A Generalized Approach for Measuring the Marginal Social Costs of Road Transport in Europe

Abstract

Social marginal cost pricing requires bottom-up calculations of social marginal costs for all circumstances. Because this is not practicable for policymaking, we suggest an approach to generalize available cost estimates and present results from this for two case studies. We conclude that in the peak period congestion costs are the most important externality of road use, and that accidents, wear and tear, and noise costs all appear to be more important than global warming. This suggests that the policy priority should be measures to tackle the other elements of transport externalities alongside global warming costs.