Upon request of MIRA (Environment Report), Transport & Mobility Leuven calculated the private costs, the marginal external costs and the degree of internalisation for transport in Flanders. The private costs are the costs for the user and the external costs are the costs for society caused by congestion, direct emissions, accidents, noise, and damage to infrastructure. But for cycling the external costs also includes an advantage, namely health benefits.
External costs are called marginal because the additional costs for society of an additional vehicle km are calculated. The degree of internalisation shows to which extent the user pays via taxes for the external costs he or she causes. They wanted to know whether the users pay enough for the negative effects of transport. This report was an actualisation and an extension to a former report released in 2004.
The key findings are:
- The report shows that current taxes and levies only cover part of the marginal external costs.
- The degree of internalisation, or what the user pays, is the largest for road transport and more for passenger cars in particular. On average, the user of a gasoline car even pays too much.
- For road transport, the external costs are variable due to place and time of the movements. Therefore differentiated taxes are recommended from an economic point of view.
- For road transport in general the most important marginal external costs are the costs of congestion, except motorcycles for which the accident cost is more important.
- For passenger transport the motorcycle has the highest external costs and within the group of passenger cars the highest costs are for the gasoline car because they have higher emissions of particulate matter that increases their environmental costs.
- Collective transport such as bus and train have lower external costs per passenger kilometre than private modes due to their higher occupancy rate.
Source: TML (Transport & Mobility Leuven) Newsletter, 26 January 2011
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