Congestion is regarded by most transport planners as the principal "externality" created by automobile usage, and road pricing as the optimum response to this and other externalities. This paper critically examines both propositions and suggests that they suffer from a series of flaws that are rarely acknowledged. The analysis draws on two radically different streams of thought, both of which cast doubt on traditional analyses of congestion and road pricing. The first is the "Austrian" critique of the neoclassical welfare economics which underlies most analyses of road pricing; the second is the new paradigm of environmental justice. The paper concludes that congestion is at least as appropriate a method of rationing road space as pricing, and that transport planning should aim to achieve an optimal level of congestion, rather than to minimise or eliminate it. (A)
Abstract