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Ieromonachou, Petros; Potter, Stephen and Warren, James
(2005).
Abstract
Traditional policies of road expansion involved a relatively simple system of actors and processes around which expertise, knowledge, and skills had built up over many decades. Some of the more radical Travel Demand Management (TDM) measures, including urban road pricing policies, involve a complicated set of institutions, processes, people and procedures. Road pricing schemes often get held up or discarded due to controversy, disagreements, unanticipated problems, and a whole host of other delaying factors. If they ever get implemented, they tend to be diluted and consequently less effective.
The paper uses an adaptation of Strategic Niche Management (SNM) to analyse road user charging case studies in the UK and Norway. SNM has previously been used to provide guidelines on the implementation of radical transport technologies (Hoogma et al., 2002). For this paper, it is modified to cover a socio-technical approach (Ieromonachou et al., 2004). A systems map is created of stakeholders involved in each road user charging scheme and of the relationships between them. A detailed SNM analysis is presented of the road user charging schemes in Bergen, Oslo, Durham and London. From this, key strategic aspects are identified, together with the processes involved in their management. These include:
• The project champion
• The role of stakeholders and users networks
• The motivations and expectations of stakeholders and users
• The change in perceptions associated with acceptance
Comparison between the four cases shows the different approaches of each country regarding the implementation and ‘marketing’ of the policies. This includes the purpose for introducing the policies, the involvement of users in the planning process and, the use of
revenues for providing alternative transport modes or financing road infrastructure.
The results from this research suggest that the use of SNM for policy analysis can help identify critical information, processes and actors in the planning, introduction and implementation of behavioural change transport policies, the barriers faced during implementation (social, political, institutional, financial), and the different information needs
for each step in the process.
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