Sustainability and Acceptability in Infrastructure Development, the Said Debates. Report of a Meeting Held on 10 February 1997.

The political feasibility of road pricing

“…Therein lies the problem -an increase high enough to have a serious impact would generate serious opposition. 2 The route taken in the future application of road pricing will depend upon existing local conditions, for one common factor in the history of implemented schemes is that progress is in incremental stages. Successful examples of the radical imposition of road-pricing techniques are limited to circumstances where the government operates in an authoritarian way.The first democratic acceptance of tolling on previously free routes to a city centre was in Bergen, where one of the routes, via a tunnel and a bridge, was already subject to a toll.…”