If You Charge Them, Fewer Will Come

The "world in numbers" for our current print issue is a nifty map of the overtaxed highway infrastructure in our major urban areas. Under the circumstances, the case for more transportation infrastructure is compelling, but it's worth underscoring the fact that you're never going to have anything more than a very temporary solution to congestion problems until you start implementing congestion pricing.

Building a highway, after all, costs money. But it creates something of value -- the chance to drive on an uncrowded roadway. But if you just give this valuable opportunity away for free, then people wind up consuming too much of it and soon enough there's no uncrowded roadway left. It's just like overfishing or any other "tragedy of the commons" issue. When you see construction of a new, unpriced and it's not likely that it'll soon become overcrowded, you're looking at a porkalicious "bridge to nowhere" sort of phenomenon where people are constructing something that has a cost out of proportion to its value. Anything that's genuinely valuable and also given away for free is going to wind up overconsumed.

Which isn't to say that we shouldn't build roads. Reasonably uncrowded highways really are valuable and we should want to have them near our major economic centers. But to get that we need to charge for access to them during peak travel periods. That will, when done appropriately, ease the overcrowding and create revenues that can subsidize activities with small-to-zero marginal costs like non-peak driving and rail travel.

Comments

yeah baby -- put the free-market to work! Unfortunately most governments will load the project down with pork and never really pay off its construction funding (witness the Mass Pike and forcing those users to pay for the Big Dig).

Posted by mike c | March 4, 2008 4:59 PM

Some countries believe that everyone has a right to higher education, health care, and a dignified retirement. Our country believes that everyone has a right to the interstate. Tolls may be economically efficient, but they are unAmerican.

Posted by Bloix | March 5, 2008 1:34 PM

When you charge people for the sake of charging people, that's called gouging. Since there's no alternative to the freeway system here in San Diego, or Ca., or the southwest, charging people to drive is just a way of further exploiting the working classes.

Unless I don't understand MY's argument, and these toll-road funds really do go towards something of use for 9-5er's, that is. Tax payers already pay taxes to get the roads built, pay taxes for their upkeep, and pay gas, car registration fees, plus the associated costs of standing in line and paying to geta driver's liscence in the first place. There's thousands of extra fees asscoitaed with driving. As far as I can tell, toll roads are just another excuse to subcharge people for stuff they already bought.

Posted by A Different Matt | March 5, 2008 1:42 PM

Besides, the government will just take the money received from congestion pricing and send it to wealthy corn farmers in Iowa.

Posted by mike | March 5, 2008 1:43 PM

It seems to me more a zero-sum game. If you ease over-crowding for some, you increase it for others. Why should the rest of the world get to more congested simply because some can better afford to pay to use scarce transportation infrastructure? Is the implication that, from now on, 2 highway lanes will now be built where demand needs more roads instead of one, so that the rich can be uncongested? If there was the space (prohibitively expensive in already built up areas) and the resources to build 2 extra lanes, why would limiting traffic on one result in any less congestion for all than opening up both lanes to traffic? Or will it be that demand will be met with just one extra pay-lane to siphon off those few who are willing to pay for it? - leaving the rest to have their original demand caused by congestion continue to be unmet.
Either way, you're only talking about easing overcrowding for the wealthy - not for the vast majority of the population. What other public resources are so didicated to use by very few people?

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | March 5, 2008 1:46 PM

This may be a dumb question, but here I go: Suppose the government builds roads A and B. Road A is relatively crowded and road B is not. Is MY's argument that the government should impose a charge on road A drivers and not on road B drivers? If youre going to charge, why not charge equally on both?

Posted by alkali | March 5, 2008 1:48 PM

disagree on equality grounds. what this will do is allow access to people to whom a $2 congestion charge is nothing while keeping poorer people off the roads. we already have enough of a two-tiered society as it is. let the hedge fund guys either sit in traffic with everybody else or take the subway.

Posted by stoneyforest | March 5, 2008 1:49 PM

This congestion pricing meme does not cut it. It does not address the basic problem of the huge need in our economy for people and goods to ferry themselves to work and store, etc., all over the place. Congestion Pricing is just a fancy new phrase for a virulent regressive tax on the working class—unless, that is, one could find a good way to charge the well-to-do more for their luxury rides on these *public financed* highways.

Posted by Chris Darrouzet | March 5, 2008 1:49 PM

A Different Matt, you're penalizing people for crowding up the highways and taking up space. That doesn't really seem too unfair to me, given that other, way too many people subscribe to highways if you don't do that, and the state has a distinct interest in charging a fee for limited, but oversubscribed resources. No one likes to pay money for something, but there's no constitutional right to drive on a highway for free. If you want to drive for free, take the service road.

The beauty of tolls is that in many places where they're implemented, you can simply choose not to pay the toll by taking an alternate route. No one HAS to pay $6 to cross a bridge or tunnel into Manhattan from NJ. They COULD park at the park and ride and grab a bus into the city. So they're not really being gouged, they just feel that the gouging is worth it.

Posted by Tyro | March 5, 2008 1:50 PM

I would suggest that solution lies in much better transit systems. In many cases, the buses and/or trains are just not a reasonable alternative.

