Congestion Relief: Assessing the Case for Road Tolls in Canada

Experience with road pricing generally — and congestion pricing specifically — is growing around the world. Research and planning in Canada should begin now on road pricing for heavily congested highways and streets.road pricing, traffic congestion

Traffic Congestion Pricing Methods and Technologies

This paper reviews the methods and technologies for congestion pricing of roads. Congestion tolls can be implemented at scales ranging from individual lanes on single links to national road networks. Tolls can be differentiated by time of day, road type and vehicle characteristics, and even set in real time according to current traffic conditions. Conventional toll booths have largely given way to electronic toll collection technologies. The main technology categories are roadside-only systems employing digital photography, tag and beacon systems that use short-range microwave technology, and in vehicle-only systems based on either satellite or cellular network communications. The best technology choice depends on the application. The rate at which congestion pricing is implemented, and its ultimate scope, will depend on what technology is used and on what other functions and services it can perform. Since congestion pricing calls for the greatest overall degree of toll differentiation, congestion pricing is likely to drive the technology choice.Road pricing; Congestion pricing; Electronic Toll Collection technology

Dedicated lanes, tolls and ITS technology

The merits of separating cars and trucks have long been debated. Potential advantages include smoother traffic flows, lower accident rates, improved air quality and reduced maintenance and road infrastructure costs. Large trucks are often banned from urban roads and restricted to certain lanes on many highways but there are no dedicated truck facilities. However, truck-only lanes and truck tollways are now being actively studied. Tolls on cars and trucks are also becoming increasingly common and could be used to distribute car and truck traffic over road networks more efficiently. This paper reviews the potential benefits from separating cars and trucks onto different lanes or roads while treating road infrastructure as given. U.S. studies of mixed traffic operations, lane restrictions and differential speed limits do not provide consistent evidence whether separating cars and trucks either facilitates traffic flows or reduces accident rates. Analysis with an economic model reveals that the potential benefits depend on the relative volumes of cars and trucks, capacity indivisibilities and the impedance and safety hazard that each vehicle type imposes. Differentiated tolls can support efficient allocations of cars and trucks between lanes. Lane access restrictions are much more limited in effectiveness. Toll lanes that are dedicated to either cars or trucks are a potentially attractive hybrid policy. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) technology can help to improve safety and travel time reliability, and help drivers select between tolled and untolled routes

Recent developments and current policy issues in road pricing in the US and Canada

The United States and Canada lag Europe and Singapore in implementing road pricing on a large scale. But the two countries have shown interest in tolling roads as a way to curb congestion and to generate revenues. The US is funding congestion pricing demonstration projects through its Value Pricing Pilot Program, and Canada has examined new ways to charge for road use and to finance road construction and maintenance. This paper reviews the current state of road pricing and funding in the two countries. The prospects for extensive road pricing appear to be brighter in the US than in Canada

Book review: Harry Richardson and Chang-Hee Christine Bae (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 roadpricing schemes in other countries and cities. Road Congestion Pricing in Europe (RCPE) provides a welcome and informative contribution to the debate

Nonlinear Pricing on Private Roads with Congestion and Toll Collection Costs

Nonlinear pricing (a form of second-degree price discrimination) is widely used in transportation and other industries but it has been largely overlooked in the road-pricing literature. This paper explores the incentives for a profit-maximizing toll-road operator to adopt some simple nonlinear pricing schemes when there is congestion and collecting tolls is costly. Users are assumed to differ in their demands to use the road. Regardless of the severity of congestion, an access fee is always profitable to implement either as part of a two-part tariff or as an alternative to paying a toll. Use of access fees for profit maximization can increase or decrease welfare relative to usage-only pricing. Hence a ban on access fees could reduce welfare.congestion pricing; two-part pricing; private roads; toll collection costs

