London's traffic congestion tax coming to a city near you...

[Kuciwalker]

Secret prisons are supposed to help conserve America's resources?

[DanS]

With energy prices about to go through the roof

If you knew what energy prices were going to do, you wouldn't be posting on Poly.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Agathon
If DanS is against it, then chances are it's a good idea.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Jeez, all this anti-DanS kneejerk posting. I don't recall that he said he'd be against congestion tax, but he's against exactly how London is doing it at the moment. I do agree that the collected tax should be used for alternative energy sources.

[q=Oerdin]The majority should go to mass transit since the people who are forced out of their cars need a viable means to still get where they are going.[/q]

If you hadn't realized, NY has a pretty damned good mass transit system .

[Adam Smith]

Dan:

I don't think this is a terribly unreasonable idea. I would make the case as follows.

The costs of congestion are very time- and site-specific, which makes any blanket solution (such as high gas taxes) rather arbitrary. But at the same time congestion costs are unquestionably very high. So just about any time- or site-specific solution you can come up with (even if it is just charging everybody entering central London or NYC $7 per day) is very likely to improve matters. This is essentially an argument of second best.

The tax has two impacts beyond reducing highway travel. First, by raising the price of a substitute mode (highway), you increase the demand for mass transit. Second, since you probably won't get the tax exactly right, (i.e., some externality still remains) using the procedes to fund mass transit is likely to further imporve matters.

Improved technology has allowed more jurisdictions to try congestion pricing plans. If NYC simply charged people for crossing the East River bridges and tunnels into Manhattan during daytime, that alone would probably improve matters greatly. (Though the article said that would be politically infeasible. Anybody know why?)

When congestion pricing plans fail it is usually for one of three reasons:
1. Inability to account for unpriced alternative routes.
2. Technology is too complex / buggy.
3. Political objections, which can be difficult to predict. For example, Hong Kong's system worked pretty well because there were only two tunnels leading into Victoria. But it failed, in part, because wayward spouses did not want records of their movements.

Originally posted by realpolitic
There is a new idea called real cost pricing

The idea has been around since A. C. Pigou and Frank Knight in the 1920's. Please do try to keep up.

[Odin]

Originally posted by Adam Smith
Hong Kong's system worked pretty well because there were only two tunnels leading into Victoria. But it failed, in part, because wayward spouses did not want records of their movements.

[Ted Striker]

Originally posted by Agathon
If DanS is against it, then chances are it's a good idea.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

If you hadn't realized, NY has a pretty damned good mass transit system .

In case you hadn't noticed I agreed with Dan except that more of the money needed to go to mass transit. Also we're talking about spreading this to other American cities and not just NYC.

[Dauphin]

If they implement this I hope that British embassy staff are immune to the charge.

[Provost Harrison]

We consider you to be backwards DanS - if you invested in proper public transport schemes then you would be able to stop traffic entering the centre of a city as there would be justification to be able to do it...

[Snotty]

The system of being able to pay for the charge anytime up to midnight of the same day seems a more sensible option than using a strictly prepay system. The one gripe about the congestion charge I heard today was that if you dont pay by midnight then the charge goes up to £50, and its easy to forget to pay in time. Easily solved if they extended the deadline another 24 hours and gave you a warning email

I dont really remember the traffic before in central London, but its still busy along some of the main roads through the zone.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Originally posted by Oerdin
In case you hadn't noticed I agreed with Dan except that more of the money needed to go to mass transite. Also we're talking about spreading this to other American cities and not just NYC.

The American cities have to want to do it. Those who don't have good mass transit and rely on car traffic (like Los Angeles or Atlanta) will NOT be thinking about doing such a program.

[Az]

Total mass transit first ( metro+lightrail+bus+good coverage of them all+high frequency), congestion tax later. Otherwise, it's bull.

[duke o' york]

Originally posted by DanS

I think a small portion of the tax should go to public transportation, but public transportation does not solve the underlying supply constraint inherent in personal transportation.

Would you care to outline this "underlying supply constraint" Dan?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui

The American cities have to want to do it. Those who don't have good mass transit and rely on car traffic (like Los Angeles or Atlanta) will NOT be thinking about doing such a program.

Give it time. LA's downtown traffic is already a nightmare yet they're talking about tripling or even quadrupling the population of downtown in the next decade. They're busy converting old factories and warehouses from the 20's through 50's into chic new urban lofts plus they're putting up highrise apartment complexes like no tomorrow. In California it has become all the rage to abandon the suburb and become a trendy urban dweller.

With the congestion this population increase brings can congestion charges be far behind?