Road Pricing to Manage Demand and Generate Revenue

Explore the findings of a team of American transportation specialists who visited foreign countries (including Sweden, the U.K., Germany, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, and Singapore) to identify road pricing practices (i.e. various user fees and tolls) that could be used to advantage locally in our online engineering course developed by Dr. Rossow. The team found road pricing methods that can be highly effective in managing demand and generating revenue and can also be politically and publicly acceptable. Pricing programs have reduced congestion on facilities and in priced areas, improved use of existing road capacity, created new travel alternatives to driving, and achieved the goals of demand management, emission reduction, and revenue generation. Revenues from pricing have been used to provide funding for multimodal transportation improvements. The team also observed road pricing methods that might be strongly resisted if implemented in the U.S. (e.g. Singapore’s taxes and fees on the acquisition of a new car may raise the cost to 3 or 4 times the dealer’s price). This course is based on Report No. FHWA-PL-10-030, “Reducing Congestion and Funding Transportation Using Road Pricing In Europe and Singapore,” written by Robert Arnold, et. al., December, 2010, and is sponsored by the Office of International Programs, the Federal Highway Administration, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials under contract No. DTFH61-99-C-005.