ABSTRACT
One specific approach to paying for the environmental damage caused by the transportation sector is environmental road pricing. Current interest in pricing traffic efficiently includes all externalities, health effects, regional environmental effects, global warming, noise, barrier effects, road damage, and accidents. European political interest in using pricing more efficiently within the transportation sector appears to be increasing, as reflected in a green paper on fair and efficient pricing in transportation (European Commission 1995). Whereas no country has yet been able to implement advanced environmentally differentiated road pricing, some sophisticated examples of road pricing, area licensing, and mileage taxes include advanced traffic-management schemes in Singapore, toll roads in Norway, and a road pricing scheme in Switzerland that uses the Global Positioning System (GPS). The main reason for this interest in road pricing—besides a general increase in environmental awareness—is presumably the fact that modern information technology has made various road-pricing systems more realistic options.
