Road Pricing in Europe — A Review of Research and Practice

Abstract

Despite the considerable benefits of road pricing that economists and other analysts have shown, and despite the efforts of the EU to get road pricing implemented, it has not been implemented on a broad scale. It is still widely considered to be a radical and controversial policy. This chapter provides a comprehensive review of experiences with road pricing in Europe and elsewhere. We consider pricing issues in urban road and interurban road transport separately. The policies in the two areas have typically been different focusing in urban transport on the private car and in interurban on freight transport. Also existing analyses, both theoretical and conceptual and those using real-world simulation models, have mostly dealt with these two topics separately. For both areas we consider the current pricing schemes, barriers to pricing and likely next steps. A central theme arising from this chapter is the importance of institutional implementation issues, including political acceptability. These questions have been given too little attention both in research and in actual attempts to implement road-pricing measures.