Posted by George | March 5, 2008 1:52 PM

Folks, if you don't charge, the poor will have the right to drive on roads that don't get them anywhere.

If you charge, perhaps the poor won't be able to drive as much, but when they do drive, the roads will get them somewhere.

The distributional aspects of this aren't nearly as simple as "road tolls hurt the poor".

Posted by Dilan Esper | March 5, 2008 1:58 PM

Congestion pricing isn't a bad idea so long as it goes along with some much more ambitious projects -- mass transit, investment in local agriculture and industry, mixed income housing, ordinances favoring smaller vehicles, etc. These will all help to ease congestion. But congestion pricing alone just discourages working class people from driving at all, or forces them to relocate to places where the roads are still free. The net gain is entrenched class stratification, with little if any impact on total carbon emissions throughout a given region.

Posted by JShel | March 5, 2008 1:59 PM

I think you're all forgetting that resources such as highways and roadways are inherently scarce. You can't run a 12 lane highway through downtown Boston, so it strikes me that you might want to limit the temptation to use the last leg of the Mass Pike to those whose desire to use it exceeds their unwillingness to pay a few dollars for the privilege.

You're talking about how it would be a regressive tax on the poor-- what about the fact that the poor have to suffer in traffic because the people figure they need to use the roads right now for whatever irrelevant issue they need to deal with but wouldn't consider worth paying for?

Posted by Tyro | March 5, 2008 2:00 PM

Someone stayed awake in Econ 102 but fell asleep in Soc 111. Americans love their cars. They don't want to pay more for their "right" to drive.

Posted by freddiemac | March 5, 2008 2:02 PM

It seems awfully innappropriate to dicuss the regressive impact of the tax without considering the fact that this would raise revenue. If the revenues are used to buy gold yachts for Haliburton execs you have a point, if they're used to finance public transit, then not so much.

Posted by TheF79 | March 5, 2008 2:04 PM

You know, I saw this in the magazine this morning and asked myself when MY would write a post about it. I have yet to read it, though. Is it only highways and rail, or does it talk about congested airports, as well?

It seems to me that the solution is a tax on commerce, which of course is borne by the consumer. These consumers often live in areas not affected by the congestion their consumption is creating.

Posted by Just Karl | March 5, 2008 2:04 PM

Anything that's genuinely valuable and also given away for free is going to wind up overconsumed.

I don't know why we assume that any transportation system we come up with will always be crowded. Overconsumed, possibly, but overcrowded, no. People don't drive just for the hell of it. I don't think if you build more roads people will just start driving more.

Posted by mpowell | March 5, 2008 2:09 PM

freddiemac, part of this might be a bit of narrow-minded thinking on the part of MattY (and me, for that matter). I'm constantly faced with a whole list of tolls I have to pay if I have to drive from DC to Boston. Sometimes it makes me think, "you know, why shouldn't people pay a toll to drive on I-395 during rush hour?" It makes perfect sense to me, but someone from florida obviously feels it is a grand encroachment on his freedom if he can't sit on the highway in traffic for free on his way to Miami.

Posted by Tyro | March 5, 2008 2:10 PM

Charging a plumber $20 to go into lower manhattan to fix a leaky faucet isn't going to make life more affordable for the non-wealthy in the cities. Charging delivery trucks to bring produce to the inner cities isn't going to help spawn new grocery services in those cities, where the communities traditionally have been under-served. This is all friedman-esque simplicity: a straight-edge, a pencil, a couple of undefined axes, and voila!: economic theory.

Posted by larry, dfh | March 5, 2008 2:16 PM

mpowell,

No, people don't (usually) drive around just for the hell of it, but as long as gas is cheap there's a lot of willingness to drive which is currently unexpressed because driving is already a hassle (because of congestion). It's possible that at SOME point there would in fact be so many lanes that there's no congestion, but it seems that point is well beyond what's feasible to build in an urban area (which is, after all, where there are dense enough concentrations of people so that congestion is a problem).

A friend of mine in graduate school (yes, economics) had the image of an iceberg. The observed traffic is the above-water part of the iceberg, and the unexpressed demand is the below-water part. If you melt some of the above-water part (i.e., build more lanes) the above-water part doesn't get that much smaller; more of the submerged part floats up.

Robert Moses unintentionally discovered this phenomenon in building much of NYC's car infrastructure last century. He kept opening bridges saying they would handle increased traffic for the next five or 10 years. Instead, lots more driving happened and the bridges filled up in 6 months.

Posted by Karl | March 5, 2008 2:24 PM

This seems like a good idea only to those who live in a city with good public transportation (ie, a real alternative). Some of us are not that lucky. A two tier system will simply hurt the poor while helping the wealthy. That is a Republican solution. A more balanced and FAIR solution would be a small gas tax increase (everybody pays) combined with better train/bus access for areas that don't have it. Other solutions that would help would be anything to reduce urban sprawl.

Posted by Parrotlover77 | March 5, 2008 2:32 PM

but someone from florida obviously feels it is a grand encroachment on his freedom if he can't sit on the highway in traffic for free on his way to Miami.

