Pricing road use: politico-economic and fairness considerations

Road pricing measures are rarely adopted in practice. In this review, we ask why citizens are not more supportive of road pricing. We identify two difficulties. First, the general public is often unwilling to embrace the price system as an allocation mechanism for scarce resources. Second, for politico-economic reasons, any latent support for road pricing schemes rarely translates into actual policy-making. Based on our analysis, we outline components of a road pricing policy that might receive greater electoral support.