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The call for a congestion charge is getting louder and more frequent in many countries as major metropolitan areas experience increasing levels of road congestion. This is often accompanied by a recognition that governments need to find new sources of revenue to maintain existing road networks and to invest in new transport infrastructure. Although reform of road pricing is almost certain to occur at some time in the future in a number of countries, a key challenge is in selling the idea to the community of road users as well as a whole raft of interest groups that influence the views of society and politicians. Simply announcing a need for a congestion charge (often misleadingly called a tax) does little to progress the reform agenda. What is required is a carefully structured demonstration of what might be done to progressively introduce adjustments in road user charges that are seen as reducing the costs to motorists while ensuring no loss of revenue to government. In this paper we show, in the context of Sydney (Australia), that this can be achieved by the reform of registration fees in the presence of a distance-based charging regime that can deliver financial gains to motorists, with prospects of revenue growth to the State Treasury.

Transport policy is an increasingly difficult area for all national governments and regional/local authorities. Tackling car use and realising a sustainable transport system appears to be very difficult. Developing public transport is seen as an increasingly important element in improving the transport system, especially in densely populated areas. At the same time however, governments are under increasing pressure to cut taxation. As a result there is a growing gap between increasing policy need for public transport and government resources to fund that need. This timely book explores one solution to this dilemma, which is the use of local charges and taxes dedicated to support public transport. Unfare Solutions examines how and why such charges have evolved and how they do (or do not) relate to modern transport policy developments and theory. It shows innovative funding techniques developed by both public transport providers and federal and local authorities. Introductory Preface 1. Transport in a Sustainable Society 2. New Finance for Public Transport 4. Polluter Pays 5. Spreading the Burden 6. Evaluating LETs 7. LETs it be. Index.

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include targets to achieve universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) within the next 15 years (2015–30). To be sustainable, this requires the long-term funding of efficient operating costs, capital maintenance costs, and any costs of capital. It is recognized that this can only be done through a combination of user charges, national taxes, and international transfers. This paper describes the main permutations in present user charges and subsidies, and reports on the ways in which each helps or hinders access by the poor to both rural and urban WASH services. An overview, based on programme experience, academic and grey literature, indicates that it is possible to accelerate the provision of clean water, basic sanitation, and improved hygiene practices ahead of the socio-economic (effective demand) trend line but only with very significant direct and indirect subsidies; direct to consumers and indirect to the supporting institutions or entities ('the enabling environment'). We conclude that, in the near term at least, it is likely that transfers will have to be acknowledged as a more prominent source of funding for recurrent costs, specifically capital maintenance charges, than donors would prefer. If supporting ongoing services for all, in rural areas or low-income urban settlements, with the necessary level of ongoing subsidies (transfers) is unaffordable for global society, most likely by default, then focusing upon subsidizing the poorest and most marginalized in the long term is the 'least bad' alternative approach – but this approach cannot be expected to deliver genuine SDGs.

Traditional charge discerners have problems such as low discerner rates and insufficient info utilization. Therefore, this paper proposes a non-aggressive charge discerner means in smart grids based on chart convolutional neural networks. This paper divides user charges into different groups based on their similarity in electricity prolapse behavior, constructs charge space-time chart info, and uses a self-adaption space-time synchronization chart convolutional neural network to achieve non-aggressive charge discerner in smart grids. Chart convolutional neural networks can practically procedure chart structured info, transforming complex relationships between charges into feature info transmission between network points. Combined with chart convolutional neural networks for feature extraction and classification, non-aggressive charge accurate discerner of various electrical equipment in the electrified wire netting is achieved. According to the testing verification, it is known that the proposed means improve the real-time and accuracy of the charge discerner, providing strong support for achieving fine management and efficient scheduling of smart grids.

