Congestion Pricing As An Alternative To Gridlock?
Some transportation experts believe that variable tolls—also known as congestion pricing—offer the only real solution to worsening gridlock in and around major population centers.
“Phantom tollbooth” scanners deduct tolls from prepaid smart cards posted on cars’ dashboards; the tolls would rise as rush hours approached and taper off as traffic dwindled. Demonstrated in Ontario and southern California, such tolls could generate more than $2 billion annually in the Northwest, according to proponents -- offsetting many local taxes while easing the congestion that annually squanders more than 130 million hours of time and 143 million gallons of gasoline in Northwest cities alone.
The keys to public acceptance of congestion pricing, according to advocates, is the creation of so-called "pilot projects" for drivers to experience - and making toll lanes available where there are also free lanes. When new pay-per-use lanes opened on southern California’s State Route 91, only 45 percent of drivers approved of congestion pricing; one year later, as many as 75 percent did.
Initially, the idea of paying variable tolls was offensive; but the reality -- in terms of faster-moving traffic and shortened commutes -- was welcomed by many.
Short of installing phantom tollbooths on existing roadways, traffic planners can accustom drivers to the technology by installing it at parking garages and ferry docks. In Oregon, for example, the Port of Portland is considering the technology for its new airport parking facility. They can also introduce pay-to-drive as a way for single-occupant vehicles to travel in carpool lanes, many of which can accommodate more vehicles without slowing. Such high-occupant-toll
(HOT) lanes have succeeded in San Diego and Houston.
In Washington, the Puget Sound Regional Council received a Department of Transportation grant for a pilot project to apply congestion pricing in transportation planning. In Oregon, greater Portland’s regional government recently began studying the potential for congestion pricing for each highway expansion project -- and is actively seeking a first chance to use variable tolls. In late 2000, public pressure moved greater Vancouver, BC's transportation planning and financing authority, TransLink, to ask the provincial government for authority to use tolls to pay for transit and road projects.
One reason to believe traffic taxes will ultimately arrive in other areas of the country - even if piecemeal and incrementally - is the lack of alternatives. For example, even if the citizens of greater Seattle tax themselves almost $1 billion extra each year for mass transit, roads, and other transportation improvements as specified in the region’s approved master transportation plan, afternoon gridlock will still spread to almost half the freeway network in the central Puget Sound region by 2020. The time residents spend stuck in traffic will triple; average freeway traffic speed will fall to 21 miles per hour. The same dynamic is playing out in other areas of the country as well -- from Phoenix to Atlanta to Boston to Washington, DC.
With the U.S. population expected to grow by another 100 million people by 2050 to nearly 400 million, there's no question traffic will grow worse - and many of us will be spending more and more time in our cars and away from our jobs and families.
Congestion pricing may not be a perfect panacea - but it could help make a worsening situation a bit more tolerable.
