Tolling in an Urban Scenario

Urban tolling or not urban tolling that is the question for many public organizations in charge of the mobility in cities. The urban tolling have been already experimented all over the world with different forms of implementation: from Singapore in 1975, Melbourne and Santiago and more recently in Europe with Oslo, Stockholm and the very well known experience in London. It have been proven that these experiences bring global advantages to the population in term of traffic regulation, pollution reduction, and increase of the city environment. In addition to the tolling mode, the objectives who characterizes the different urban tolling are easing the traffic flow, reduce the pollution and impact on the environment of the road traffic, improve the public transport, and fund the construction of infrastructure or transport services. All these objectives are crucial to select the type of urban tolling (network, zone, or ring), the level of prices applied to the users (variable in function of the level of traffic), and/or variable in function of the level of pollution per users (HOV/HOT lanes, cars/trucks, pollution index of the vehicle)… and the usage of the revenue (development of the public transport, reimbursement of bridge or tunnel, general usage for community) Now, how to go from the idea to the realization of the project ? What are the questions to answer for the implementation of a urban tolling ? First of all, one should verify the governmental or local area law. Is invoicing a driver for entering a certain zone of the city or for the usage of a public road (like a ring for example) authorized by law or not ? For example in France, urban tolling are not authorized, except to fund the construction of a road or a bridge or a tunnel, as for example in Marseille (Prado-Carenage tunnel, or A14 highway in the west side of Paris).