Traffic congestion is one of the most challenging issues of urban agglomeration. Congestion costs are often higher than their socially optimal levels, and little is known about the key parameters needed to design optimal congestion policies. This paper addresses this issue by exploiting an...

Hypercongestion - the phenomenon that higher traffic densities can reduce throughput - is well understood at the link level, but has also been observed in a macroscopic form at the level of traffic networks; for instance, in morning rush-hour traffic into a downtown core. In this paper, we show...

This paper discusses a number of issues that will become increasingly important nowthat the concept of marginal external cost pricing becomes more likely to be implementedas a policy strategy in transport in reality. The first part of the paper deals with thelong-run efficiency of marginal...

In most federal countries, the pricing of road use is still largely decided at the federal level, and often takes the form of fuel taxes. Recently, however, (urban) road pricing and (regional) distance charging have gained momentum, increasing opportunities for decentralized decision-making. In...

This paper considers the welfare impacts of a range of franchising regimes for congestible highways. For a single road in isolation, it is shown that a competitive auction with the level of road use as the decision criterion produces the socially optimal road (in terms of capacity and toll...

The recent literature on congestion pricing with large agents contains a remarkable inconsistency: though agents are large enough to recognize self-imposed congestion and exert market power over prices, they do not take into account the impact of their own actions on the magnitude of congestion...