Road pricing and investment

Charles Lindsey ()

Economics of Transportation, 2012, vol. 1, issue 1, 49-63

Abstract: Traffic congestion is a bane of modern city life. Transportation economists have long supported road pricing as a tool for controlling congestion and the idea is slowly coming into practice. This paper reviews the theory of congestion pricing and the relationship between optimal congestion tolls and optimal road capacity. It is organized around four questions. Is congestion pricing according to marginal-social-cost principles consistent with covering the costs of road infrastructure? How does road pricing affect optimal road capacity? How does road pricing affect optimal public transportation fares and capacity? Do private toll road operators make socially efficient toll and capacity decisions? The paper concludes with an assessment of long-run trends in travel demand and technology that could alter the evolution of traffic congestion and priorities for road pricing and investment.

Keywords: Congestion pricing; Second-best pricing; Road capacity; Induced demand; Public transportation; Private roads (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2212012212000044
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:ecotra:v:1:y:2012:i:1:p:49-63

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecotra.2012.07.001

Access Statistics for this article

Economics of Transportation is currently edited by Mogens Fosgerau and Erik Verhoef

More articles in Economics of Transportation from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().