Transport's demand in the Metropolitan Region of São Paulo and urban toll policy as a measure to reduce congestion

The São Paulo Metropolitan Area has been suffering for several years from enormous congestions that causes many problems, such as air and noise pollution, and productivity losses. Until now a day, the city has never had a policy to solve the causes of the problem. Automobile users cause external costs to other individuals and do not pay for it. Those who commute by car take into account only private costs, lower than the total social one, which considers also external costs. Thus, there is an excessive use of the roads and, consequently, congestion. A congestion pricing policy imposes to car users an expense as a way to internalize the costs generated to society by them. At the same time, this policy generates revenues for investment in the city's transport system. This work aims to estimate the demand of different transport modes in the São Paulo Metropolitan Area and simulate how the demand would respond to an implementation of a congestion charge for cars, in a specific area of the city. For this, we use a mixed multinomial logit model, based on Origin-Destination Research. As the variable dependent on the modal choice for commuting, we consider six different modes of transport: walking and cycling (1), buses (2), car (3), subway and train (4), taxi (5) and motorcycle (6). As explanatory variables, we use cost and time travel, besides socioeconomic characteristics of the individuals. We simulate the congestion price policy imposing an additional fee to car journeys intended to or that pass through the restricted area. Our results suggest that an urban toll would have a positive impact on reducing the number of car commuters (each $1 fee would reduce in 6.18% the demand for car commuters), increasing the number of trips in other modes, especially public transport (2.18% for buses and 1.16% for subway and train), and non-motorized transport (walking and cycling, 2.53%). As an additional benefit to public budget, the congestion charging generates revenues for the city to invest in transport infrastructure.