By Frank on October 30, 2007
Writing in Crosscut, Daniel Jack Chasan makes a good argument:
Why not do congestion pricing here? There’s no good reason, but if you want to make congestion pricing work, you have to do more than bar-code everybody’s car and send out bills. First, you have to give people alternative means of transportation. London didn’t just make people pay to drive downtown. The city bought 300 new buses and froze transit fares in advance. (In contrast, Sims’ proposed 2008 budget would raise bus fares by 25 cents a ticket. A quarter isn’t much, but it represents a stiff 16-2/3 percent increase for people who ride the bus during rush hour, and a doubling of the fare for elderly riders.)
Besides, working class people already rode public transportation in London. And downtown London retailers didn’t really have to worry about shoppers just driving to the malls instead. None of the above holds true for Seattle. Make it harder to drive downtown and a lot of shoppers will just head for the malls. You can’t just throw a cordon of congestion pricing around downtown Seattle. You’d have to cordon off the major alternatives, too.
I think some sort of tolling for road use is inevitable, whether it’s Sightline’s innovative pay-as-you-drive idea or RFID transponders or congestion pricing or good old fashioned tollbooths. Plus, the gas tax is becoming a less reilable revenue stream.
But first it’s important that we get going ASAP on transit alternatives, so that people have a reason to switch from SOV use.
Posted in bicycles, intercity rail
By Frank on October 8, 2007
CIS is thinking about how to message congestion pricing to road warriors. All the ideas he puts forward are intersting jujitsu moves — designed to use free-marketers own strengths against them.
Let me suggest another, that might be even simpler: congestion pricing is a use tax. Conservatives like use taxes. Many, for example, expect bus tickets to cover 100% of the cost of the bus (ignoring the fact that bus service has positive externalities that justify the taxpayer subsity). The common refrain I often hear is, “I’m never going to ride the bus, so why should I pay for it?”
Well, that argument cuts both ways. Congestion pricing simply lines up the supply and the demand to make you pay for what you use, as I’ve written before.
Posted in intercity rail, legislation, seattle transit
By Frank on August 13, 2007
…maybe they’ll just find another way, argues Cascadia Report, discussing the “nightmare” I-5 closure that began today:
The clear takeaway is that people are more flexible than they think. In this case, there is a strong incentive (not wasting hours in traffic) to find alternatives. It’s exactly what would happen if the viaduct freeway were replaced with a combination of better transit and a more efficient network of surface streets. It’s exactly what would happen if there were tolls based on the amount of congestion on the roads. As long as there are effective alternatives (like far more transit, better carpool lanes) people will take them.
To be sure, August was strategically chosen because, in Francophone Seattle, no one really works this month. But it does show how elastic demand is for our highways. If you make a resource free, people will tend to over-consume it.
Posted in intercity rail, transitnow
By Frank on June 25, 2007
HOT lanes (a.k.a. “Lexus Lanes”) have two main purposes, as far as I can tell: (1) to make better use of HOV lanes by adding as many single-occumancy cars as you can while still keeping those lanes moving at 50mph, and (2) to free up general purpose lanes. I suppose you could add a third purpose, to generate additional revenue. But overall revenue is small, and typically covers only the cost of administering the program.
As this Wall Street Journal article notes, the lanes are successful at the first goal. But they will only benefit the general public to the extent that they achieve the second. And on that point, the record is less clear. Does any extra capacity just get eaten up by people who would have otherwise chosen not to commute? Do wealthy drivers just take more trips now that they have a guaranteed congestion-free option? These questions remain unanswered.
To truly manage congestion in this way, you’d probably have to toll all the lanes, which is the system that King County is supposedly looking into.
Posted in intercity rail, international rail, legislation, passenger rail
By Frank on June 23, 2007
Clark Williams-Derry takes a deeper look into a Seattle trend: many of us don’t go to work on Mondays or Fridays. After comparing traffic data, he concludes:
Now, I don’t know for certain what accounts for the difference. But I think it’s pretty simple: there are just enough people who don’t work Mondays or Fridays — either because of flexible, 4×10 hour work schedules, or because of people taking long weekends or vacation days — that traffic volumes never quite reach the “tipping point” between free-flow and gridlock.
That’s exactly how traffic tends to work: a roadway that’s operating near peak capacity — full, but flowing freely — can suddenly descend into gridlock if just a few extra cars enter the highway at once. That’s one reason that Seattle’s metered on ramps help keep traffic moving more smoothly: by regulating access, they help prevent the sudden bursts of traffic that can bring a highway to a standstill.
This certainly matches my experience. It also, I think, speaks to how well we could do with congestion pricing.
Posted in intercity rail, legislation
By Frank on May 2, 2007
Danny Westneat flags Ron Sims’ latest big idea:
The idea is to turn all our freeways into payways.
There’s nothing new about tolls. But Sims is not talking about a couple of bucks for crossing a bridge. It’s a plan to toll most every mile of every major state and federal highway from Everett to south of Tacoma.
It’s just a concept, Sims says, but here’s how it could work. We’d all have computer chips in our cars to record time of day and lane miles traveled on Interstates 5, 405 and 90 (out to Issaquah), as well as parts of highways 99, 167, 509, 518 and 520. The gist is you’d pay $2 for a short rush-hour commute, with a max of $4 to $8 for longer drives, such as from Bothell to Tacoma. It’d be $1 for driving around in the middle of the night.
Westneat like the idea, but says that tolls are “political suicide.” He writes, “If there’s anything that’ll get the local blood boiling as much as that income tax, Sims has found it.”
I’m not so sure. If you assume that by “local blood” he means the conservative, anti-tax folks who by and large oppose the income tax, he’s mistaken. Pay-for-what-you-use has a lot of support among conservatives, because it involves no redistribution. It’s also insanely market friendly: when something gets more scarce (freeway capacity during rush hour), the price goes up. It’s Econ 101.
For example, here’s Stefan Sharkansky of the conservative blog Sound Politics writing two weeks ago:
Nobody should be forced to pay for infrastructure he considers to be foolishly cost-ineffective and/or environmentally immoral. Nobody should have their desired solution held hostage for the other. Roads should be paid for only by those who want and use them. Likewise with light rail.
Let all highway construction and improvements be paid for through tolls, and let all light rail be financed 100% through the farebox.
Sometimes it really is that simple.
Sounds like an endorsement to me!
Posted in bicycle safety, i405, intercity rail, legislation, RTID
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