Atlantic Cities: Congestion Pricing's Enduring Public Perception Problem (http://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/02/congestion-pricings-enduring-public-perception-problem/4582/)
QuoteOver the past couple years the Capital Region Transportation Planning Board has hosted a series of public forums in metro Washington, D.C. (two in Virginia, two in Maryland, one in the District) to gauge local support for congestion strategies. A couple weeks ago, the board released its general conclusions [PDF (http://www.mwcog.org/uploads/committee-documents/ZV1cWFZb20130117170347.pdf)]. As you might expect, pretty much everyone in the Beltway area considers traffic a major problem. When it comes to potential solutions, however, they're far less unified or convinced.
QuoteAt each forum, attendees learned the extent of the region's congestion trouble and got a primer on three options for reducing it. The first idea was highway pricing: interstate toll lanes whose revenue would go toward better bus service in the corridor. The second was mileage pricing: a per-mile fee that could reduce traffic by charging more on the most congested roads. The third was standard congestion pricing: paying a fee to enter a high-traffic zone.
No one thought of actually building more roads?
Quote from: Mdcastle on February 22, 2013, 11:52:27 PM
No one thought of actually building more roads?
Where would you build them in the middle of Washington, DC? In the middle of The Mall?
A better solution might be to look at why people are driving to the middle of town and see if there can be alternatives offered:
1. Park & Ride Lots near Metro stations, maybe near hotels so tourists can use the Metro as well, as an example.
2. Better parking areas near, but not in the center of town with a way to get to/from the center efficiently.
One need not add a cost to driving to the middle, but provide better alternatives to driving to the middle in the first place. People will pay the charge (see London) if they have a need to go there in the first place.
Demand for transportation is relatively inelastic as far as pricing is concerned if there is not an easy parallel cheaper route. Charging people to enter the city center will have a little impact on traffic, but not enough to make a downtown area not still congested.
Places where congestion pricing might have more of an effect on traffic are places where there is a bypass that, due to congestion, tolling, or simply being longer, is not used as much as it could be - in such a case congestion pricing would help move through traffic out of the downtown area.
DC, however, does not fit this bill. Through traffic uses the beltway and is already disincentivized to go through downtown simply because there is no convenient way to do so.
Realistically, it is more of a money raising scheme than a means of combating traffic. Of course, if the money raised goes towards transportation upgrades, then it indirectly helps.
DC has bad traffic problems because it is a large city that has nowhere near finished its planned freeway system, and has a transit system which does not go anywhere near everywhere conveniently or at all and thus is not useful for a lot of trips. The district's chronic lack of funding due to having large swaths of federally owned land that do not pay property taxes only compounds the problem.
Quote from: Duke87 on February 24, 2013, 04:18:47 PM
DC has bad traffic problems because it is a large city that has nowhere near finished its planned freeway system, and has a transit system which does not go anywhere near everywhere conveniently or at all and thus is not useful for a lot of trips. The district's chronic lack of funding due to having large swaths of federally owned land that do not pay property taxes only compounds the problem.
However, D.C. is fortunate to have a rail transit system that is mostly funded by taxpayers from outside of D.C.