U.S. Cities Urged to Adopt 'Congestion Tax'

The Washington Post ^ | Sunday, June 5, 2005; Page A15 | Terence Chea

[echoBoomer]

The mayor of London told dozens of world mayors that they could unclog city streets and fight global warming by charging hefty fees for driving in congested areas of their communities.

Mayor Ken Livingstone said making drivers pay a "congestion charge" to drive in central London has improved traffic flow and reduced the emission of "greenhouse gases" blamed for raising temperatures and changing weather patterns. The $9 fee has forced people out of their cars and filled city buses, subways and sidewalks, he told mayors assembled here Friday for the U.N. World Environment Day Conference.

"We are the only city in the Western world where there's a notable shift from car use to public transport...

[HostileTerritory]

if our nation's highways were upgraded to the point that traffic jams were erradicated.

How exactly do you do that, though? It's not as easy as waving the magic "upgrade" wand--if you build bigger roads, then builders will put more housing and commerce along the side, and you're back where you began. This is accepted wisdom among civic authorities.

[DoughtyOne]

B.S. Populations grow and infrastructure has to expand. Our parents generation planned for the future and we're not. Right now there's a mindset out there (screw drivers, if they're not smart enough to take the bus, they shouldn't be able to work). Sorry, but there is an increased populace brought to use by those who don't give a damn about tens of millions of illegals flooding in, and also by normal population growth, and we have to get around still. What do you suggest, mass suicide?

Build some fricken infrastructure!

[HostileTerritory]

Again, railing against the problem doesn't mean that you've got a solution that works. Adding six lanes to every highway in Atlanta wouldn't fix their congestion--it would only move it around.

[DoughtyOne]

Look, I drive the busiest freeway in the United States every day. It's the section of the 101 that hits the 405 in San Fernando Valley. I didn't rate it, so don't blame me if you disagree.

In the last 40 years one lane has been added. That was instantly turned into a diamond lane which 95% of the public can't use. While they seem to be adding one more lane that that stretch of freeway, it's a band-aid on a machete wound.

The planners are simply not up to speed. We need to build for the future and all you're telling me is that there is no solution.

Double decking some sections of the freeway are an absolute necessity. Without it we face total gridlock. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what needs to be done.

There are too many cars for the present lanes. We need more lanes. That was the situation in the 50s and 60s. They built more lanes. What's so hard to figure with regard to that?

"Adding six lanes to every highway in Atlanta wouldn't fix their congestion--it would only move it around." Well, yes adding lanes to the freeway would allow traffic to move around. Even you admit that. And thanks by the way.

What will happen if you don't? Oh, the traffic won't move around. Okay. I get it. I think I was pointing that out all along.

[Alberta's Child]

Congestion is a problem of poor traffic management by the civic engineers.

This is not true at all. What you have to understand is that effectively dealing with traffic congestion is basically impossible. This is mainly because traffic congestion is primarily a function of the unpredictable nature of transportation. For example, it's relatively easy to design a water supply system or a building structure because water always behaves in a predictable manner and structural loadings are distributed through a building frame in a predictable manner.

Human behavior, on the other hand, is inherently unpredictable. In a free society it impossible to design a transportation system that functions adequately over a long period of time because there are so many variables (household size, number of registered vehicles per household, housing development patterns, office and retail development patterns, an endless number of origin/destination combinations for people traveling from home to work, variations in driving skills by age and level of intelligence, etc.).

Give me 90 days, and I could design a transportation system for your city that would not have any congestion at all. I am sure, however, that you would never want to live in the city after I am done with it -- mainly because you would have to live where I tell you to live, work where (and when) I tell you to work, shop where (and when) I tell you to shop, drive the vehicle I tell you to drive, and have no more (and no less) than exactly 2 children.

[Alberta's Child]

A Swedish firm a few years ago offered to build a monorail system ALL OVER LA for no money up front. They wanted the reciepts for ten years as payment. Idiot politicians said no.

The "idiot politicians" may not have been so dumb after all. There was a similar project proposed at one of the major New York airports a few years ago, and a European firm came in with a very low bid on the project. There's a reason why these firms do this -- they are willing to construct a base system at a very low cost (or nothing, in the case of LA), but once they build it the government that oversees the operation is forced to go back to the same company any time they want to expand the system. This company wasn't trying to "sell" Los Angeles a monorail system -- they were basically trying to "buy" the proprietary rights to construct every piece of rapid transit infrastructure in Los Angeles for the next 50 years.

You can be sure that this Swedish company would have charged an exorbitant sum of money to build any future extensions to the system -- mainly because once the initial system is built the City of Los Angeles has no choice but to go back to the same company to do all future upgrades.

[Kozak]

system in all cars containing a GPS receiver to record distance time of day and location of all travel.

Money to be made in selling a device that spoofs the GPS reciever into getting false data. " My car sits in the garage all day....."

[Alberta's Child]

You're absolutely right about this, Grammar Police. Traffic congestion is not a problem of inadequate infrastructure, or poor traffic operations -- it's a basic problem of economics.

Traffic congestion is nothing more than an extension of the "Tragedy of the Commons," an economic theory first postulated by economist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s. Hardin used the example of livestock grazing in colonial times to illustrate his basic premise that assets subsidized by the government with no private ownership tend to be used to excess and eventually break down or disappear. In colonial towns, the area known as "the commons" usually ended up a bare patch of dirt from all the excessive grazing of livestock by the people in the town -- they treated it in way that they would never treat their own pastures, because there was no sense of ownership and no reason to curtail your grazing activities when the land was "free" for your use.

Traffic congestion takes this principle one step further. A highway is not "free" in any sense because motorists are the ones who pay most of the costs associated with building it, but once the highway is constructed there is a perception that it is "free" because the costs have already been paid -- and motorists do not incur any additional costs by using it.

Try to imagine a world in which every person ate three meals a day at all-you-can-eat restaurant buffets. Once you pay for your meal, you can get all the food you want. The natural result of this arrangement is a world full of grossly overweight people.

[Little Ray]

Gee. They want to run folks outta their cities? Then who will pay for their bogus "social services?"