/ Présentations

Stéphanie Souche : “Understanding the Diversity Appellations of an Urban Toll Policy. An Economist’s Viewpoint”

(Traduction : Fiona Simpkins, MCF Civilisation britannique,
TRIANGLE)

Speaker : Stéphanie Souche, Assistant Professor in Economic Sciences at the IUT of Montluçon.

Topic : “Understanding the Diversity of Appellations of an Urban Toll Policy. An Economist’s Viewpoint”.

Summary : The experiments in introducing urban tolls have multiplied in recent years with a great diversity of chosen appellations. It could either be a licensing system to access the central area of cities such as Singapour (Area Central License System), a peripheral belt toll system in the Norwegian cities of Bergen, Oslo, Trondheim (Toll Ring System), an electronic tariff on roads in Hong Kong (Electronic Road Pricing), the more recent introduction of a congestion charge in London (Central London Congestion Charging), or tolled express lanes as well as bridge and tunnel tolls in the United States (Toll Express Lanes and Toll bridges) and in France (“tunnel Prado-Carénage”).

Why is there such a diversity of appellations for these different experiments although they are only the expression of an urban transport toll policy ? The lexicological analysis of the vocabulary used allows a classification of these experiments by groups of two antonyms of the word toll, built on polarised oppositions. The inclusion of the historical and political context of the policy as well as the economic objective sought through the introduction of the urban toll policy allows a further detailed taxonomy.

Key words : antomyns, context, political onomastics, toll, taxonomy.