Abstract
With ongoing urbanization, traffic congestion and the air pollution it induces are worsening. Using a system dynamics (SD) approach, this study constructed a driving-restriction policy model to explore the effects of different stages of policy implementation on variables such as traffic congestion, emissions, and parking demand. Medium- and long-term dynamic simulation showed that the effect of the policy was obvious in the initial stage but gradually weakened in the medium term, leading to a “fading” effect on traffic-congestion alleviation; a “rebound” effect was even observed at the end of the simulation. Thus, the policy will not effectively reduce traffic congestion in the long term and will induce a new demand for car purchases, resulting in paradoxical effects, which will aggravate parking demand, congestion, and pollution. Yet, it was also found that introducing penalty policies and an air pollution charging fee could weaken the paradoxical effects and compensate for some defects of the policy. Such strategies could help reduce emissions, traffic congestion, parking demand, the number of illegal trips, and the overall number of vehicle trips. These findings can provide not only a theoretical basis for further research but also practical guidance for policy improvement.
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Acknowledgements
We are thankful to the anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11901167), Project funded by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021M690889), Social Science Planning Foundation of Henan Province (Grant No. 2019BJJ038), Science and Technology Innovation Foundation of Henan Agricultural University (grant nos. KJCX2021B04, KJCX2021B05), and Special Fund for Topnotch Talent at Henan Agricultural University (Grant No. 30500646). We thank LetPub (www.letpub.com) for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
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Jia, S., Li, Y. & Fang, T. Can driving-restriction policies alleviate traffic congestion? A case study in Beijing, China. Clean Techn Environ Policy 24, 2931–2946 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-022-02377-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10098-022-02377-z