The distributional consequences of national road user charging [Published title: Testing for the distributional effects of national road user charging]

The implementation of a system of national road user charging for Britain would give rise to spatial and temporal differentiation in pricing. Road users would be charged according to the use they actually make of the network at different times and in different places. This paper is concerned with the distributional consequences that may arise from the imposition of some form of marginal social cost based road user charging. It develops a demand model for Britain to estimate the traffic, speed, price and generalised cost changes that might result from a national system of road pricing. These results are derived for small areas of the country and are then related to the geography of income deprivation to show the implication of charging in relation to relative poverty. Our analysis shows no systematic relationship between the levels of price, speed and generalised cost changes and levels of income deprivation in Britain. The most obvious spatial association we find is a strong positive relationship between the level of urbanisation and the level of charge under systems of marginal social cost pricing.