Congestion Pricing: Still Good For Basically Everyone
Urbanists often find themselves falling into a pattern of thinking
that boils down to the dictum that what’s good for drivers must be bad
for walkability, and sustainability, and all the things that they prize
about well-designed cities. Drivers seem to believe this too, which is
interesting because it often isn’t true.
What’s good for the driver in the middle is also good for public health. (Photo: FHWA)Take performance parking.
Both urbanists (and drivers) seem to believe that it’s good (or bad),
because it makes parking more expensive, which is bad (or good) for
drivers. But this assumes that a free parking system, where open spots
are almost never available, is desirable for drivers.
That’s
like saying that a store that gives away bread for free — and which
subsequently never has any bread — is good for people who like eating
bread.
For the most part, thinking about congestion pricing
follows this same rule. Urbanists tend to like it because it makes
driving more costly and raises revenue for transit infrastructure.
Drivers tend to oppose it, because they don’t want to pay more to
drive. In fact, congestion pricing would be good for people who really
want to drive and good for people who’d like to have an alternative to driving.
This
message has been slow to sink in, but the fact that drivers may benefit
from congestion pricing may be beginning to resonate with urbanists.
Unfortunately — and so powerful is the
what’s-bad-for-drivers-is-good-for-cities mentality — the absorption
of this message has caused some urbanists to conclude that they’ve been
wrong all along, and that congestion pricing really is bad. If drivers might benefit, it must be the case that cities, and the earth, will not.
So writes the New Yorker‘s David Owen, in an extremely misguided piece in the Wall Street Journal.
By requiring car drivers to pay a fee to drive in a city
at peak hours, congestion pricing reduces traffic and raises money that
can be used to support public transit—both worthy goals.Yet congestion pricing has dubious environmental value. Traffic
jams, if they’re managed well, can actually be good for the
environment. They maintain a level of frustration that turns drivers
into subway riders or pedestrians.






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