The continued transition towards electric mobility will decrease energy tax revenues worldwide, which has substantial implications for government funds. At the same time, demand for transportation is ever increasing, which in turn increases congestion problems. Combining both challenges, this paper assesses the effectiveness of congestion pricing as a sustainable revenue stream to offset fuel tax loss in 2030 while simultaneously enhancing efficiency in the transport sector. A congestion-based toll that is road-and-time-variant is simulated for the greater Berlin area in Germany using the multi-agent transport simulation (MATSim) software. Through the simulation results, this paper quantifies the impacts of the toll on the governmental revenue, traffic management, environment, social welfare, and the distribution effects. We find that the revenue from congestion tolls in a metropolitan area can compensate the reduction in passenger car fuel tax. Furthermore, a remarkable welfare surplus is observed. The toll also successfully incentivises transport users to adjust their travel behaviour, which reduces traffic delay time by 28%. CO2 emissions as a key metric for decarbonisation of the transport sector decrease by more than 5%. The analysis of the distribution effects suggests that a redistribution plan with a focus on the middle-low-income residents and the outer boroughs could help the policy gain more public acceptance.

Credit-based congestion pricing (CBCP) has emerged as a mechanism to alleviate the social inequity concerns of road congestion pricing - a promising strategy for traffic congestion mitigation - by providing low-income users with travel credits to offset some of their toll payments. While CBCP offers immense potential for addressing inequity issues that hamper the practical viability of congestion pricing, the deployment of CBCP in practice is nascent, and the potential efficacy and optimal design of CBCP schemes have yet to be formalized. In this work, we study the design of CBCP schemes to achieve particular societal objectives and investigate their influence on traffic patterns when routing heterogeneous users with different values of time (VoTs) in a multi-lane highway with an express lane. We introduce a new non-atomic congestion game model of a mixed-economy, wherein eligible users receive travel credits while the remaining ineligible users pay out-of-pocket to use the express lane. In this setting, we investigate the effect of CBCP schemes on traffic patterns by characterizing the properties (i.e., existence, comparative statics) of the corresponding Nash equilibria and, in the setting when eligible users have time-invariant VoTs, develop a convex program to compute these equilibria. We further present a bi-level optimization framework to design optimal CBCP schemes to achieve a central planner's societal objectives. Finally, we conduct numerical experiments based on a case study of the San Mateo 101 Express Lanes Project, one of the first North American CBCP pilots. Our results demonstrate the potential of CBCP to enable low-income travelers to avail of the travel time savings provided by congestion pricing on express lanes while having comparatively low impacts on the travel costs of other road users.

To the editor: The Metropolitan Transportation Authority wants to explore congestion pricing. We cannot tax our way out of traffic any more than we can reduce the number of residents in and around Los Angeles, nor can most people change where they live or where they must travel to work. Encouraging housing development along the various Metro routes is an option, but ultimately, we will never be able to overcome the challenges presented by the spread-out geography of greater Los Angeles. If Los Angeles and other nearby cities really want to see traffic move more quickly, they should put significantly more effort and money into repairing our streets, which are in a shameful and dare I say dangerous state of disrepair. To the editor: A single word appearing in the article explains everything. The word is "choice," and it implies that working people will make an informed decision about whether or not to pay an additional tax to get to work.

The transport ministry plans to test "congestion pricing" in four municipalities with major tourist attractions, including Kyoto and Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture. The plan was presented to a panel on Thursday, with tests slated to begin this fall in Kamakura, Kobe and Karuizawa, Nagano Prefecture. No fees will be collected in the tests. Congestion pricing is a new system that employs state-of-the-art technologies to counter traffic jams, said University of Tokyo professor Eiji Hato, who chairs the panel. The ministry hopes to ease congestion by using artificial intelligence and other technologies.

An entire sector of the federal government is held hostage by the last century. The death spiral of the gas tax, and the other broken user-fees, demand we reform federal transportation funding, harness emerging technology, and guide the autonomous vehicle revolution. The powerful disruptive force of car sharing services like Uber and Lyft will rapidly be joined by autonomous vehicle technology. A huge part of our economy and culture--the American way of life designed around the automobile for the last century--will change. Our challenge is to use that change to solve problems rather than create new ones, and maintain and tailor our existing infrastructure for the future.