Congestion charging: Technical options for the delivery of future UK policy

From a legacy of almost no experience of charging for road use in the UK, except for a small number of tolled estuarial and river crossings and some innovative flirtations with congestion charging trials, such as the Cambridge congestion charging scheme in the mid-1990s, in the new millennia the UK is now at the forefront of research and the deployment of road user charging. With the successful urban congestion charging schemes now in place in the Cities of London and Durham and the planned introduction of HGV-distance based charging in 2008 the UK have embraced the charging for road use, however in addition the Government is also now actively looking at the feasibility of introducing a National road user charging system to fully or partially replace fixed car-tax and fuel-duty. This raises challenges both of a political and technical nature which are discussed in the paper.