‘Winners’ and ‘Losers’ - ‘Just’ market-based instruments for urban transport
Name of applicant
Ravi Seshadri
Title
Associate Professor
Institution
Technical University of Denmark
Amount
DKK 6,969,543
Year
2025
Type of grant
Semper Ardens: Accelerate
What?
In urban transport, Market-Based Instruments (MBIs) such as road pricing are a key policy instrument for achieving a carbon-neutral future. This project will develop scientific tools to design MBIs for urban transport that are equitable (‘just’), efficient and guarantee privacy. It will quantify the trade-offs involved in decarbonizing transport and provide guidance on how we should go about it.
Why?
Transportation is a significant contributor to global emissions, yet MBIs have seldom been adopted in urban transportation unlike in other sectors. A key challenge is that they are often unjust (inequitable) since they disproportionately burden the poor and disadvantaged. Issues of equity surrounding MBIs have long been recognized, but the state-of-the-art does not provide convincing solutions.
How?
To address this, the project will adopt an interdisciplinary approach combining techniques from welfare economics and social choice theory, transportation science, operations research and distributive justice. It will leverage empirical data from a road-pricing experiment and large-scale simulation tools and include an international network of experts with diverse backgrounds.