Skip to main content

What's the impact of road pricing on traffic? CSRB Group report reveals all

Transport consultant examines 76 toll schemes worldwide to analyse their effect
By Adam Hill October 9, 2024 Read time: 1 min
Additional data was collected for each of the tolling case studies (© Dezzor | Dreamstime.com)

As gas taxes fall, authorities all over the world are looking at alternative means of getting in much-needed revenue to bolster transportation budgets.

Some form of road pricing is an obvious answer to this problem – but what effects do such schemes have on traffic?

A new white paper - The Traffic Impact of Road Pricing - from global transport adviser CSRB Group looks at lessons from tolling schemes worldwide and provides real-world answers for planners, policymakers, traffic engineers and infrastructure investors.

The report analyses data from 76 international toll road, bridge, tunnel and cordon case studies - and finds that the impact on traffic is significant, says co-author and CSRB senior partner Robert Bain.

"We collected additional data for each of our case studies in terms of the toll facilities’ characteristics, toll prices and the quantity and quality of alternative routes and modes available to local drivers," he says.

"From these candidate explanatory variables, we were able to construct a simple predictive model that can be used to provide ‘first cut’ estimates of the likely traffic response to toll charging under different circumstances."

CSRB Group provides commercial due diligence services to institutional investors, private infrastructure funds, insurance companies, IFIs and government agencies worldwide.

Click here to download the report.

For more information on companies in this article

Related Content

  • #ITSDubai2024: Driving the future of mobility through ITS
    August 30, 2024
    The ITS World Congress 2024, set to take place in Dubai from September 16-20, promises to be a landmark event for the global ITS community. Here is an in-depth look at what visitors can expect from their time at the cutting edge of mobility technology...
  • Iomob: Tech can help us make better transport choices
    January 24, 2023
    Tired of ‘greenwashing’? Maybe it’s time for the transport sector to think differently, and more ambitiously, about how to encourage greener modal shift, suggests Adrian Ulisse of Iomob
  • Road pricing is inevitable – because the ‘user pays’ principle is fair
    June 14, 2018
    We pay for roads through our taxes: the poor pay proportionately more, and effectively subsidise the rich. It would be fairer to accept the ‘user pays’ principle, says Dr John Walker. Road pricing is already used worldwide to combat congestion and pollution, to compensate for falling revenues from fuel duty (‘gas tax’), to provide an alternative (and fairer) means of charging motorists than the 80-year old fuel tax and to improve the efficiency of and expand transport infrastructure. However, it could and s
  • The future? It's remote, says Valerann
    January 4, 2024
    More responsive traffic management is of enormous value – and Valerann thinks its SaaS system, remotely deployed in Latin America, is able to identify incidents much more quickly, finds Andrew Stone