An examination into Stockholm’s seven-month-long trial period with congestion taxes, this collection of articles analyzes the political and administrative processes of the first Swedish congestion experiment and its aftermath. Describing the preoccupations, hopes, and impressions that came along with the trial period and how feelings fluctuated among the inhabitants of Stockholm before, during, and after the trial, this study provide tools for avoiding the pitfalls, with hopes that the successes of the Stockholm Trial will be repeated in other contexts.

. . . this book is an interesting collection of papers on the topic of road congestion pricing. . . The reader should find this collection to be both interesting and informative, but also quite thought-provoking. . . The papers also provide some very useful information about projects that have not worked or have not been implemented for various reasons and lessons that can be learnt from failures to implement and failures of pricing schemes. Peter R. Stopher, International Planning Studies In February 2003, the London Congestion Charging Scheme was introduced and in 2006 a similar policy was introduced in Stockholm. In both cases automobile traffic entering the cordon declined by about 20 percent. This book evaluates these and other similar programs exploring their implications for the United States. While there is increasing interest in road pricing in the US in many individual states, the motivation is often highway financing rather than congestion relief. The contributors argue that the prospects for extensive implementation in the US remain uncertain. Nevertheless, this book illustrates that the European experience suggests political feasibility is much less of a hurdle than was once considered and that congestion pricing would have a significant impact in reducing traffic as it did in Europe. This study s value lies in the fact that it examines road pricing in the real world and not simply from a theoretical viewpoint. As a comparative study it will appeal to both policymakers and academics in transportation economics and planning, urban economics, planning and economic geography.

This paper reviews literature on the optimal design of pricing policies to reduce urban automobile congestion. The implications of a range of complicating factors are considered; these include traffic bottlenecks, constraints on which roads and freeway lanes in the road network can be priced, driver heterogeneity, private toll operators, other externalities besides congestion, and interactions between congestion taxes and the broader fiscal system. I also briefly discuss the incidence of congestion taxes and experience with this policy in the United States and elsewhere. Although the economics literature on congestion pricing has advanced considerably over the past 20 years, research is still needed on the empirical measurement of second-best efficient tolls for urban centers and whether alternative design features have substantial implications for efficiency. More research is also needed on the design of schemes to promote feasibility by compensating adversely affected groups with minimal loss in economic efficiency.

This book on road traffic congestion in cities and suburbs describes congestion problems and shows how they can be relieved. The first part (Chapters 1 - 3) shows how congestion reflects transportation technologies and settlement patterns. The second part (Chapters 4 - 13) describes the causes, characteristics, and consequences of congestion. The third part (Chapters 14 - 23) presents various relief strategies - including supply adaptation and demand mitigation - for nonrecurring and recurring congestion. The last part (Chapter 24) gives general guidelines for congestion relief and provides a general outlook for the future. The book will be useful for a wide audience - including students, practitioners and researchers in a variety of professional endeavors: traffic engineers, transportation planners, public transport specialists, city planners, public administrators, and private enterprises that depend on transportation for their activities.

"The presence of preexisting tax distortions, and the form of revenue recycling, can crucially affect the size -- and possibly even the sign -- of the welfare effect of road pricing schemes. The efficiency gains from recycling congestion tax revenues in other tax reductions can amount to several times the Pigouvian welfare gains from congestion reduction"--Cover.

As the number of automobiles continues to rise globally, traffic management has become increasingly challenging. A deep body of economic and social literature from Marshall (1920) and Weber (1892) onwards, suggests that humans and cities benefit from proximity. Proximity, comes at the cost, however, of congestion that by slowing movement countervails the agglomerative benefits proximity provides (Alonso, 1964, Mills 1992). Today, traffic in many urban centers has reached crisis levels (Barry, 2012), leading many cities to consider different forms of congestion pricing.On February 2, 2019 New York City began levying a $2.50 per trip tax on medallion taxis and $2.75 tax on ride-share vehicles traveling in much of Manhattan with the dual goals of reducing congestion and raising money for the Metropolitan Transportation Agency which funds mass transit (Herman, 2019). Further taxes are planned (Walker, 2019).To assess the tax's initial effects on congestion, I study traffic data from the New York City Department of Transportation that is available through New York City's Open Data initiative. Utilizing a variety of sensors situated around New York City, DOT tracks speeds electronically. For my research, I compare traffic speeds after the toll was levied with speeds beforehand.I find that in its first month, the surcharge levied on cars has not led to a decline in congestion operationalized as increase in average traffic speed. In fact, traffic speeds in Manhattan declined slightly in February suggesting greater congestion. More research is needed to assess if these findings are real or spurious, how the surcharge affects other variables such as real estate prices, and the applicability of these findings to other metropolitan regions.