Contents
-
Foreword
Preface
1 Introduction
- 1.1 Importance of personal mobility
- 1.1.1 Role of door-to-door speed
- 1.1.2 Public transport as an alternative?
- 1.1.3 Travel in rural areas
- 1.2 Meeting the 'need' for roads
- 1.3 The United Kingdom
- 1.4 The United States
- 1.4.1 Profitability of US roads
- 1.4.2 The federal role: power without responsibility
- 1.4.3 Environmental concerns
- 1.5 Developing countries
- 1.6 Commercial provision of roads?
- Notes
2 Commercial management of roads
- 2.1 Weaknesses in roads management
- 2.1.1 Ownership arrangements
- 2.1.2 Accountability
- 2.1.3 Absence of pricing
- 2.1.4 Absence of competition
- 2.1.5 Absence of financial independence
- 2.2 US telecom as a model for commercial road system
- 2.3 Basic requirements of a commercial road system
- 2.3.1 Telecom operating companies have owners
- 2.3.2 Telecom companies are financially self-supporting
- 2.3.3 No discrimination against private sector suppliers
- 2.3.4 Network charges are not paid to the government
- 2.3.5 Interconnection
- 2.4 Application of the telecommunications model to roads
- 2.4.1 The organization of an effective road management system
- 2.4.2 Keeping the accounts of road corporations
- 2.4.3 Relationship between government and road corporations
- 2.5 Dedicated road funds
- 2.5.1 Rise and fall of the British Road Fund
- 2.5.2 The US federal Highway Trust Fund
- 2.5.3 Avoiding the errors of the traditional road funds
- 2.5.4 Establishing modern dedicated road funds
- 2.5.5 Irrelevance of the earmarked taxation controversy
- 2.6 Responsibility for road accidents
- 2.6.1 Should owners be legally liable for accidents on their roads?
- 2.6.2 Give insurers licensing and testing responsibilities?
- 2.6.3 Are governments good at making roads safer?
- 2.6.4 Risks to unprotected road users
- 2.6.5 Conclusions on road safety
- Notes
3 Commercial pricing of roads
- 3.1 Road damage costs
- 3.1.1 Costs of operating roads
- 3.1.2 Costs of maintaining roads
- 3.1.3 Costs of road improvement and capacity expansion
- 3.1.4 Costs of constructing roads
- 3.1.5 Effect of axle weight on road pavements
- 3.2 Congestion costs
- 3.2.1 Calculating congestion costs
- 3.2.2 Is it equitable to impose congestion charges?
- 3.2.3 Calculating benefit-maximizing congestion charges
- 3.2.4 Are congestion-free roads desirable?
- 3.3 Accident costs
- 3.3.1 The magnitude of road accident problems
- 3.3.2 How much insurance? The costs of accidents
- 3.4 Pollution costs
- 3.4.1 The costs of pollution from motor vehicles
- 3.4.2 Should polluters pay?
- 3.4.3 Targeting polluting vehicles directly
- 3.4.4 Paying for automotive pollution
- 3.4.5 Conclusions on commercial payments for pollution
- 3.5 Payments of more than direct costs
- 3.5.1 Theoretical considerations
- 3.5.2 The magnitudes involved
- 3.5.3 Conclusion on recovering all road costs
- 3.6 Should road charge levels be controlled by government?
- 3.7 Conclusions on the commercial pricing of roads
- Notes
4 Charging for road use
- 4.1 Requirements to be met by a road pricing system
- 4.2 Indirect charges for road use
- 4.2.1 Indirect charges: charges related to vehicle ownership
- 4.2.2 Indirect charges: charges related to vehicle use
- 4.2.3 Indirect charges: charges related to distance traveled
- 4.2.4 Indirect charges: supplementary licences
- 4.2.5 Indirect charges: shadow tolls
- 4.3 Direct charges for road use
- 4.3.1 Direct charges, registered off vehicles: conventional tolls
- 4.3.2 Direct charges, registered off vehicles: electronic road pricing
- 4.3.3 Direct charges, registered in vehicles: electronic charge cards
- 4.4 Recommendations for appropriate charging methods
- 4.5 Is congestion pricing always beneficial?