There is a toll road that basically parallels I-95 and runs from Orlando to Miami. It's called the Florida Turnpike.

Posted by Just Karl | March 5, 2008 2:38 PM

Idea #2: Road maintance weighted vehicle tax. A person driving a Hummer H2 uses more road space, pollutes more, presents a higher accident fatality risk to others, and wears down roads MUCH faster than somebody in a Honda Civic. The former tends to be wealthier too, so the regressiveness of the tax would be more limited. The more resource consuming your vehicle, the higher your vehicle/asset tax. Money goes to roads. No need for toll booths and two tiered society.

Posted by Parrotlover77 | March 5, 2008 2:38 PM

Without significant action, Chicago's freight rail congestion will continue to increase to the point that it impairs the ability to move bulk goods and intermodal traffic across the country, with a huge corresponding economic penalty. A solution to the problem, the CREATE program (formerly the Chicago Rail Plan) has been on the books for years, but the pro-oil, pro-highway, and anti-railroad Bush administration and its lapdog Congress have contributed only a minimal amount to the public/private consortium. Under a reality-based administration, Chicago's (and therefore much of the nation's) freight rail congestion problems can be solved for a federal share of about $900 million, which in terms of return on investment (benefits to American industry, reduction of highway congestion, and improvement of environmental quality) compares favorably to the vast majority of recent public works projects.

Incidentally, every ton of freight moved from road to rail also offers substantial cost savings in terms of federal highway spending. Over-the-road trucks cause more than 90% of the wear on the nation's highway system, but their fuel taxes and license fees account for only a small portion of this cost. Essentially, the government is paying hundreds of billions of dollars a year in indirect subsidies to the trucking industry, creating little incentive for businesses to optimize their transportation strategies.

Posted by Dr. Wu | March 5, 2008 2:38 PM

Karl,

It seems like that would be true in a city like NYC where there is a substantial public transit infrastructure. I just don't see it in a city like Dallas or Los Angeles, though. If you need to get somewhere, your only option is to drive. I suppose people would decide they 'needed' to go more places, but where are they going? People already commute to work in those places, it just takes longer now.

Posted by mpowell | March 5, 2008 2:38 PM

I agree with Matt that we should have even higher population density, facilitated by lots of immigration, and solve whatever infrastructure problems that arise with "congestion pricing", "peak energy use pricing", "off-season water pricing" and anything else that allows the rich to have a happy life while those at the bottom take it on the chin (by paying for a resource, or forgoing it altoghether).

Posted by Quiddity | March 5, 2008 2:40 PM

But if you just give this valuable opportunity away for free,...

Wow, you sound just like a Republican now.

Last I checked, I was paying taxes for the highway system and a lot of the funding comes from gas taxes. The more you use, the more you pay. Considering people from populated states also tend to pay more to the federal government than they get back in services, I'm guessing that I've already been paying "congestion pricing".

My guess is that you live in an area where you can choose to hop on the train to get to work. I used to as well and I loved it. But now I can't and neither can a lot of other people. If you want to push for densification, then you have to build the infrastructure to accommodate it. That means either more roads or more trains.

Posted by Jinchi | March 5, 2008 2:41 PM

Jinchi, take, for example, the intercounty connector in Maryland-- aassuming it ever gets built. There will be plenty of more congested or roundabout alternatives (that currently exist!) if, for some reason, you don't feel like you can pay the toll. However, if, for some reason, you really, really need to use the most direct route between Baltimore and MOngomery county, you will have to pay a fee. That actually sounds pretty fair, if you ask me, because it controls access to an otherwise free resource.

Plus, congestion pricing is almost invariably proposed in areas where there are plenty of alternatives, not in outlying areas that have other sorts of problems.

Posted by Tyro | March 5, 2008 2:47 PM

"Anything that's genuinely valuable and also given away for free is going to wind up overconsumed."

Does this mean that transit projects around the country that do not have ridership levels anywhere near projections--I guess we can call them underconsumed--are not genuinely valuable?

I rememeber proposals for the Maglev in the DC area. Experts were projecting a ridership of something like 35,000 round trips per day--at $21 a trip. Surely, those are proposterous numbers and the ridership would have been far less. And part of that would have been due to "overpricing." But isn't it possible that sometimes, on occasion, transit advocates are just as likely as highway advocates to BS about the "genuine value" of their proposals?

Posted by SM | March 5, 2008 2:53 PM

I find the argument somewhat flawed as it does not take into consideration the amount of money needed to repair existing infrastructure. Much of our nation's interstate bridges are reaching the end of their useful life and will need replaced. The focus of the post is simply on building new roads and not on the maintenance of existing roads, which is what most of the money in SAFETEA-LU goes to. However, I appreciate Matt for bringing the infrastructure issue up as it is often forgotten.

Matt, could the media start putting some heat on McCaim, Obama and Clinton as to what they to do about the infrastructure situation in this country? Existing needs for roads alone is $107 billion. For water infrastructure it's $202 billion. Infrastructure repair and construction creates jobs in this country that can't be exported.

You hearing me Barack Obama? This is how you win the rust belt in the fall. Talk infrastructure.

