Road pricing and public transport pricing reform in Paris: complements or substitutes?

This paper explores reforms of pricing of private and public transport in Paris. Paris has used a policy of very low public transport prices and no road pricing. The Paris transport network is represented as a stylized concentric city with the choice between car, rapid rail, metro and busses as well as two income classes and different transport motives. The model is used to test what are the efficiency gains of introducing road pricing and of increasing public transit prices in the peak. Are both reforms re-enforcing each other or are they largely substitutes? We find that a zonal pricing scheme for the center of Paris combined with higher public transport fares in the peak perform best. The benefits of an overall capacity extension of public transport supply are much lower than the benefits of pricing reforms and could very well not pass the cost benefit test.