Marco Kouwenhoven

The impact of fixed and variable costs on household car ownership

Abstract Car purchase taxes in The Netherlands are among the highest in the EU. The Dutch government plans to gradually replace car purchase and ownership taxes by a national road user charging system (kilometre charge) in the period 2012 to 2016. As a result, new and second hand car prices in the Netherlands will drop up to 30%. Relatively little research has been conducted on the impacts of such large price changes on car ownership. Reduced car prices are likely to lead to an increase in car ownership. But consumers could also refrain from buying extra cars when they consider the extra operating costs resulting from the kilometre charge. This paper presents one of the few empirical studies to examine the effects of both (large) fixed and variable car cost changes on both car ownership and use. An internet survey among Dutch households was designed and conducted including stated intentions and stated preference experiments. We investigated whether households react more to present one-off fixed costs than to recurrent variable costs, for various specifications of car costs. Model analysis was conducted to derive fixed and variable price elasticities for private car ownership and effects of the kilometre charge. The study shows in their car purchase decisions, households react more strongly to a change in euro per year in fixed car costs than to a euro per year in variable car costs. Abolishing the Dutch car purchase tax while at the same time introducing a kilometre charge will lead to 2% rise in car ownership on the short to medium run (1–5 years).

Prévision de la fiabilité des temps de parcours dans le transport routier : un nouveau modèle pour les Pays-Bas

Dans ce chapitre, nous decrivons comment nous avons integre la variabilite du temps de parcours dans le modele national neerlandais de prevision des transports et faisons le bilan des enseignements a tirer de ce nouvel outil de prevision sur le plan de l’action des pouvoirs publics. Jusqu’ici aux Pays-Bas, les ameliorations de la fiabilite des temps de parcours des projets routiers sont pris en compte dans l’analyse cout-avantages moyennant l’application d’un coefficient majorateur de 1.25 aux gains de temps de parcours dus a une reduction de la congestion. Cette proportionnalite repose sur le lien entre reduction de la congestion et amelioration de la fiabilite. Mais ce traitement de la fiabilite n’est d’aucune utilite lorsqu’il s’agit d’evaluer les politiques visant plus particulierement la variabilite du temps de parcours. Consideree comme provisoire des le depart, cette methode devait etre remplacee par une autre, plus fine, susceptible de prendre cette variabilite en compte. Pour ce faire, nous avons determine une relation empirique entre l’ecart type du temps de parcours, le retard moyen sur ce temps et la longueur du trajet. Cette technique a ete integree dans le modele national neerlandais sous la forme d’un module de post-traitement. Le nouveau modele de prevision de la fiabilite des temps de parcours sera integre dans les lignes directrices neerlandaises de l’analyse cout-avantages.