INVESTIGATING WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR CONGESTION PRICING IN PESHAWAR UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
Keywords:
willingness to pay, congestion pricing, stated preference surveys, discrete choice experiment, and road infrastructureAbstract
Congested road is a perfect example of tragedy of the commons as there is no restriction for drivers not to
exploit it. Car users are independent in their traveling decisions but their decisions have negative consequences for
others for which they do not pay rather the non-users pay for them in the form of hard cash, inconvenience and lack of
safety. This unwanted but widely practiced phenomena has over-shadowed the livable environment even in universities
all across Pakistan particularly in Peshawar university campus (case study) where the environment is exacerbated by
minimum personalized vehicle holders for the maximum non-car commuters resulting from the free vehicular entrance
and biased provision of infrastructure. This leads to huge social divide, inequality and gender disparity. In addition to
finding appropriate rent for provision of new equitable, environment and gender friendly modes of transport like rental
bikes and golf carts, Willingness to pay for congestion pricing as proposed solution is investigated through online webbased questionnaire survey from 580 respondents and statistical analysis is used for selecting most feasible mode(s) of
alternate in-campus transportation. Results showed that 67.6% respondents were WTP for congestion charging and
55.3% selected golf carts as their preferred mode in campus followed by rental bike with 27.6%. Appropriate rent chosen
for golf cart was PKR 20 and less than PKR 20 for rental bikes by more than half of the respondents. Congestion pricing
was perceived as effective solution and proposed modes were opted as the preferred modes for traveling in campus.
