PUBLIC PERCEIVENESS AND POTENTIAL IMPLEMENTATION OF ROAD PRICING IN JORDAN

The growth rate in motor vehicle in Amman, the capital of Jordan, has been and is projected to vastly exceed the growth in new roads, causing traffic congestion, which is expected to rise even further over the next se veral decades. As a result, urban residents and commuters are confronting increasingly unbearable traffic conditions, a situation that will only get worse without radical reform. Among the many strategies that have been implemented to combat traffic conges tion, road pricing and driver charging strategy is the one which has demonstrated a serious ability to make a lasting impression. This paper investigates public perceiveness of the road pricing strategy in an attempt to evaluate the acceptability and consequently the potential implementation of such a strategy on Amman’s urban road network. Predesigned questionnaires were used to assess the level of acceptability of individual road users and public firms for introducing a road charging scheme on the us e of congested roads. The results were encouraging and showed that almost half of the respondents support the implementation of such a scheme in order to combat traffic congestion.