Pricing Methods

In order to consider the range of pricing methods available, it is first necessary to choose a definition for road pricing. The term "road pricing" has been criticised as an inaccurate description of systems which is applied to (Thompson, 1990) and there is some inconsistency regarding the extent of charging policies which are considered to be included. A liberal definition could cover any fiscal form of traffic restraint, affecting the mode, time, route, destination of frequency of journeys. In this case road pricing already exists worldwide through taxes imposed upon the purchase and licensing of vehicles and through fuel taxation. The extension of conventional taxation arrangements has been used as part of road pricing strategies in both Hong Kong and Singapore (Dawson and Brown, 1985; LPAC, 1991). However, the essence of most road pricing work has been to replace and supplement these existing charges, which do not discriminate by time, location or amount of vehicle use, with charging structures which are directly related to these issues. For this reason the descriptions road-use pricing, congestion pricing and road user charging are sometimes preferred, and some recent texts have attempted to impose a narrower definition for road pricing, in which only charging systems relating directly to the time and distance travelled are included (CIT, 1992). For the purposes of this review it is best to retain the conventional term of road pricing and apply the broadest definition.