The London Congestion Charge: A Tentative Economic Appraisal. A Comment on the Paper by Prud'homme and Bocajero

Peter Mackie

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2005

Subject Area

operations - traffic, planning - safety/accidents, ridership - demand, policy - congestion, economics - pricing, economics - appraisal/evaluation, economics - value of time, mode - mass transit

Keywords

Value of time, Transit, Traffic safety, Public transit, Mass transit, London (England), Local transit, Financial ratios, Economic analysis, Demand, Costs, Cost benefit analysis, Congestion pricing, Case studies, Benefit cost analysis

Abstract

A discussion of an article with the aforementioned title, published in this issue of this journal, is presented. The aim of the author of this comment is to raise some issues as a contribution to the debate on the economic success of the London congestion charge. The author questions the worth of time savings as calculated by Prud'homme and Bocajero. He also suggests that their model of public transportation seems too rudimentary in several respects. They also do not consider safety benefits. However, the author does agree that there appears to be an extremely high resource cost of running the congestion pricing scheme and that the revenue:cost ratio is worrying. These findings suggest that it is essential to continue to assess the scheme's impact using a mixture of data gathering and monitoring.

Comments

Transport Policy Home Page: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0967070X

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