An economic, environmental and transport evaluation of the Ecopass scheme in Milan: three years later

Romeo Danielis (), Lucia Rotaris (), Edoardo Marcucci () and Jérôme Massiani

No 11_3, Working Papers from SIET Società Italiana di Economia dei Trasporti e della Logistica

Abstract: The paper provides an evaluation of the Ecopass scheme for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010. The term Ecopass conveys the stated political objective of the scheme: a PASS to improve the quality of the urban environment (ECO). The scheme has actually improved the air quality in Milan, although the recommended PM10 threshold is still exceeded for a larger number of days than that recommended by EU directives. This paper estimates the costs and benefits of the scheme three years after its implementation using the same methodology applied in Rotaris et al. (2010) for the year 2008. It results that the benefits still exceed the costs by an increasing amount, but at an annual decreasing rate of improvement. The Ecopass scheme has proved beneficial, but it seems to have exhausted its potential: little further gains in environmental quality could be obtained via a fiscal incentive to improve the abatement technology of the vehicles. The new administration, elected in June 2011, is faced with the task of deciding whether to dismiss, maintain or change the Ecopass scheme. The prevailing idea coming from the Ecopass Commission and from the advocacy groups is to extend both the area of application and the number of classes subject to the charge. A move from a pollution charge to a congestion charge, or at least a combination of a pollution and a congestion charge is envisaged.

Keywords: Ecopass; road pricing; congestion pricing; urban transport (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 20 pages
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sietitalia.org/wpsiet/WPsiet_Danielis_R ... cci_Massiani2011.pdf First version, (application/pdf)

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:sit:wpaper:11_3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from SIET Società Italiana di Economia dei Trasporti e della Logistica Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Edoardo Marcucci ().