Shortcomings in urban road pricing

For many academic and professional transportation engineers, the concept of congestion pricing has become the paradigm of efficiency regarding the use of scarce road infrastructure and implementing dissuasive measures to deter excessive car use. While road pricing can be considered, in many cases, as a good traffic management tool it also involves a number of risks and overexpectations that are important to consider when designing, implementing and managing an efficient road pricing scheme. This work presents a series of records, many of them based on specialized literature and empirical evidence, that help to describe the potential risks and possible overexpectations that can come into play in a congestion pricing policy. Such information can be of great help in order to promote the correct implementation of traffic management policy.