Congestion Pricing

A pilot project to bring high occupancy/toll lanes to State Route 167 in metro Seattle has grossly deviated from projections, raising questions about the value of added road capacity.

There’s so much to unpack in the landmark report released by U.S. PIRG and the Frontier Group earlier this week on transportation trends. Tuesday, we focused on the disparity between government transportation forecasts and recent realities. We also took a look at a few reasons to believe that the millennial generation – those aged 13 to 30 right now -- will continue to drive less than previous generations. One of those reasons is that technology has reduced our need to drive in many different ways.

Two of the nation's leading lefty commentators weighed in on transportation incentives last Friday, when both economist Paul Krugman at the New York Times and Matt Yglesias at Slate went on a congestion pricing kick.

In response to yesterday's story on the Texas Transportation Institute's congestion rankings, which take traffic delays out of context and risk being used to justify road expansions, former New Jersey DOT leader Gary Toth raised this question: What if, instead of getting frustrated with the report, we reframe its interpretation?

Could a congestion pricing program work in the DC region? Maybe. But first, officials would need to get the public on board -- no easy task. A report on the conclusions from five public forums, held in the region between October 2011 and January 2012, suggest that more and better transportation options need to be in place before a congestion charge is levied, so that commuters feel they have options.

Top transportation officials from three global cities -- London, Singapore and Stockholm -- shared their experiences in expanding the use of transit at a panel at the Regional Plan Association's annual conference last Friday. Eyeing those cities, it's easy for Americans to get jealous.

In 1951, Milton Friedman coauthored a paper on road pricing. It would be a mere footnote in both Friedman's career and in the intellectual history of road pricing, if not for one sci-fi flourish: The authors propose painting radioactive material alongside expressways, so that road operators can charge drivers using car-mounted geiger counters. Obviously, this suggestion was never heeded, but it says something about the economics profession’s hunger for pricing roads that a future Nobel laureate would set his imagination to Bradbury mode to advance the cause. Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, later credited Friedman with inspiring London’s pathbreaking congestion charge.