THE ROLE OF TRANSPORT SUPPLY IN THE ACCEPTABILITY OF POLLUTION CHARGING EXTENSION. THE CASE OF MILAN

In the beginning of 2008 a pollution charging in the central area of Milan was introduced. It initially had a large impact on traffic volume, but in some years its effect worn off, as the citizen of Milan started to change their cars. This is why in June 2011 Milan citizens were consulted in a referendum for its extension to all cars, resulting in a strong support to the policy extension. We initially describe and contextualize the Milan experiment within the main European experiences on urban road charging in order to have a better understanding of the acceptability of this kind of measures. The paper then attempts to study, through a revealed references exercise, which are the determinants of the highly positive vote in favour of the extension to a road pricing scheme. In particular we are focusing on: ideological orientation, socio-economic variables, distance from the city centre, public transport provision. Differently from existing literature, we put particular interest in the latter, as we want to assess the relationship between policy acceptability and neighbourhood accessibility, to verify if public transport was essential to the successful implementation of road charging.