Out-of-pocket health payments (OOPs) are a key indicator of health financing systems' performance. Measuring OOPs through household surveys is challenging and yet it is the primary source of information in the absence of comprehensive data on user charges in the public sector and market data from the private sector. The choice of the recall period has been identified as a source of bias in previous studies. This study investigates the effect of two different types of recall periods on the agreement between OOPs reported by households and providers. Households were sampled for our community survey from the Navrongo Health and Demographic Surveillance System, Ghana. Two versions of a health expenditure module were developed differing only in the recall periods, \"shorter recall periods\" 2 weeks for medicines and outpatient care, 3 months for preventive care and 6 months for inpatient care and medical products. The longer recall periods were 4 weeks, 6 months and 12 months. Households from both community and provider sampling were randomly assigned to the two questionnaires. The providers included the hospital, one clinic and, health facilities and drug shops in the area. We estimated the ratio between the overall mean household OOPs and overall mean provider OOPs. We assessed agreement between the individual matched household-provider OOPs using Bland-Altman analysis. The short and long-recall period versions of the questionnaires were administered to 746 and 480 households with matching success to provider records of 72% and 84%, respectively. The most common spending categories were inpatient care and medicines in this sample. The overall mean OOPs reported by the households were higher than provider records for both recall periods. For matched household-provider data, there was no evidence of a difference in the agreement between the household and provider OOPs for inpatient care, the ratio of household to provider for the 12 months recall was estimated to be 0.74 (95% CI 0.45, 1.19; p = 0.22) that of the ratio of household to provider for the 6-month period, where less than 1 would indicate better agreement. For medicines, the ratio of 4 weeks to 2 weeks was 1.26 (0.93, 1.39; p = 0.39). There were considerable challenges in using provider data to assess the accuracy of reported OOPs in this setting. There was no evidence from this study that the agreement between household and provider data differed by recall period, however the confidence intervals of the effect were wide, and an effect cannot be ruled out. These findings underscore the need for caution in relying solely on provider-reported data and highlight the importance of considering alternative data collection methods to improve the accuracy of healthcare cost assessments.

Land reclamation has become one of the great concerns of many coastal states for its serious environmental and ecological effects. User charge is an effective market-based approach for regulating land reclamation. The user change should be designed to reflect the full effect of converting sea to land to ensure sustainable use of marine resources. In this paper, we present an ecological-economic framework to estimate the user charge that covers both the ecological damages and the rent associated with the reclaimed land. We apply the framework to Xiamen’s West Sea. Results of the case study suggest that the rents of reclaimed land for industrial and commercial uses are 49 yuan/m 2 and 1,066–2,704 yuan/m 2 , respectively. The unit value of ecological damages of land reclamation is 605 yuan/m 2 . The present user charge is too low to regulate excessive land reclamation. The user charge for land reclamation in the study area should be modified to 653 yuan/m 2 for industrial uses and 35–40% of adjacent land prices for commercial uses.

Establishing and maintaining gamma knife facility incurs significant costs, mandating healthcare institutions to meticulously assess financial implications for sustainability. This study explores the financial implications of setting up and operating a Gamma Knife facility, with an aim to ascertain user charges for achieving breakeven. The study was conducted from January to June 2019 at the largest neurosurgery centre of an Institute of National Importance (INI), in Delhi, India. Applying both Traditional and Time-Driven Activity-Based Costing (TD-ABC) methodologies, capital and operating expenses were calculated. (1US$ = INR 70.4 -Average value for the year 2019). The average cost per gamma knife radio surgery procedure was calculated to be US $2,469 (INR 1,73,832), with major costs attributed to machinery & equipment (43.6%), followed by manpower (32.5%), electricity (9.67%), equipment maintenance (8.61%) etc. The initial investment to establish a Gamma Knife facility is significantly higher with an MRI unit (Model A) at US $ 9,836,423 (INR 69,24,84,164) compared to one without (Model B) at US $7,294,986 (INR 51,35,66,988). Currently, the patient has to pay US $1,065 (INR 75,000) for a gamma knife radio surgery, which poses a challenge for achieving breakeven since the variable cost for the same is US $1,367 (INR 96,239) per procedure. The study serve as a tool for strategic planning, pricing adjustments, and enhancing operational efficiencies, thus ensuring that such high-end technologies can be sustainably integrated into the public healthcare landscape of a developing country like India.

This primer presents some promising and innovative mileage fee system designs and transition strategies. For states or localities that are considering a transition to mileage fees, awareness of these strategies can help determine whether shifting from fuel taxes to mileage fees merits further consideration. For jurisdictions already engaged in detailed assessments of mileage fees, these concepts can help reduce costs and build public support.