The book deals with the calculation of costs for road infrastructure and congestion and the allocation of these costs to vehicle types. It focusses on heavy goods vehicles. The most important features of the book are i) the review of the state of the art, ii) a discussion of the theoretical requirements for cost accounts under the aspects of different pricing purposes, iii) a comprehensive treatment of various methodological issues for cost calculation, iv) the elaboration of empirical results for the EU-countries and Switzerland. Of particular value is the fact that existing practice of road accounts in Europe is not simply summarised but the different methodologies are applied at data sets from three countries and quantitatively compared. Further benefits are the comprehensive information and data collection, the empirical results for road infrastructure costs, the harmonised treatment of congestion costs and the policy recommendations.

This book presents the results of the study "Infrastructure Capital, Maintenance and Road Damage Costs for Different Heavy Goods Vehicles in the EU" which was commissioned by the European Commission, DG VII. This study supported the preparation of the white book on transport infrastructure charging. The study an European consortium consisting of DIW (German has been conducted by Institute for Economic Research, project leader and responsible for the country reports for Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden), INFRAS (responsible for the country reports for Switzerland, Denmark, Portugal and Greece), Consultancy Dr. Herry (responsible for the country reports for Austria, Finland, France and Italy) and NERA (National Economic Research Associates, responsible for the country reports for the UK, Ireland and Spain). The project ran from November 1997 to March 1998 and was monitored by a steering committee with representatives of the EU-member states. This book is dealing with the calculation of costs for road infrastructure and congestion and the allocation of these costs to vehicle types. It focuses on heavy goods vehicles. This is a topic of high relevance for transport policy both on the national and the EU-Ievel with a long tradition of political and scientific debate. The study contains a comprehensive methodological comparison of existing models for calculating road capital values and capital costs and for allocating infrastructure costs to vehicle types.

Inhalt
1 Introduction.- 2 State of the art.- 2.1 Review of infrastructure cost and expenditure accounts.- 2.2 Congestion cost studies.- 3 Methodology.- 3.1 Methodological overview.- 3.2 Definitions and classifications.- 3.3 Estimation of capital values and capital costs.- 3.4 Cost allocation.- 3.5 Estimation of marginal infrastructure costs.- 3.6 Congestion costs.- 3.7 Summary: methodology proposed for this study.- 4 Results.- 4.1 Capital values and road infrastructure costs.- 4.2 Average and marginal road infrastructure costs.- 4.3 Congestion costs.- 5 Conclusions and recommendations.- 5.1 Towards a harmonised methodology.- 5.2 Further research needs.- Annex A - Summarising tables.- Annex B - Glossary.- List of abbreviations.- List of tables.- List of figures.- Literature.- Project team.