The London Congestion Charging Scheme: The Evidence

John Peirson and Roger Vickerman

Chapter 5 in Road Pricing, the Economy and the Environment, 2008, pp 79-91 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract In February 2003, the Mayor of London introduced road pricing for driving in a small area of Central London. The London Congestion Charging Scheme uses relatively simple technology, was implemented over two and a half years, faced political opposition and required the efforts of a determined political champion who refused to be put off. The £5 charge has reduced car movements by about 30%, and increased bus use and traffic speeds. The unexpectedly large reduction in car use is partly explained by the possibility of taking routes around the charging zone. For this reason, the implied elasticity of about −0.8 is greater than many other previous elasticity estimates. It is suggested that extending the Scheme to a larger area or applying a similar scheme to certain other cities may not be quite so successful.

Keywords: Price Elasticity; Road User; Ring Road; Road Price; Congestion Charge (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:adspcp:978-3-540-77150-0_5

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783540771500

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-77150-0_5

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Advances in Spatial Science from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().