Posted by Ben | March 5, 2008 2:53 PM

Today's fun activity:
Replace the concept of "roads" with "healthcare" and see a liberal cause turn conservative.

-------
Under the circumstances, the case for *affordable healthcare* is compelling, but it's worth underscoring the fact that you're never going to have anything more than a very temporary solution to *healthcare* problems until you start implementing congestion pricing.

*Implementing and funding a healthcare plan*, after all, costs money. But it creates something of value -- the chance to *be healthy*. But if you just give this valuable opportunity away for free, then people wind up consuming too much of it and soon enough there's no uncrowded *clinics or hospitals* left. It's just like overfishing or any other "tragedy of the commons" issue.

When you see *talk of an unpriced healthcare plan* it's not likely that it'll soon become *bankrupt*, you're looking at a porkalicious "bridge to nowhere" sort of phenomenon where people are constructing something that has a cost out of proportion to its value.

Anything that's genuinely valuable and also given away for free is going to wind up overconsumed. Which isn't to say that we shouldn't *have universal healthcare*. *A healthy population* really is valuable and we should want it. But to get that we need to charge for access to them. That will, when done appropriately, ease the *costs* and create revenues that can subsidize activities with small-to-zero marginal costs like *childhood immunization* and *primary care*.
--------

Adding: I believe that universal healthcare should be a right, especially in a country as rich as ours. I am also sick and tired of riding in dirty subways, constant threats of congestion pricing, bridge tolls, and alternate side parking.

Posted by Bill | March 5, 2008 2:54 PM

The real free market solution isn't congestion pricing, it's leaving the existing road system in place, and waiting for some people to give up and move away, or to take jobs closer to where they live.

Posted by Rich | March 5, 2008 2:56 PM

I was paying taxes for the highway system and a lot of the funding comes from gas taxes. The more you use, the more you pay.

Yes, but the point is the externalities of your driving a car are much higher when you drive on a crowded highway than on an uncrowded highway. Thus: congestion pricing.

Posted by right | March 5, 2008 2:57 PM

I'm totally against congestion charges. It's really a drop in the bucket for someone making $100/hour to pay the charge, but for some workers, they could be looking at maybe a half hour or hour's worth of wages just for the privilege of using the roads that their tax dollars ostensibly helped to fund in the first place. Many lower-wage workers already have to live some distance from the urban areas in which they work due to skyrocketing rents and property values. If the value equation were better on lower and middle income housing near employment centers, I think it would help a lot. There are a lot of people who don't necessarily like driving an hour to work and back, but it's a sacrifice that they make in order to get a decent place to live.

A lot of the congestion (and wear on the road surface itself) comes from the glut of trucks on the highway - a consequence of the total gutting of the rail system that occurred in this country throughout the middle of the twentieth century. It would also probably help to shift more long and medium haul freight to rail transit. Too bad they ripped out most of the track years ago...

The value equation on public transport needs to change too. Nobody save the utterly desperate will use it when it turns a twenty or thirty minute car journey into a ninety minute ordeal of waiting at stops, taking transfers, etc. I would like to see transit agencies moving away from the slow, smoky, road congestion-inducing buses and toward dedicated right-of-way means of mass transit with quicker cycle times like subways, light rail, tramways, and so forth.

Congestion charges don't really get to the root of the problem - unsustainable urban development and freight transport strategies. They're just a stopgap strategy to temporarily free up some space by brushing away people of marginal income.

Posted by STC | March 5, 2008 2:57 PM

Charging a plumber $20 to go into lower manhattan to fix a leaky faucet isn't going to make life more affordable for the non-wealthy in the cities. Charging delivery trucks to bring produce to the inner cities isn't going to help spawn new grocery services in those cities, where the communities traditionally have been under-served. This is all friedman-esque simplicity: a straight-edge, a pencil, a couple of undefined axes, and voila!: economic theory.

There are thousands of plumbers in Manhattan already, so if there's some pressing need to bring one in from Brooklyn or NJ or somewhere, or the price difference is so great, presumably it's worth the congestion fee. Some people might prefer to bring in plumbers from Boston or something too, but there's no reason we should subsidize the practice.

You have a somewhat better point with grocery stores, but I'd point out that the $20 or whatever is probably pretty insignificant compared to the value of the inventory, and may well be compensated for by faster transit times from the reduced congestion. In any case, while there are a variety of disincentives for grocery stores (and other services) in inner cities, those are better addressed directly, rather than by subsidizing grocery trucks and through trucks and cadillacs from the 'burbs all in a lump.

Posted by jack lecou | March 5, 2008 2:59 PM

Plus, congestion pricing is almost invariably proposed in areas where there are plenty of alternatives, not in outlying areas that have other sorts of problems.

Actually, I don't think that's true. Look at the current passion for toll roads on Texas highways. Most of Texas has been built with an outright hostility towards pedestrian, bicycle or commuter rail options. You have no other alternatives.

In fact, consider the fact that tolls are a favorite vehicle of Republican governors and Congressmen. They aren't worrying about the environment, they're creating a new revenue stream and pretending not to raise taxes. Personally, I'd rather pay the taxes up front - and most people who spend 20-30 minutes waiting in line to get through the toll booth would agree.

