Congestion Charging: Challenges to Meet the UK Policy Objectives

Abstract

This paper reviews and comment on the current issues of road-use charging in the UK from two perspectives, the technical and the political. The paper concludes that the lack of appropriate technology will not be the constraint in implementing road-use charging in the near future in the UK, and new technologies that are currently being researched should not be excluded as possible future solutions for charging. However the local authority schemes that are now up and running in London and Durham, the on-going National Trials in Leeds, the policy of introducing distancebased charging for Heavy Goods Vehicles and the Commission for Integrated Transport’s proposal to have distance-charging black-boxes in all UK registered vehicles suggests certain policy divergence which may be difficult to "sell" to the public.