Samenvatting
This introductory chapter on some fundamentals of road pricing covers various aspects of road user charges. The main focus is on traffic control and demand management in urban regions as a component of an overall city management strategy. The chapter starts with an analysis of a road network as a collective resource and the utilisation of road capacity as collective consumption under conditions of idle and congested capacity. A formal model is then presented for the analysis of road pricing in congested networks. There is also a discussion about the way in which road user charges can be motivated. The chapter closes with a list of the characteristics of a good pricing system.