What drives inequalities in Low Emission Zones’ impacts on job accessibility?

Charlotte Liotta

Transport Policy, 2025, vol. 160, issue C, 29-41

Abstract: Low-emission zones (LEZs) aim to improve urban air quality and reduce emissions but often face public opposition due to their regressive impacts on accessibility. However, the causes of these regressive impacts remain poorly understood. This study investigates the factors driving inequalities in the impacts of LEZs on job accessibility across occupational categories in eight French cities. Using ex-ante open-source data, it computes expected job accessibility losses due to LEZs per occupational category. Additionally, it provides a counterfactual decomposition of the disparities in LEZs’ impacts between six drivers: ownership of polluting vehicles, workers’ residences and workplaces within the LEZ, accessibility of workers’ homes and workplaces via public transportation, and feasibility of active transportation modes for commuting between homes and workplaces. The findings reveal that LEZs are predominantly regressive in six out of the eight cities examined. Despite a higher concentration of high-income workers and jobs within LEZs, resulting in significant accessibility losses for this group, low-income workers bear a greater burden due to the limited availability of public transportation near their residences and workplaces, longer commutes to work, and higher shares of polluting vehicles. These findings help inform potential complementary policies to address the regressive effects of LEZs.

Keywords: Low emission zones; Transport justice; Urban form (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967070X24003184
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:trapol:v:160:y:2025:i:c:p:29-41

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.tranpol.2024.10.029

Access Statistics for this article

Transport Policy is currently edited by Y. Hayashi

More articles in Transport Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().