(2008) Road Congestion Pricing in Europe: Implications for the United States

Road pricing has a long and checkered history with many failed attempts interspersed by a small number of successes around the world. A question at the forefront of research and policy is whether the successes and failures hold useful lessons for designing and implementing road-pricing schemes in other countries and cities. Road Congestion Pricing in Europe (RCPE) provides a welcome and informative contribution to the debate. As the title indicates, RCPE deals mainly with road pricing to alleviate congestion rather than to generate revenues or to tackle pollution and other road transportation externalities. The well-crafted introductory chapter by the editors is followed by 18 chapters organized into four parts. Part I deals with the UK and includes a historical review of UK road pricing policy, a model-based analysis of the practicality and fairness of national road charging (subject of a major study by the UK Department for Transport in 2004) and a congestion charging proposal for Cambridge. There are also two moderately technical but clearly written chapters on toll cordons and on second-best road congestion pricing when competing bus and rail services are privately operated. Part II on the London congestion charge features a chapter on the scheme’s success in alleviating congestion, two chapters on its environmental effects, and a chapter on how it might b