A growing number of roads are currently financed by the private sector via Build-Operate-and -Transfer (BOT) schemes. When the franchised road has no close substitute, the government must regulate tolls. Yet when there are many ways of getting from one point to another, regulation may be avoided by allowing competition between several franchise owners. This paper studies toll competition among private roads with congestion. The paper derives two main results. First, we find sufficient conditions for the existence of an equilibrium in pure strategies with strictly positive tolls. Equilibrium congestion is less than optimal, which runs counter to what is expected form price competition. While a lower toll reduces the out-of-pocket cost paid by a user, it increases the congestion cost thereby reducing the drivers' willingness to pay for using the road. Franchise holders partially internalize congestion costs when setting tolls, which softens price competition. Second, when demand and the number of roads increase at the same rate, tolls converge to the socially optimal level -- that is, in the limit equilibrium tolls are just enough to make each driver internalize the congestion externality


    Access

    Download


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    Toll Competition Among Congested Roads



    Published in:

    Publication date :

    1999


    Size :

    1 Online-Ressource


    Remarks:

    Campusweiter Zugriff (Universität Hannover) - Vervielfältigungen (z.B. Kopien, Downloads) sind nur von einzelnen Kapiteln oder Seiten und nur zum eigenen wissenschaftlichen Gebrauch erlaubt. Keine Weitergabe an Dritte. Kein systematisches Downloaden durch Robots.



    Type of media :

    Book


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Competition and efficiency of private toll roads

    Xiao, Feng | Online Contents | 2007


    Bottle tankers to debottleneck congested roads

    Tollenaar, R. L. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 1993



    The economics of heavily congested roads

    Neuburger, Henry | Elsevier | 1970


    Toll roads

    Kelly, H.H. | Engineering Index Backfile | 1931