Lately, these roads have been sold off for a quick buck - putting public lands into private hands where the public has no recourse to prevent abuse. Couple that with the segregation of commuters into preferred customers willing to pay a higher price to get around the rabble (as opposed to HOV lanes) and those who can't pay are squeezed into even tighter quarters.

Posted by Jinchi | March 5, 2008 3:02 PM

One problem we have here in VA is that our arteries are pretty big and are adequate except at rush hour times. The problem really is that we have no capillaries. There are no roads to go even from one neighborhood to the next without venturing out on one of the arteries. The arteries would be a lot better during rush hour if the local traffic had alternative routes. People like living on cul-de-sacs and circle drives. Trouble is, that's an inefficient use of road-building resources.

Posted by postxian | March 5, 2008 3:05 PM

Jinchi, you are correct. Our Texas toll roads are a nice profit stream for multi-national consortiums. And nice local jobs, eh? One guy in a booth making change.

Posted by Nat | March 5, 2008 3:12 PM

Fact: More roads and more lanes = more drivers.

The solution is public transportation, and not just public transportation infrastructure, but metropolitan development patterns that allow people to use it.

As long as we keep building huge office parks in the exurbs that workers can only get to by driving, we'll be facing insufferable traffic. It should be permissible to build an office building for 5,000 people on farmland in the 'burbs. It should only be permissible to built that either in the central city, or within walking distance of a suburban commuter rail station. That way people in nearby suburbs have a short drive to work, as they do now, but others - reverse commuters who live in the city, or suburbanites who don't live close by, can take a train to work.

The fact is that people want this, which is why New York suburbs along the Metro North or Chicago suburbs on the North Shore, with convenient access to downtown via Metra commuter rail, tend to be the most expensive (read: highest demand) suburbs in those metro areas. The problem is that there's no incentive for developers to promote this pattern. This needs to change.

Posted by TH | March 5, 2008 3:14 PM

Since there's no alternative to the freeway system here in San Diego...

What? How about the trolley? It works for me - I live in downtown SD and work in El Cajon (and it would work in reverse as well). Even if one doesn't live near a station, one can drive to the nearest and take the trolley/bus from there.

Posted by SoCalCommie | March 5, 2008 3:25 PM

"That way people in nearby suburbs have a short drive to work, as they do now, but others - reverse commuters who live in the city, or suburbanites who don't live close by, can take a train to work."

Much of the commuting in the suburbs/exurbs is from burb to burb, not to/from a center city. Public transportation within the burbs is very inefficient or nonexistent.
I'm sure lots of folks would love to get out of the traffic jams, but in many cases housing is unaffordable near the work location and/or you have 2 (or more) workers in the household working in different suburbs.

Posted by CParis | March 5, 2008 3:29 PM

Hasn't the tripling of fuel prices highlighted the in elasticity in demand for oil? Unless people have real alternatives, toll roads and gas taxes are nothing but yet another government squeeze.

Posted by john stephen lewis | March 5, 2008 3:32 PM

The arguments against congestion pricing disproportionately affecting the poor do not make sense to me.

We don't give broccoli away for free just because it's relatively cheaper for rich people. Nor do we charge different prices. We do give out food stamps to those who need them to get by. (Or we should...)

The same system needs to be in place here: charge the appropriate price up front for the use of road system, then subsidize the truly needy directly. Otherwise everyone ends up paying a much higher net subsidy, directed at all sorts of users who do not need it.

Obviously congestion isn't the end-all of urban policy, but it's definitely part of the package (along with much, much more transit infrastructure development, land use and zoning adjustments, tax policy, etc.)

Posted by jack lecou | March 5, 2008 3:40 PM

Congestion charges don't really get to the root of the problem - unsustainable urban development and freight transport strategies. They're just a stopgap strategy to temporarily free up some space by brushing away people of marginal income.

This is simply wrong- especially when the funding source for mass transportation is considered.

In NYC, for example, congestion pricing is going to direct hundreds of millions of dollars to express buses in the outer boroughs. This gives people a choice they currently don't have: drive into Manhattan for 8 dollars (plus parking and the cost of owning and operating a vehicle) or take an express bus into the city.

[If being able to drive into congested cities was really the liberal value that some here believe- why aren't they advocating for the public distribution of automobiles, gasoline, and insurance?] The fact is that the poorest in our society don't have cars- until we put a fair price on limited resources the market will not address alternate means of affordably moving citizens around the city.

Posted by Preston | March 5, 2008 3:50 PM

The "induced travel" hypothesis -- that new roads just create more travel and hence do not reduce congestion -- is quite controversial and the evidence is unclear:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D07E4DD133CF93BA15752C0A9669C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

It's way premature to conclude that building roads doesn't reduce congestion. Skimping on road-building is just another way the U.S. sells infrastructure short.

Congestion pricing does seem to be able to reduce congestion somewhat, but it is regressive and people are correct to question its fairness. The poorer you are, the less control you probably have over when you commute. If it is done, funds ought to be used to cut another regressive tax.

Posted by mq | March 5, 2008 3:53 PM

"Porkalicious" is my word of the year.

