Congestion pricing has proven to be an efficient market-based policy for mitigating congestion. However, despite successful implementations, congestion pricing remains challenging to promote. Much of the public opposition stems from perceived inequality. Congestion pricing disproportionately affects the poor, who may face higher costs due to inflexible schedules, or may need to switch to less desirable routes, departure times, or travel modes. This talk will review our prior studies on addressing such equity concerns. Our approaches include exploring a second-best pricing scheme that achieves Pareto improvement or optimizes an income-based equity measure. Additionally, we examine another market-based instrument: tradable mobility credits. This instrument directly regulates quantity, with price signals emerging from the combination of quantity restriction and a trading scheme. We demonstrate that tradable credits can lead to a simpler and fairer distribution of benefits from congestion reduction and be more amenable to public acceptance. When justified, the welfare effects of this scheme on individuals can be controlled by how the credits are distributed.
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