Financing new urban infrastructures is more and more difficult due to the limitation of public budgets. At the same time, increase in travel demand, congestion of existing networks and injuries to environment request investments or management of the demand. Urban road pricing has been implemented in some specific sites in France for building tunnels and urban motorways with different levels of success, whilst in other countries it has been used for restricting access to central districts. Three kinds of considerations must be studied: (1) the policy objectives of the transportation scheme of the town and the ways and means to reach them taking into account the consistency of the modal offer and the pricing of public transport parking and road use; (2) the technical possibility of implementing a pricing scheme within dense network with heavy traffic flows with electronic systems or with more classical tax systems; and (3) the users reactions. For this last consideration studies have been performed to estimate the "value of time" of different types of road users mainly on the example of the tunnel "Prado-Carenage" in Marseille. This gives references for further projects. Calculations have also been developed about the economic advantages of managing the demand with pricing schemes.
Samenvatting