- Annex to Chapter 4: Brief history of road congestion pricing
- Notes
5 Commercial investment in roads
- 5.1 Profitability as an investment criterion
- 5.1.1 Comparability of investments
- 5.1.2 Private funding
- 5.2 Needs assessment as an alternative to profitability
- 5.3 Benefit-cost analysis as an alternative to profitability
- 5.4 Using the profitability criterion: dealing with profits
- 5.4.1 Critical importance of revenue disposition
- 5.4.2 Alternatives for the disposition of surplus revenues
- 5.4.3 Implications of allowing surpluses to remain with road providers
- 5.5 Using the profitability criterion: dealing with losses
- 5.6 What if 'returns to scale' are not 'constant'?
- Notes
6 Objections to the commercial provision of roads
- 6.1 Would it be 'equitable' for roads to operate commercially?
- 6.1.1 Efficient markets do not discriminate between rich and poor
- 6.1.2 Disposal of congestion revenues
- 6.1.3 Roads should be paid for by beneficiaries, not by all taxpayers
- 6.1.4 Likely gainers from commercialization
- 6.1.5 Likely losers from commercialization
- 6.2 Coping with 'market failure'
- 6.2.1 Roads as 'natural monopolies'
- 6.2.2 Roads produce 'externalities'
- 6.2.3 Roads are not 'pure public goods'
- 6.2.4 Roads are not 'merit goods'
- 6.3 National interests
- 6.4 Conclusions
- Note
7 Private provision of public roads
- 7.1 Forms of private sector participation in road provision
- 7.1.1 B-O-T projects
- 7.2 Advantages of private provision
- 7.3 Examples of privately provided roads
- 7.3.1 Some early roads, privately provided
- 7.3.2 More recent roads, privately provided
- 7.4 United Kingdom
- 7.4.1 The Dartford river crossing
- 7.4.2 The Birmingham Northern Relief Road
- 7.5 Continental Europe
- 7.5.1 France
- 7.5.2 Italy
- 7.5.3 Spain
- 7.5.4 Hungary
- 7.6 United States
- 7.6.1 Virginia's Dulles Greenway
- 7.6.2 California's SR-91
- 7.7 Mexico
- 7.8 Far East
- 7.8.1 China
- 7.8.2 Japan
- 7.8.3 Thailand
- 7.9 Objections to the private provision of roads
- 7.9.1 Getting the rights-of-way
- 7.9.2 Getting paid
- 7.9.3 Competition from 'free' roads
- 7.9.4 Uncertainty about legal liability
- 7.9.5 Fear of exploitation by road monopolies
- 7.9.6 Difficulties of interaction with public road authorities
- 7.9.7 Difficulty in raising finance in capital markets
- 7.9.8 Conclusions on objections to the private provision of roads
- 7.10 Conclusions on the private provision of public roads
- Notes
8 Roads to the market
- 8.1 Reports on progress to date
- 8.1.1 In the United Kingdom
- 8.1.2 In the United States
- 8.1.3 In Sub-Saharan Africa
- 8.1.4 Conclusions on progress-to-date
- 8.2 Next steps
- 8.2.1 Bring about institutional reforms
- 8.2.2 Introduce 'shadow tolls'
- 8.2.3 Establish dedicated road funds
- 8.2.4 Eliminate discrimination against privately funded roads
- 8.2.5 Develop electronic methods of charging for road use
- 8.2.6 Roles of government
- 8.2.7 Need for working examples
- Note
Epilogue: 'How to plan and pay for the safe and adequate
highways we need'
- Authors' introductory note
- I. The Proposal: A shift to the private enterprise point of view
- 1. The introduction of private enterprise would be likely to lead
- to a substantial increase in actual expenditure on highways
- 2. The provision of highways is neither too expensive nor too
large-scale an activity to be conducted by private enterprises
- II. Economic peculiarities of highways
- 1. The technical difficulty of charging for the use of roads
- 2. A road is in some measure a natural monopoly
- 3. The 'neighborhood effect' of roads
- III. Practical proposals
- 1. Turnpikes (express roadways covering extensive distances)
- 2. A policy for ordinary inter-city roads
- a) How to charge and how much to charge
- i) What is an 'ideal' system of prices
- ii) How to improve the present system
- iii) Atomic age suggestions
- b) How to operate the roads, given a method of charging
- 3. Suggestions for intra-city roads
- a) Give cities their full share of motor-vehicle taxes
- b) Reducing the size of administrative units
- c) Privately operated throughways
- d) Parking should be charged for
- IV. Conclusion
- Notes
References
Name index
Geographic index
Subject index
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