Posted by Steve | March 5, 2008 4:08 PM

A lot of the viability of congestion pricing hinges on the question of what to do with the money that's collected. The two most reasonable suggestions I've seen are to send it directly back to lower-income drivers as a subsidy and/or using it to support buses or mass transit. Either one of those would be fine by me and could very well nullify the equity arguments against congestion pricing.

It's important, though, for alternative transportation possibilities to exist. But they do exist in a lot more places than you think. I live in L.A. and take the bus into work most mornings.

Posted by Adam Villani | March 5, 2008 4:27 PM

So long as you don't count the 70 cents per gallon gas tax, driver's license fees, property taxes, income taxes devoted to police and emergency maintenance and repairs then, yes, I suppose road use is free.

No to mention the $6 it costs to cros the George Washington and Tappan Zee. This stops no one.

Sanibel Island in Florida built a bridge to get to the Island and charged $10 per car over 20 years ago.

The lines were 5 miles long to get on the island.

Posted by jim | March 5, 2008 4:56 PM

My problem with Matt's argument is that he's advocating two contradictory values here. He wants dense urban areas, but then he wants to increase the costs of accessing those areas.

If you create, by design, a few concentrated areas of commerce and business then you are creating the magnets for traffic that cause the congestion. That's what the red zones on his map represent - the convergence of people and goods to the central exchange point. If you want to urge urbanization then you have to create an efficient means of accessing those urban areas. Toll roads and fees for access inhibit that process.

If you consider dense urban areas a positive good for the nation, then you've lost your argument that individual commuters should pay a "fee for service". In fact, the more you desire urbanization, the more you should support subsidized roads or free and extensive public transit.

What you should be considering is what combination of transit options does the best job of moving people, goods and services with the minimum environmental and economic impact.

Posted by Jinchi | March 5, 2008 5:13 PM

Has any of you geniuses taken a look at how poorly this idea is screwing up London? They have been trying to do this for five years. Thanks to mayoral powers given to Ken Livingstone, he single-handedly put this into effect back in 2003.

No, it doesn't reduce traffic.
No, it doesn't reduce pollution.
No, it doesn't stay focused within a single central area.
No, the money raised doesn't cover the cost of operating it - let alone funds infrastructure.

Before you geniuses blindly embrace Mayor Mike's three-year trial, perhaps you should take a look at the fact first, OK?

Posted by VanillaMan | March 5, 2008 5:40 PM

Jinchi-

Cities are in some ways based on high transportation costs. The more important and expensive it is to get people and stuff from point A to point B, the more it makes sense to try to arrange things so that those points are real close together.

I don't think Matt's pro-density per se. I think the point is that it has been federal and state policy for many, many years to massively subsidize a highway system that makes it unnaturally cheap to get from point A to far-flung point B, never mind externalities from pollution, congestion, noise, and damage to the landscape. These are massive distortions of the market, causing a massive deadweight loss.

What we think the world might look like absent those distortions does tend to resemble the dense, walkable and transport-friendly cities some of us like to live in, but that's mostly happy coincidence.

Posted by jack lecou | March 5, 2008 6:01 PM

Highways don't represent the "tragedy of the commons" unless we have insufficient supply of highway to meet demand. In other words, building more highways than we need doesn't make people use them more than they need to, whereas building less highways than people need will, indeed, make people use highways less than they need to, at a cost not only to themselves, but to everyone. If I don't go out shopping as much as I'd like to, due to bad traffic (which was often the case when I lived in Marin County) then not only do I suffer, but so does the whole economy, since I won't be buying as much. Likewise, if bad traffic makes me less inclined, or able to go to work, I become less productive, and that hurts not only me, but the whole economy.

So in essence, traffic problems are not made better for charging people to use overcrowded highways. this would only make people less inclined to go out and shop and work than they already are. The economy would suffer overall, even if tax revenues would increase. But a tax system on congestion will never work to relieve congestion, because it requires the perpetuation of congestion to perpetuate the tax system. SO there is a completely negative incentive for such revenues to be used to build more highways that would fully satisify the needs of the public, because doing so would end congestion, and the need to tax congestion. If you want to create a perfectly self-perpetuating bureaucracy that will never solve the problem it is charged with solving, this seems ideal. But if you want to create a thriving econonomy and culture, it's guaranteed to fail miserably.

Posted by conradg | March 5, 2008 8:17 PM

Actually, the rich are already buying themselves out of this. They're moving into the dense central cities and kicking the poor and middle class out into the suburbs.

Posted by Kaleberg | March 5, 2008 8:17 PM

We need to look at this proposition realistically and dispassionately. The opportunity cost of slowing down the best and the brightest-- who are usually the wealthier folks -- from getting to their work or whatever other creative endeavor they are heading for -- is much more important than what the masses are up to. If they have to pay to play, that's the cost of not being in the creative-capitalist groups to which they owe the jobs they are trying to get to in their car. Better to further enable the well-to-do so they can create the job and other opportunities for the rest of the population.

