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10/10/2006Can Sweden Reach Consensus on Congestion Charging?
Oscar Alarik is Deputy Officer at the Congestion Charge Secretariat in Stockholm, Sweden. He has worked on the project for two years now, about the same time as it has taken to implement and, since January 3, 2006, trial it for the Swedish public. The trial concluded at the end of August, and the system went to referendum on September 17, 2006. The following is adapted from Alarik’s remarks at the W2i Digital Cities Convention in London, September 25–26, 2006. Stockholm is a beautiful town, and in Sweden we think we are known everywhere for being environmentally friendly… but we have environmental problems, and they are severe. And congestion has always been quite severe as far back as the 1950s. Now this has grown to a problem costing $300–800 m euros per year, and it’s a problem the average Stockholm resident recognizes.
 Stockholm is not big, but there are certain things that are causing the problem. The Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren split Stockholm in two parts, and there are only a few places where you can get off from south to north here, and that is through the city. At the same time, new projects for new roads, bridges, and tunnels are very controversial and cost a lot of money.
Our last mayor went into office saying she was opposed to congestion charging, but after she was elected, she was forced into it because the left and green parties forced the Social Democrats nationally to begin congestion taxing in Sweden. (It’s called taxes in Sweden because a municipality can’t decide to charge itself, so the issue of whether to have these charges or not is always coming up in Parliament.)
Stockholm’s system differs a bit from London’s. In London, you have cameras recognizing cars throughout the city, but in Stockholm, there is only once chance, which is when the car enters or exts the center of Stockholm (at 1 of 18 control points), when you’re charged between 1–2 euros. With a maximum charge of 6 euro per day per vehicle, it’s much cheaper in Stockholm than in London. And there are many vehicles that are exempted, such as taxis and clean cars.
Essing Road, in particular, is exempted for political reasons; it is Sweden’s largest bypass. Everyone thought this road would be overcrowded because it’s the only way now to go north and south without being charged.
The aim was to reduce traffic by 10–15%, increase average speed on streets and roads, reduce emissions, and improve the city’s environment. There were also three parts to the project. Beside the congestion charge, there was a heavy investment in public transport (200 new buses) and in new park-and-ride facilities. So this is what it looks like. When you pass, you can see how much you are charged.
There are two systems that recognize the cars that pass the zone — a camera that zooms into the registration number and reads it through OCR technology, and a tag or transponder, or an on-board unit (OBR), which communicates with the station. It is voluntary for Stockholm people to get this tag, but there’s a benefit, which is that you can use direct debit from your bank so that you don’t have to go onto the Internet and pay.
When you cross one of those toll stations, the system looks into the national registration system at who the owner is, and then the car owner has to pay. And there are several ways to pay — Internet, direct debit, or at a 7-11s store. If you go onto the Internet, you can see all the tax decisions you have that you have paid or not paid.
It’s a large system. About 500,000 tax decisions are made every 24 hours, and millions of pictures of registration plates are stored. There are lots of transactions, so it’s a quite complicated system, and IBM has carried it out. We’re very glad that they built such a robust system. There’s no rocket science, they tell us. They just use the best technology available and build it robustly. Every toll station has several ways to communicate with the central station. For example, there are three different cables. If one is broken, two remain. If all three are broken, you can still get the information from the toll station. This system has been up and going 99.96% of the time.
Political Background
People didn’t like the project before it was begun. Newspapers reported that thousands marched against congestion charges. So this wasn’t the best start that we could have on a project — the entire population hating it. But as soon as it was launched, on the very first day, January 3, we had a cut of 25–30% in traffic, and immediately the media switched from being extremely against it to being mildly in favor of it. The results have been so good that Stockholm car drivers have seen the effects themselves. At the end of August, when the system was switched off, traffic increased again and the cars have come back — but not all of them.
What happened in the media? One headline said the system had worked. Then the big newspapers that were against said it was it was time to change. One said, “Stockholm loves congestion charges.” When we had had such harsh media, this was strange.
The effects on travel time were good — 20–25% less congestion during the peak hours — and there was less congestion quite far outside the city limits. And we had a cut in air pollution between 8–14%, which is quite good considering this is exactly where there’s most people. We got some international support, too. Just before the public referendum, in September 17, Al Gore was here telling everyone to vote in favor of the congestion charges.
Public Referendum
Swedish public referendums are not decisive; they’re like a big opinion poll for people. For the 17th of September — the same day as the national elections — 51.3% of Stockholm residents voted “yes.” We thought it was a little bit slim, because our opinion polls showed 5–6% more than that. There was an agreement between the old majority in town and the old majority in Parliament that the city residents should decide. But what happened on the same day was a switch from the left to the right parties, and now we have a new government in force taking over, and three of those four leaders are against the congestion charging.
At the same time as our city referendum, some of the municipalities around Stockholm voted as a protest. Eleven had their own referendums, and all of these were against it, and the new government said they were going to listen to them.
We don’t know what the outcome will be. On the one hand, we have a success in Stockholm, but on the other hand, congestion charges can only be revived through a change in the law in Parliament, where the new government is against charging. But at the same time there is a majority in Parliament that favors congestion charges. So whatever the new government does, they will have problems. For two weeks since the elections, there has been speculation about what the new government will do.
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