Research On The Internalization Of The External Cost Of The Transport System In China

With the development of economy and improvement of standard of living, more and more attention was paid on the environmental protection. Traffic transport did great contribution to the economy, but meanwhile the air pollution, noise, traffic accidents and congestion produced by transport have brought excess impact on the environment. Since the negative impacts were paid by the whole society instead of the suppliers and users of transport activities, they belonged to the external cost of the transport industry. The existence of external cost led to the low efficient allocation of transport rescourses, such as the market share of road transport expanded and the transport structure came to be unreasonable. To improve the efficiency of transport resources and promote the development of environmentally friendly mode, it would be necessary to internalize the external cost of transport aiming at realizing the harmony among the transport, economy and environment.The content of external cost of transport was introduced firstly in the thesis. The development process of researches on external cost was reviewed briefly. The monetary valuation methods of external cost was summarized and sorted in details, which including the hedonic property price method, the wage risk method, the contingent valuation method, the travel cost method and the dose-response approach. The current external cost of the traffic system in China was caculated according to the unit external cost of all modes. By reviewing the developing trend of the external cost of all modes since the 1950s, the conclusion was gained that the transport structure is evidently unreasonable. It would be obviously indispensable to internalize the external cost.The internalizing methods in America, Japan and European countries were introduced in the thesis, and the applicability of all the methods was analysed demonstratively. Three instruments adapted to Chinese situations were brought forward as follows:a) Tax on the heavy polluted traffic modes; b) Charge on the obviously unreasonable transport distances; c) offer transport subsidies with the taxes and fares to the modes with low external cost.