Road pricing (tolls, etc.) as a means of generating revenue for infrastructure investment has become a major policy option in both Europe and North America. It can also be used as a policy in the management of traffic demand and flow, environmental objectives, and optimal resource allocation as regards the size of investments. Road pricing is assumed to be able to solve many problems simultaneously -- congestion control, pollution reduction, and investment financing. This volume assembles and assesses theoretical knowledge, empirical results and experiences of actual road pricing. In addition, the impact of new information technology on future policy formulation is considered.

Traffic congestion affects towns and cities everywhere and in some places it is regarded as one of the most urgent and important problems in need of a solution. Road pricing is undoubtedly recognised as an effective traffic demand management tool. The recent London congestion charging scheme seems to be showing that public and political opposition is not insurmountable. Thus, the ghost that prevented the introduction of a policy supported by transport economists for over 80 years seems to have disappeared or at least, weakened.The book contains twelve papers useful to different types of audience, such as researchers and postgraduate students, civil servants, policy makers and consultants. The first part is mainly theoretical and concentrates on second-best congestion pricing including pricing in urban contexts, the impact on the performance of the road network, optimal locations and charge levels, dynamic aspects such as time variation of tolls, potential impacts of road pricing on costs and service quality of public transport buses, and efficiency costs and transport sector effects of different types of pricing when they guarantee a balanced budget per mode.The second part contains chapters that describe the schemes in place around the world such as Singapore, Norway, London, and the US. The volume is an update of the state of the art on the subject and the first one to have been written and appear after the London scheme was implemented and to contain an assessment of its preliminary impacts.

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.

In recent years more emphasis has been placed in transport research on using existing roads as efficiently as possible in order to diminish the impact of traffic congestion. This book describes new theoretical, empirical and simulation models to analyse the impact of information provision to drivers and road pricing on congestion levels. It is the first publication presenting a wide variety of economic models to study information and road pricing effects jointly.

Excise taxes on smoking, drinking, gambling, polluting, and driving are always topical and controversial. Not only are these taxes convenient sources of government revenue, they can also be designed to reflect the external costs that consumers or producers of excisable products impose on other people. Global warming, acid rain, traffic congestion, and the economic costs of cigarette and alcohol consumption are problems that can be corrected through selective excise taxes and other regulatory instruments. Excise taxes, moreover, are increasingly looked upon as revenue substitutes for distortionary taxes on capital and labour. Addressing these and other issues, this book by internationally recognized experts analyses the art of excise taxation, providing a systematic, insightful, and often provocative treatment of a major fiscal instrument that policy-makers often neglect, and that gets little attention in the professional literature. It provides a sound understanding, not only of relevant economic theory, but of the myriad institutional details that are crucial for the practical application of that theory.

"The synthesis describes the experience of several foreign countries that have used road pricing, or congestion pricing, as a means to manage congestion. The synthesis contains dicussions of the policy, equity, and implementation issues associated with congestion pricing. Several of the schemes described were planned or implemented as methods to increase roadway funding rather than for congestion management, but have had the effect of changing travel patterns."--Avant-propos.

Addresses transit's ridership and its share of the travel market. The research explored a variety of different public policies and transit management actions that can potentially influence transit ridership, particularly in comparison to local travel by private vehicle.

First Published in 1997. This book contains a set of readings which convey clearly the fundamental concepts, theory and methodologies essential for the teaching and study of transport economics. The papers were carefully selected by seven prominent and experienced professors of transport economics for their usefulness in teaching. As such, most of the twenty-seven papers included in the book deal with timeless and fundamental subjects in transport economics and have been evaluated by many instructors as being effective papers for teaching. The book is organised into six parts: Transport Demand, Transport Cost, Pricing, Infrastructure, Regulation and Market Structure, and Project Evaluation.

Economic growth and globalisation create traffic growth, leading to congestion, which again increases travel times and costs. Road pricing is an instrument that may efficiently reduce the negative impacts. This volume is a collection of research papers on the use of road pricing. The focus is on passenger transport, and the papers cover a wide range of approaches, including theoretical modelling and empirical studies of road pricing experience from different cities.

. . . the book provides ample evidence of the various and often complex issues that arise in road pricing policies. New research is presented on topics mostly neglected in the past (such as the role of firms in rod pricing, or new insights from dynamic network models). Tilmann Rave, Journal of Regional Science Transport pricing is high on the political agenda throughout the world, but as the authors illustrate, governments seeking to implement this often face challenging questions and significant barriers. The associated policy and research questions cannot always be addressed adequately from a mono-disciplinary perspective. This book shows how a multi-disciplinary approach may lead to new types of analysis and insights, contributing to a better understanding of the intricacies of transport pricing and eventually to a potentially more effective and acceptable design of such policies. The study addresses important policy and research themes such as the possible motives for introducing road transport pricing and potential conflicts between these motives, behavioural responses to transport pricing for households and firms, the modelling of transport pricing, and the acceptability of pricing. Studying road transport pricing from a multi-disciplinary perspective, this book will be of great interest to transport policymakers and advisors, transport academics and consultants and students in transport studies.