Should the congestion charges be collected only during the rush hours or at other times as well? Would the charging apply only to private cars or to goods traffic as well?
Will only the main roads be made chargeable, or all roads?
And which method and technique should be chosen for the collection of the fares?
Answers to these and other questions the Ministry of Transport and Communications aims to find by the end of the next year.
The government’s ministerial working group on transport and communications policy decided on Thursday that the exploration of the planned congestion charges for the Helsinki region will continue.
The working group went through around 50 statements issued in reference to the congestion charges report completed last summer.
Juhani Tervala, the highest-ranking civil servant at the Ministry of Transport and Communications, reckons that the implementation of the congestion charges scheme could start towards the end of the 2010s at the earliest.
In Tervala’s view the introduction of the scheme should be postponed until technology has advanced to the level where the collection of the tolls could be carried out based on satellite positioning.
In the future studies the aim is also to investigate the effect of congestion tolls on business life, the urban structure, and people’s equality.
The scheme has been suspected, for example, to diminish the pulling power of the downtown Helsinki shops in favour of the decentralised shopping malls on the ring roads.
“What is alsoimportant is that the levied fees will not be seen as additional ‘urban taxation’. The starting point has to be that the Finns living in the capital area are treated even-handedly relative to the citizens elsewhere in the country”, says Tervala.
Next the Ministry will also look into who should run the system and how the produced revenue should be used.
The region’s municipalities have insisted that the proceeds be used to develop the area’s traffic and public transportation arrangements.
The congestion charges’ possible effect on transportation taxation in wider terms will also be under scrutiny.
“Will all the present taxes remain unaffected, or will there be more fundamental changes?”
