This issue of Transport is the second issue in recent years devoted to the area of road user charging. Volume 161, issue TR3, published in August 2008, covered a number of important areas relating to road user charging including scheme design and technology, acceptance, experience and the issue surrounding the introduction of a national road user charge.
This issue of Transport continues the theme dealing with acceptability, technology, the London congestion charge, the case of Stockholm and the potential impact of introducing a road user charging scheme in a national park setting.
In terms of the papers included, Ryley (2010) seeks to examine the individual travel behaviour response towards actual and potential road user charging in the UK.
With any road user charging scheme the issue of technology is all important. It could be argued that a key requirement of any charging scheme is that motorists should be able to understand it easily and that it should be flexible enough so that a range of policies, with differing aims, could be implemented. As such, the paper by Ochieng et al. (2010) seeks to identify current feasible technologies accounting for the fact that an ability to locate and track a vehicle both in space and time is fundamental to charging for road use.
The following two papers consider road user charging with respect to particular cities. Buckingham et al. (2010) seek to describe the development and monitoring of the central London congestion charging scheme and review its impact in terms of traffic and congestion. Morán and Bang (2010) address the issue of the reliability of congestion measures in the case of Stockholm's congestion charging trial.
The fifth paper, by Thomopoulos and Takama (2010), relates to road user charging in a rural setting. Specifically, it focuses on road user charging in the context of the Upper Derwent valley of the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire, UK. The issues of objectives, trip purpose, visitors' value of time and the dispersion of traffic into neighbouring areas are addressed.
While the current economic climate has to some extent eased the situation with respect to traffic growth, the whole area of congestion and traffic-related pollution are likely to remain issues of concern for the foreseeable future. As such, the aim of this themed issue is to stimulate the discussion with respect to road user charging.
