Only Pricing Congestion Can Stop Congestion

[Marcanadian]

http://www.dmg.utoronto.ca/pdf/tts/2006/regional_travel_summaries/TTS_report4_full.pdf

what about the trip matrix? say page 60?

That's more along the lines of what I was referring to, but again, it just summarizes the total trips made to the entire city of Toronto; it doesn't have a separate matrix for vehicles or the downtown area. I thought I had seen a figure somewhere that stated what percentage of downtown vehicles were from outside of Toronto, but I can't for the life of me find it.

 

[M II A II R II K]

An Animated Argument For Congestion Pricing


January 6, 2012

By Lewis Lehe

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/01/06/an-animated-argument-for-congestion-pricing/


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.

- Since the 1920′s, economists have nurtured an elaborate theory of road pricing rules, but until recently, it has never been very practical to price roads on a per-mile, time-variable basis. The time and money wasted collecting the money weren’t worth it. The digital revolution, however, has recently given us E-ZPass, online bill-pay, database computing, and even plate-reading cameras. Putting a price on roads that varies according to demand, or “congestion pricing,†is suddenly practical.

- Of course, it’s all right to consume other people’s time if your benefit from driving is sufficiently large. We just want to make sure your trip is “worth it,†and the way our society makes this determination in the division of other resources is by charging money.

- Obviously, the test of “willingness-to-pay†is unhelpful when the price tag is impoverishing — surgery, for example. But the rush-hour congestion price typically hovers in the movie ticket bandwidth of $5-12. American society comfortably asks drivers to purchase cars, insurance, and gasoline, so there’s no compelling social justice argument against a price for road use — especially at hours when the marginal car wastes hundreds of minutes and begets carcinogenic pollution via the start-stop of pistons in gridlock.

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[video=youtube;bere_rqCTkY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bere_rqCTkY[/video]




[video=youtube;jGTpGMR7SD0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGTpGMR7SD0[/video]




[video=youtube;NI1Q4EvAd7A]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI1Q4EvAd7A[/video]




[video=youtube;1KEdqDnVIZ4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KEdqDnVIZ4[/video]

 

[M II A II R II K]

Finding the cure for traffic


August 05, 2012

By Derrick Z. Jackson

Read More: http://articles.boston.com/2012-08-05/opinion/33033963_1_congestion-fee-stockholm-traffic


For the price of a large cup of coffee, Sweden’s capital turned the typical Monday rush-hour traffic snarl into the equivalent of a calm Saturday stream of cars. Six years after the city imposed a congestion fee on drivers coming into the urban core, the sense of sanity in Stockholm’s streets continues to awe local researchers, environmentalists, and politicians.

- Beginning as a seven-month experiment in 2006, Stockholm, a city of 820,000 people in a metropolitan area of 2 million, ringed the perimeter of the city center at 18 entry points with camera gantries. As cars cross into the so-called congestion zone, cameras take pictures of their license plates and automatically charge drivers a fee ranging from about $1.50 at non-peak hours to about $3 at peak.

- It was as if, for example, motorists were charged to cross in and out of downtown Boston from Cambridge or along Storrow Drive, or to approach the oft-choked Fenway, Longwood, and Boston University areas along Commonwealth Avenue, Beacon Street, the Jamaicaway, or Route 9. When the Stockholm scheme was first proposed, it sounded as improbable to many Swedes as it would to Bostonians now. “At first, we thought there was no better way to commit political suicide than to have a congestion fee,†said Gunnar Soderholm, Stockholm’s director of health and environment. “Now the fee is mainstream. There is no discussion.â€

- “Don’t mistake Sweden with the rest of northern Europe and their little cars,†said Magnus Nilsson, a senior campaigner for Transport & Environment, a group that lobbies the European Union for sustainable transportation policies. “We’re the land of Volvo and Saab.†But in 2002, the small, pro-environment Green Party gained critical leverage in Stockholm’s multi-party elections, and negotiated congestion pricing as the condition of joining a governing coalition. A trial was eventually set to begin on Jan. 3, 2006. To make public transportation more attractive as that date approached, Stockholm purchased nearly 200 new buses, created more park-and-ride spaces, and added kilometers of bicycling lanes.