Congestion, risk aversion and the value of information

Information about traffic conditions is conveyed to drivers by radio and variable message signs, and more recently available via the Internet and Advanced Traveler Information Systems (ATIS). This has spurred research on how travelers respond to information, how much they are likely to benefit from it and how much they are willing to pay for it. We analyze the decisions of drivers whether to acquire information and which route to take on a simple congested road network. Four information regimes are considered: No information, Free information which is publicly available at no cost, Costly information which is publicly available for a fee, and Private information which is available free to a single individual. We find that Private information is individually more valuable than either Free or Costly information, while the benefits from Free and Costly information cannot be ranked in general. We also find that Free or Costly information can decrease the expected utility of drivers who are sufficiently risk-averse.

Research challenges in modelling urban road pricing: an overview

This article introduces the contributions of this special issue on modelling of urban road pricing and its implementation. The issue focuses on the design of urban road pricing schemes, and their spatial and temporal impacts, using quantitative transport (and land use) models. The policy implications of road pricing, including welfare and equity aspects, are studied for Paris, Brussels and Oslo using state of the art planning models. The issue is completed with a study of public acceptability and the upcoming road-pricing trial in Stockholm, and a review paper on the history of thought and future prospects of road pricing.urban transport planning models, road pricing, transport policy implementation, earmarking, efficiency, equity, acceptability

Private operators and time-of-day tolling on a congested road network

Private-sector involvement in the construction and operation of roads is growing around the world and private toll roads are seen as a useful tool in the battle against congestion. Yet serious concerns remain about exercise of monopoly power if private operators can set tolls freely. A number of theoretical studies have investigated private toll-road pricing strategies, and compared them with first-best and second-best public tolls. But most of the analyses have employed simple road networks and/or used static models that do not capture the temporal dimension of congestion or describe the impacts of tolling schemes that vary by time of day. This paper takes a fresh look at private toll road pricing using METROPOLIS: a dynamic traffic simulator that treats endogenously choices of transport mode, departure time and route at the level of individual travellers. Simulations are performed for the peak-period morning commute on a stylized urban road network with jobs concentrated towards the centre of the city. Tolling scenarios are defined in terms of what is tolled (traffic lanes, whole links, or toll rings) and how tolls are varied over time. Three administration regimes are compared. The first two are the standard polar cases: social surplus maximization by a public-sector operator, and unconstrained profit maximization by a private-sector operator. The third regime entails varying tolls in steps to eliminate queuing on the tolled links. It is a form of third-best tolling that could be implemented either by a public operator or by the private sector under quality-of-service regulation. Amongst the results it is found that the no-queue tolling regime performs favourably compared to public step tolling, and invariably better than private tolling. Another provisional finding is that a private operator has less incentive than does a public operator to implement time-of-day congestion pricing.

The Economics of Truck Toll Lanes

This paper extends an earlier paper by the authors ("Maintenance and congestion pricing with competing roads" presented at ERSA 2005) by introducing two user groups: heavy and light vehicles (viz. trucks and cars). This extension is important since heavy vehicles generate higher congestion and (much) higher pavement damage externalities than do light vehicles. The model features a simple road network with two routes linking a common origin and destination. Pavement quality on each route depreciates with usage and due to natural weathering. Three administration regimes are analysed. The first two regimes are the second best and first best optima. In the second-best regime maintenance levels are chosen for the two routes, but no tolls are applied. In the first-best regime, both maintenance levels and tolls are set to support an optmal division of traffic between the two routes as well as an optimal quality of service. The final regime is a Duopoly. In this regime each route is owned and operated by a different firm that maximises its own profit by choosing a maintenance level and a toll. The analysis (which is still in progress) entails solution and comparison of the outcomes of the three administration regimes. Among other things, we are interested to see in which regimes routes are differentiated so that one route is mainly used by heavy vehicles and the other by light vehicles. Preliminary results suggest that (as in the case of homogeneous users) private ownership is distorted towards excessive tolls and low maintenance effort.