ROAD PRICING, A WAY TO REDUCE CONGESTION

Since 2000, the congestion problem in the Netherlands has grown a lot. To try to solve this problem there are different policies that can be implemented. Since the problem is not solved already it is safe to say that the Netherlands need additional solutions to solve the problem. One of the solutions that can be implemented is road pricing in the way of paying per kilometer, also called ‘rekeningrijden’. This thesis has been written to examine the attitude towards road pricing, and if people are willing to accept this measure to reduce the congestion problem. The data that is collected in this research is collected by an online survey and researched the attitude towards road pricing and reducing the congestion problem and the relationship between these. Also, different demographic data of the respondents was collected to check whether there would be a difference between the different demographic groups. To analyze the data the statistic program SPSS was used. To know the relationship between the questions a correlation table is used, and to check whether other variables have an influence on the attitude towards road pricing a linear regression is used. The results show that people who are more willing to help reduce congestion are more positive about road pricing. The results also show that when people are driving more kilometers, people are less positive about road pricing. Striking is that people are positive about reducing congestion, but do not want to do something about it themselves. The results did not differ between the different demographic groups. The advice is to use marketing to make the attitude towards road pricing more positive by focusing on the positive aspects. Also try to make the people more aware of the things they can do to reduce congestion to make people more positive about reducing congestion which will positively influence the attitude towards road pricing and makes people more willing to accept road pricing. Also, an extra measure can be to reward people who want to change their behavior and punish the people who will not change their behavior by road pricing