He has asked for the first results to be delivered by autumn.
Tolls will be used only for new roads and not for existing ones, he promised.
"Let me be clear: this is not about mass tolling – it’s about getting more out of the money that motorists already pay," he said.
In a speech at the Instuitution of Civil Engineers today, the prime minister set out what he called his "infrastructure vision" and invoked the names of Brunel and Stephenson.
"Infrastructure matters because it is the magic ingredient in so much of modern life…. It affects the competitiveness of every business in the country; it is the invisible thread that ties our prosperity together," he said. "If our infrastructure is second-rate, then our country will be too."
The prime minister made it clear that he sees no conflict between road building and his goal for leading 'the greenest governmnet ever'.
He said: "We need good roads. The problem’s clear: we don’t have enough capacity in places of key demand. There’s nothing green about a traffic jam – and gridlock holds the economy back."
Mr Cameron said: "No government in living memory has set out a sufficiently comprehensive and ambitious vision of this country’s infrastructure needs. By a comprehensive and ambitious vision, I don’t just mean a list of projects. I mean an overall system – an integrated set of networks that collectively deliver the economic and social goods.
"But as well as this failure of vision, there’s been a failure of financing.
"Everyone knows that infrastructure is expensive. One academic assessment puts the bill at five hundred billion pounds just to meet our current commitments. And we can’t hide from the fact that new infrastructure has to be paid for either by those who use it, or by government, or a combination of the two."
He added: "No government has acted with the necessary determination to blast through the vested interests and bureaucratic hurdles in order to provide what the long-term national interest demands. To put it crudely, we’ve become good in Britain at sweating old assets. But if you do that for too long, there’s a price to pay. It’s not enough just to keep the existing infrastructure going. We need to build – as other countries are building – the completely new infrastructure we need for the future."
Offering the water industry as a potential model, Mr Cameron said: "Britain already has a long and successful track record of regulating infrastructure providers, such as the water industry. And now we need to go much further and faster in opening up the financing of our infrastructure."
He said: "Why is it that other infrastructure – for example water – is funded by private sector capital through privately owned, independently regulated, utilities but roads in Britain call on the public finances for funding? We need to look urgently at the options for getting large-scale private investment into the national roads network – from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and other investors.
"That’s why I have asked the Department for Transport and the Treasury to carry out a feasibility study of new ownership and financing models for the national roads system and to report progress to me in the autumn."
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