Urban road pricing - what lessons can we learn from the Italians?

摘要

In Italy, the situation with road pricing has been very different to that which has developed in the UK. The road pricing schemes in Rome and Genoa were not introduced under specific legislation but rather evolved from access control zones. These controlled zones called Limited Traffic Zones (LTZ) usually cover the historic city centres. Only residents of the area and a limited number of permit holders are allowed to access the zones. The city of Bologna pioneered the policy in the 1980's, and despite ongoing difficulties, this prompted a widespread adoption of the measure. In other Italian towns and cities the policy is gradually evolving to a hybrid form of road pricing by requesting LTZ permit holders to pay an annual fee. The incremental introduction of the Italian road pricing experiments has taken approximately ten years. Do the implementation processes of these schemes hold any useful lessons for the UK?