San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge was the first to institute one-way toll collection, on October 19, 1968. You could say that made San Francisco the first city in the world to institute congestion pricing.
Congestion pricing recalls that old Yogi Berra saw: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Cities have become unbearable places to drive cars. Increased traffic in congested cities from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., to Paris to Shanghai has led to the near-extermination of stickshifts and experimentation with autonomous cars.
Studying travel data from all U.S. metropolitan areas for 1980, 1990, and 2000, found “adding 10 percent more lane miles to a city increases vehicle miles traveled by 10 percent.” Equally depressing, “Changes in a city’s stock of buses have no measurable effect on traffic in the city.”
More buses benefit a metropolitan area more than new roads and lanes. “Reductions in travel time caused by an average highway expansion are not sufficient to justify the expense of such an expansion,” Mr. Al Turner writes, while “expansions of the bus network are more likely to pass a cost-benefit test than expansions of the highway network. The demand for vehicle miles traveled is responsive to price. This suggests small ‘time of day’ congestion charges largely impact travel behavior.”
Singapore instituted its Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) to curb congestion in 1975, 28 years before London’s system. Here are other worldwide ideas to stop traffic congestion:
1. Singapore: City and expressway pricing are determined by time of day and vehicle class. Paper permit enforcement 1975-’98, switched to Electronic Road Pricing in 1998. May replace ERP with a GPS-based system. Taxes and fees increase new car prices by 150 percent. Fees are lower for a weekend-only license plate. All prices shown in US currency.
2. London: Established in Central London, 2003. Western extension in 2007 with repeal planned in ’10. Each entry fee is the equivalent of $14.84, with a $19.79 daily maximum.
3. Stockholm: City entry fee of $1.50, $2.26, or $3.15, based on time of day. Maximum fee is $9.45.
4. Seoul: Entry fee equivalent to $0 to $3.32 , no apparent daily maximum.
5. New York City: Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg procured a $354 million federal grant to institute congestion pricing in 2008, but Democrats in the New York State Assembly refused to hold a vote on the proposed bill.
6. The Netherlands: A National Distance Based Tax on all roadways, counting each vehicle’s CO2 emissions ratings was to have replaced vehicle tax revenue by 2018. A new Dutch government voted in over opposition to troops in Afghanistan overturned the Distance Based Tax this year.
7. Germany: Heavy Goods Vehicle Charging on highways, beginning in 2005, to recover lost tax revenue from foreign semi-trucks that could enter and leave the country without refueling.
8. Czech Republic: Charging trucks on highways beginning in 2007, same goal as Gemany’s program.
Since last December, citizens of Beijing, China, have had to try their luck in a lottery to get a license plate for a new car. Portland, Oregon, has had a demonstration project using mileage-based fees, as with Holland’s plan.
In the United States, where “tax” in any form is a four-letter word, the answer may be “incentive.” High Occupancy/Toll, or HOT lanes are the rage in various parts of the country (see map at top). California has had diamond lanes for years, at one point making a used Toyota Prius with hybrid exemption stickers worth twice as much as the same model bereft of the stickers.
HOT lanes differ in that they allow not just drivers with at least one passenger, or a “green” car exemption, but also solo drivers willing to pay a toll via electronic tracker. This makes the Duranton/Turner study a kind of oxymoron: If HOT lanes work and solo drivers are willing to pay more to drive in a less-congested lane, that proves added lanes don’t reduce congestion, while refuting the conclusion that extra fees are the answer to reducing congestion.
