The London congestion charge: a tentative economic appraisal

Rémy Prud'homme and Juan Pablo Bocarejo

Transport Policy, 2005, vol. 12, issue 3, 279-287

Abstract: Pre-charge and post-charge data (particularly on speed and road usage) in the London congestion charge zone is used to estimate demand and cost curves for road usage. Pre-charge congestion costs are estimated, and shown to be small (0.1% of the area GDP). They are largely (90%) eliminated by the charge, which produces an economic benefit. Charge proceeds are about three times larger than the value of the congestion. Unfortunately, the yearly amortisation and operation costs of the charge system appear to be significantly higher than the economic benefit produced by the system. The London congestion charge, which is a great technical and political success, seems to be an economic failure. It could be defined as mini Concorde.

Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (83)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967-070X(05)00029-6
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:trapol:v:12:y:2005:i:3:p:279-287

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Transport Policy is currently edited by Y. Hayashi

More articles in Transport Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().