Volume 3, Issue 4

This introductory article to the special issue discusses briefly both the practice and theory of road pricing. Actual methods of charging for road use are discussed, and the current trend towards greater use of time-of-day congestion tolls is noted. The basic model of traffic congestion and road pricing is presented next, and this is followed by a summary of the extensions to the basic model represented in this issue of the Review of Network Economics. Researchers are now developing models that come very close to presenting realistic congestion toll systems that are reasonably efficient.

This paper reviews and comment on the current issues of road-use charging in the UK from two perspectives, the technical and the political. The paper concludes that the lack of appropriate technology will not be the constraint in implementing road-use charging in the near future in the UK, and new technologies that are currently being researched should not be excluded as possible future solutions for charging. However the local authority schemes that are now up and running in London and Durham, the on-going National Trials in Leeds, the policy of introducing distancebased charging for Heavy Goods Vehicles and the Commission for Integrated Transport’s proposal to have distance-charging black-boxes in all UK registered vehicles suggests certain policy divergence which may be difficult to "sell" to the public.

Solutions to the route choice problem for assumptions of user-optimality and system-optimality are presented for the road network of the Chicago region. Regionwide results show a 5% decrease in total travel time would be achieved during the morning peak period, if a system-optimal solution based on travel times were implemented. Among the costs of this solution is a 1.5% increase in vehicle-miles traveled. Findings for differences in link flows and individual origin-destination pairs complete the paper.

This paper reviews recent advances in multi-period congestion pricing models in urban road system. Mathematical formulations of various congestion pricing problems for two time periods (peak and off-peak) and for a simple road network are presented. A procedure is provided for conducting a simulation study of the peak and off-peak congestion pricing models to examine congestion tolls and their effects on traffic allocations and social welfares. Major findings from the analysis results are summarized. Some extensions of the existing models and future research topics are also discussed.

The objective of this paper is to make numerical estimates of the effects of various partial tolling schemes in a long-run setting where road capacities are harmonized with the tolling plan. The results demonstrate that different tolling schemes bring about different sets of equilibrium outcomes in respect to optimal investment in road capacity, travel speeds, numbers of road users, and the division of travel between peak and off-peak periods. These differential effects are relevant where, for political or equity reasons, simple maximization of efficiency may not be feasible or desired. The model presented provides a toll for evaluating these trade-offs.

This paper examines the effects of alternative congestion pricing systems, cordon pricing and congestion pricing for existing toll roads, using the network equilibrium model developed for the Osaka Metropolitan Area, Japan. Cordon pricing is more effective in reducing the total efficiency loss from traffic congestion, but produces relatively large amounts of toll revenue. On the other hand, pricing for existing toll roads keeps the loss in consumer surplus (and toll revenue) relatively low to attain the same level of efficiency gain as the cordon pricing.