Book Reviews

• Published date: 01 September 1974
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7401900311
• Date: 01 September 1974
• Author: William Vickrey
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS 631

Gabriel Roth,

Paying

for

Roads:

The

Economics

of

Traffic

Congestion, Baltimore: Penguin Books (1967), 153 pp.,

$1.25

paperback.

This exposition of an approach to the solution of the prob-

lems of urban transportation and traffic congestion covers

material that should be, but often is not,

part

of the kit of

tools of anyone seriously concerned with the problem of get-

ting about in the modern city. Applying the principles of

effi-

cient pricing, comparable to the prices developed elsewhere

in freely competitive markets, an almost revolutionary degree

of improvement in the

efficiency

with which street facilities

are

used is within reach.

It

is not too much to say that if

applied for an extended period, street pricing could bring

about a significant change in the patterns of activity in large

metropolitan areas, recovering the accessibility of the urban

core to those for whom such access is of prime importance,

and rescuing the central business district from much of the

economic decline to which congestion has been a major con-

tributing factor.

Such results do, to be sure, require afairly sharp break

with traditional methods and concepts of levying charges on

motorists for the use of the facilities provided. Instead of at-

tempting to spread the charges in whatever manner is easiest

to collect over a wide class of users, as is done with the gaso-

line tax, the charges must be made to vary according to the

time, place, and manner of use, so as to bring home to each

user the costs which he is thereby inflicting on the remainder

of the community, and to induce each user to adjust his use

accordingly so as to avoid using facilities in circumstances

where the value of the use to him, in the light of the available

alternatives, is insufficient to warrant the incurring of the

costs, whether in terms of costs related to his own vehicle

and time or to the increased costs and time of other users.

Smoothing over the sharp differentials in costs according to

time and place, as is done with present methods of charging

road users, is as inefficient as it would be

for

asupermarket