Tradable Mobility Credits Taking the Place of Congestion Pricing: An Overview

While car sharing, eCommerce, and autonomous vehicles are expected to increase the unit veh-km of each vehicle as well as the density of vehicles moving on the streets, congestion remains a big barrier to overcome in urban transportation. Plans to charge for urban car congestion have been viewed as successful solutions to this issue. Although urban congestion pricing has a solid theoretical foundation and has been successfully implemented in places like Singapore, London, Stockholm, Milan, etc., public acceptance and equity concerns remain the main obstacles to its implementation. This paper first reviews the research and application cases of urban congestion pricing through recent years. An alternative to congestion pricing that gets around its drawbacks is a system of transferable mobility credits. Others with low vehicle-use demands can sell their mobility credits to people with higher demands since travelers are given mobility credits that can be transferred within a particular urban region. So, this program gives people the chance to cut down on their use of cars. This paper highlights the studies on this innovative approach to urban mobility management and contrasts it with traditional congestion pricing programs. Finally, a conclusion has been drawn on the gap and some potential directions for further research have been suggested.