Posted by curious sampler | March 5, 2008 8:20 PM

BTW, I should mention that I have since moved from Marin to a more rural, less congested area. The roads here are almost never filled to capacity, and guess what, people don't use the highways more than they need to. So there's no Malthusian principle of the commons here, when there's plenty of commons for everyone. This is because transportation is very different than a commodity like land. The tragedy of the commons was based on using public land for grazing. Since sheep can multiply infinitely, and anyone can profit from using free land to feed them, the land is abused. But there's a limit to our transportation needs. It doesn't profit us to travel all day and all night, using up the highways as much as we possible can. In fact, that hurts us. So there transportation and congestion problems are NOT an example of the "tragedy of the commons", and solutions that take that approach are misguided and guaranteed to fail.

Posted by Conradg | March 5, 2008 8:24 PM

Why is it always east-coasters who float this idea?

Oh, that's right... because they don't live in the less-populated, geographically dispersed west, where ideas like this get laughed out of the room.

Congestion pricing? No, dude...we need flying cars. Flying cars are the only solution.

Posted by Joe From Colorado | March 5, 2008 10:05 PM

Tyro,

I think I accidentally posted my response in the wrong column, so I'll rephrase:

As others have hinted, congestion is good for cities. If Matt is really in favor of urbanism, then he is in favor of density and the congestion it naturally causes. Healthy cities have a lot of congestion due to their density. Unhealthy cities have very little congestion. Have you ever tried to drive around Detroit? The streets are empty, it is a breeze. And getting into Detroit from the suburbs is a breeze too. Just hop on the expressway and it dumps you off right downtown, right by your office parking garage. Contrast that with Chicago. Sure you can drive downtown on the expressway. I wouldn't want to. The congestion is terrible. And that is why Chicago is a much healthier, vibrant city. It is dense, and the streets are naturally enough clogged with people. That is a good thing. It means people have an incentive to live downtown. If congestion were reduced by some means (pricing probably won't reduce congestion in strong cities like Chicago or New York anyways) then people will naturally leave the city for the burbs, and the core city will die.

But people have not realized this yet, because cars are "rights". Tolls don't reduce congestion, just look at Chicago, which has all sorts of tolls. People passing through have no choice but to pay them, but if you live close enough to the city, say in Oak Park or Shaumburg, there are no tolls or very little, so it does not discourage use or sprawl.

Posted by freddiemac | March 5, 2008 10:11 PM

I'm so stealing "porkalicious"

Posted by Josh | March 5, 2008 10:17 PM

Conradg,

Actually, your example illustrates the very principle of the tragedy of the commons in terms of congestion. Right now there is plenty of roads for everyone. But what if 30,000 people moved to where you live? They would all use the roads and highways, which are free, and I'm willing to bet that your roads can't handle an extra 30k cars. Especially when they're all trying to get to work at 7:30.

There is no limit to transportation needs. If road transit were really unlimited, then every New Yorker would drive a car. But New York does not have the capacity to handle 8 million cars. See?

Posted by freddiemac | March 5, 2008 10:17 PM

Before you geniuses blindly embrace Mayor Mike's three-year trial, perhaps you should take a look at the fact first, OK?

VanillaMan- was this intended to be parody? Because all of the points you made are simply not true- bus service has skyrocketed and improved without single-passenger cars clogging the streets.

Successful cities cannot rely on transportation modes as inefficient as private automobiles. Congestion pricing provides a funding mechanism to increase the capacity of clogged streets.

Posted by Preston | March 5, 2008 10:47 PM

I am a Detroiter who goes to graduate school at Marquette University. freddiemac's comments on the Detroit/Chicago difference are dead-on. What irks me are the toll charges I have to pay to take I-94 from the Wisconsin border to the Edens (and get reamed on the Skyway, but that's a choice). I'm taxed for the "privilege" of driving through Illinois - at a stop-and-go crawl, for good chunks of it - when the only reason I do it is there's a bloody lake between Milwaukee and Muskegon.

This strikes me as the sort of "taxation without representation" that our Founders took up arms against. But not us - we're too busy watching Judge Judy and eating fried foods.

Posted by Jason | March 5, 2008 10:58 PM

Jason,

I was born and raised in Milwaukee till age 29, a New Yorker for two decades following.

You upper Midwesterners are spoiled. You have no idea about "taxation without representation," how bad it can get. That's nothing. Get urban, get crowded, draw daily activity from different localities, someone's got to pay for all the stuff they use before they go home at night besides the people that live there. If we're going to keep local governments and not give all the power to the Feds, that's the problem you're stuck with. Is it "fair" for Amazon to have to collect Wisconsin sales tax when it sends a book to you? Since you may still be a citizen of Michigan, wouldn't you rather Amazon give it to them?

If you want to go straight across the lake, you could always tax the localities and build the bridge to trump all bridges, ya know, instead of using Illinois' roads. It might even be a tourist attraction. :-) And Michigan and Wisconsin could start arguing over who gets the commuters' state income taxes.

Posted by artappraiser | March 5, 2008 11:09 PM

Veering off-topic but I thought so interesting and amusing when I read it that I still remember the story--

Gov. Corzine had been going around NJ in Feb. like Willie Loman with Powerpoint presentation to the masses, trying to sell 800% higher tolls over 15 years to pay down the debt. He did get a few rotten tomatoes thrown at him:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/nyregion/12tolls.html

Posted by artappraiser | March 5, 2008 11:21 PM

"Latent demand" has to be considered. It's what traffic engineers call all the trips that people WOULD take if only the traffic weren't so bad.

