Increasing the acceptability of a congestion charging scheme

Congestion charging is currently being considered as an important public policy in an increasing number of cities around the world, but evidence shows the importance of gaining public acceptability prior to its implementation. We analyse which factors should be considered to increase acceptability in the case of the Spanish city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. We applied a three-stage methodology: first a qualitative survey using focus groups, second Likert scales and exploratory factor analysis on a sample of 89 individuals, and finally, a stated choice (SC) experiment to a different sample of 206 respondents to value their preferences. The SC experiment was designed as a cordon-price scheme, including system features and considering three different uses for revenues: improving the current bus transport system, creating an underground line and increasing green areas in the city. Our qualitative analysis shows the previous resistance to accept any charging system, the lack of confidence on politicians and stresses the importance given to the use of revenues. On the other hand, values obtained from the SC experiment suggest that that public acceptability relies on the characteristics of the congestion charging scheme. In particular more than one third of the population would be willing to pay a daily fare of €2.22 if revenues from the system were used to increase the size of green areas instead of reinvesting this into the transport system.