ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the reasons why the city of Cambridge presented an ideal opportunity for the implementation of some form of road user charging scheme. Congestion metering as a method of road user charging surfaced in the Cambridge context in 1990. It is possible to trace the notion of congestion metering back to the Smeed Report. Congestion metering would make the motorist fully aware of the external costs imposed on other users. Congestion metering was therefore added to the strategy in October 1990 as a fiscal approach to urban traffic management. As far as the Cambridge scheme is concerned, Cambridgeshire County Council (1990) perceived the objectives of congestion metering as being: to retain the economic prosperity of the city; to manage vehicular demand by containing traffic volumes to the 1990 flow; to operate fairly on all vehicles; to be self policing; to use the surplus income to fund a light rapid transit (LRT) system.