That's why building more roads makes traffic worse. Soon the new road is just as crowded as the old one, only now there are more cars involved.

It's all moot anyway. Anybody who seriously thinks our (in Jim Kunstler's phrase) Happy Motoring lifestyle will continue much longer is in serious denial.

Posted by Rob Lewis | March 5, 2008 11:30 PM

LOL. This is a great example of the shortsighted nature of Americans. None of the proposed 'solutions' is necessary in the first place.

We will soon be paying five or six bucks a gallon for gasoline. The only congestion problems will be all the cars parked in our driveways because we can't afford to go anywhere.

Enjoy.

Posted by Tim Fuller | March 6, 2008 8:31 AM

Sorry to flog a dead horse here, but I just thought that, as a digression, I should point out that much of the "congestion" that the map illustrates is rather tangential to the argument that Matthew makes regarding highway tolling. For example, the Chicago congestion that the map illustrates is actually freight rail congestion, not cars. Likewise the congestion from SoCal is from cargo shipping. So really, what this map serves to illustrate is the necessity for upgrading our national infrastructure in order to bring it into the 21st century. Freight rail lines need to be expanded.

Let's be forthright, a lot of our freight lines were torn up or abandoned. So there is a lot of expansion of freight lines that wouldn't cost very much, as the rights of way still exist. This would ease the congestion around L.A. and Chicago that are costing us billions that the map points out.

Posted by freddiemac | March 6, 2008 9:13 AM

freddiemac, congestion is a natural result of a vibrant city, but it also imposes a cost, and that cost can be extracted from people who are coming into the city in the most inefficient means possible (driving) in order to fund alternatives.

I can see how congestion pricing in Houston is a non-starter (what would be the point?), but I can imagine that DC would gain some revenue and traffic-planning benefits by charging tolls on all its incoming bridges during morning rush hour: DC barely has the infrastructure to handle the rush of incoming traffic now, so why not charge people for the privilege, incentivizing them to take the metro or drive in some other time? Meanwhile, the money funds the infrastructure.

Soon the is just as crowded as the old one, only now there are more cars involved

This is the "iron law" of traffic congestion-- traffic congestion will increase to the level that everyone can only just barely tolerate.

Posted by Tyro | March 6, 2008 10:26 AM

Another example of Liberal Fascism! The Nazis also used trains to transport Jewish prisoners to concentration camps.

Posted by c-bo | March 6, 2008 12:42 PM

ADM - in chicago, the tollway system is self-supporting. But, not all roads are tolled, and they don't charge a high enough toll.

When a mass transit ride costs $2 each way, and is subsidized by taxation, then it would make sense to charge a like amount for a toll, and that may reduce some of the congestion. Charging a higher rate, high enough to make overall revenues fall, would shift people off of the roads and reduce congestion significantly. Opening up the roads for people willing to pay a high toll charge.

In places like southern california, set the toll nice and high, then issue tax exempt bonds for billions of dollars, and build an extensive mass transit system, using the toll charges to pay for debt retirement. Then, the lower income working class will have a legitimate cheaper alternative. You can start by buying a huge fleet of buses that criss-cross the freeways, along with shuttle buses to park and ride stops in suburban areas, and shuttle buses to employment centers in office parks, retail centers, and industrial areas. With the money from the bonds, you build an extensive network of ground light rail, subways, and heavy rail. Furthermore, you can build the infrastructure necessary to support high speed regional rail links. High speed rail from San Diego LA to San Francisco to Portland to Seattle and other points. Reduce the need for inefficient short distance air travel.

Jason from Milwaukee/Detroit - you choose to take that path. Last time I checked, there are ferry's that go across the lake. You could also avoid paying the tolls by driving out to Madison, shooting down I-39, and then taking I-80.

Like you said, you choose to pay those prices.

Or you could take the Amtrak from Milwaukee to Chicago, and then catch another train from Chicago to Detroit. You choose that. You don't live in Illinois, so you don't get to vote here. You choose to pass through Illinois. When I go to Wisconsin, I pay Wisconsin taxes. It's my choice. I could choose not to go to Wisconsin.

In general, we need to increase our national reliance upon the train.

A crowded train is nowhere near as bad a time waster as a crowded superhighway.

It will have the further benefits of increasing density (sprawl follows highways, density follows mass transit links), and reducing the consumption of land for housing, land which could be used to provide green space and farm land. How many housing developments have been lost in the past 10 years due to wildfires in Southern Cal?

Posted by jerry 101 | March 6, 2008 2:12 PM

Good points by all - I'm used to relatively open roads in Michigan, and it's quite clear that open roads are a rare privilege in the Northeast Corridor and the greater Los Angeles area. What we really need to relieve congestion are trains: both the freight rail overhaul that Matthew cites and a dedicated point-to-point, high-speed, French-style train system.

Posted by Jason | March 6, 2008 2:47 PM