Client: Departament de Territori i Sostenibilitat, Generalitat de Catalunya
Dates: 2015-2016

Motorways in Catalonia are mostly financed by private tolls but in the next years most of the contracts will expire and so a new pricing and financing model is to be set. The main aim of the project was to define a new road pricing model for Catalonia dealing both with the funding of the road system and with the management of demand. In the first place, a benchmarking analysis of the existing road pricing schemes was performed with particular emphasis on the management structure and the earmarking of toll revenues. Then, revenues from actual taxes and tolls of the Catalan road system were deeply reviewed together with the costs of infrastructure and externalities. From this analysis, revenues/costs matrices were defined for different categories, including type of vehicle, type of road, geographical area and road ownership. This constitutes an appropriate decision-making tool to assess how revenues are linked to costs and the economic impacts of a new pricing scheme on each stakeholder.

According to specific short-term and long-term policy objectives and relying on the resulting revenues/costs matrices, several pricing models were evaluated to choose the best suited to the particular context. Finally, transition scenarios were defined to adapt the actual system to the proposed one by carefully taking into account the acceptability of each step.

CENIT provided the following services:

  •  Literature review in road pricing.
  • Benchmarking analysis of the actual network-wide and urban pricing models and technological systems.
  • Study of infrastructure costs (historic and future), external costs and actual taxes and tolls.
  • Assessment of road pricing models.
  • Setting of different step-by-step transitions from the actual model to the future.
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