Munich. According to a study, an anti-traffic jam fee of a few euros could solve large parts of Munich’s traffic problems. You could “get the congestion problems in the inner city under control”, write the authors of the Ifo Institute and the consulting firm Intraplan in a study presented on Monday. The researchers do not expect any negative effects on retail and tourism. On the contrary, they even assume that the city center will become more attractive if more people switch to public transport.
According to the study, six euros per day per vehicle could reduce traffic within the 28-kilometer-long Middle Ring by an average of 23 percent – at peak times by 33 percent. At 10 euros it would even be around 30 or 41 percent. The researchers assume that because of the fee, many people would switch to other modes of transport – especially public ones.
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According to the authors, social hardship caused by the fee could be cushioned with the help of the income from it – for example through social tickets for public transport. In addition, the money could be put into expanding the network.
“Such a fee would also be conceivable for other cities in Germany,” said Oliver Falck, author and head of the Center for Industrial Organization and New Technologies at the Ifo Institute. “We suspect that the results can also be transferred to other congested cities.” He named Berlin, Düsseldorf, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Nuremberg, Cologne, Hanover, Bremen and Frankfurt as particularly congested cities besides Munich. A fee would always have to be adapted to the local conditions, said Falck. (dpa)
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