- Even with the upgrades, public opposition to the fees initially ran as high as 75 percent. On Jan. 2, the day before the trial, the roads were packed. The next morning, rush hour came, and Swedes dropped a collective jaw. Traffic flowed smoothly, with large gaps between many cars. When the trial ended July 31, Stockholm had experienced a 22 percent reduction of traffic. But perhaps more importantly, peak travel times had been slashed. “Even many of the businesses that opposed the fees said they were getting deliveries on time for the first time in years,†Nilsson said.

- When the trial was over, the cars came back. Traffic volumes rose so close to their original levels that city residents, by a slim majority, voted to make the congestion charge permanent. The result made Stockholm the first city to approve such fees by election. The charges resumed in 2007, and today traffic is still 20 percent lower than it was. The percentage of trips to the city core by public transportation at peak hours rose to 78 percent.

- That dwarfs Boston’s 12.2 percent of metropolitan residents who use public transportation for work, according to the Census Bureau. Though Boston has the sixth-highest number of public transit commuters in the nation and a commuter rail system that stretches deep into the suburbs, the Green City Index by Siemens and the Economist ranks it only 17th in transportation quality among 27 major US and Canadian metro areas, in part because of a relatively low level of public transit availability per developed square mile. Boston’s transit system is on a path toward decline.

- Boston would not need to take as many cars off the road as Stockholm to see major relief. “I don’t think you’d need a 20- to 25-percent reduction,†said Tim Lomax, a senior research engineer at the institute. “If we cut 10 to 15 percent of the demand, I could be the king of Boston.†These numbers make Boston a prime candidate to be the first US city to try a congestion fee.

- But a proposal by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to charge drivers $8 to enter midtown Manhattan died under fierce opposition from outside Manhattan. San Francisco is studying congestion pricing, but implementation would not likely occur anytime before 2015. The idea of congestion pricing was floated in Boston in 2005 by former city councilor Paul Scapicchio.

- Richard Dimino, CEO of the business group A Better City, said Boston should consider holding a trial like Stockholm’s, but is concerned that the city does not have a public transportation schedule that “complements the current character of the economy and people working flex time, working late at night and on weekends, which also can reduce congestion.†Yet the transit system cannot get better without a source of money to improve it. London, which imposed a stiff $15.50 congestion fee, netted half a billion dollars in the last two years to improve mass transit. A congestion charge system in Boston could also help resolve a major inequity: Interstate 90 already has tolls, but Interstate 93 does not.

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[W. K. Lis]

Free work parking drives solo driver rate

From this link at SFGate:

When it comes to commuting, Californians are a lot like other Americans - they like to go it alone.

About 73 percent of Californians drove solo to their jobs, a 2009-'11 census survey found, slightly fewer than Americans as a whole. Californians were a bit more likely to carpool and to take public transit than the national average, but both figures were dwarfed by the number of lone drivers, the American Community Survey showed.

One explanation for persistently high rates of solo drivers, said Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at UCLA, is free parking.

"If you can park free at work, it's an invitation to drive to work alone. And almost everybody who does drive to work has this invitation," he said.
Cash instead

Shoup's research led to a 1992 state law that requires employers to offer workers cash in lieu of a parking space. The idea behind the cash-out program is that by allowing employees to cash out their subsidized parking spots and walk, ride a bike, take public transit or carpool to work instead, there would be fewer cars on the road and fewer emissions in the air.

A study Shoup conducted 15 years ago for the state Air Resources Board found that employers who offered cash-out programs saw solo driving to work drop by 17 percent, carpooling increase by 64 percent, walking and biking grow by 33 percent, and transit ridership jump by 50 percent.

The cash-out program, however, is not well known and not widely used, Shoup said.
Missed chance

"California has missed an opportunity to take advantage of this law," he said. "If you offer parking cash-out, it would really turn things upside down. Parking, which used to be free, now has an opportunity cost. They could get cash, so now you think, 'Well gee, maybe I should think about transit.' "

Women and minorities would be the biggest beneficiaries of cash-out programs, because they're less likely to drive alone and more likely to take public transit to work, Shoup said. The American Community Survey showed that about 55 percent of solo drivers to work in California were men and about 45 percent were women. About 44 percent of public transit riders were Latino.

One challenge for advocates of alternatives to driving, however, is the time it takes to get to work without a car.

Californians who refrain from driving to work alone typically have longer commutes. On average, solo drivers spent 25 1/2 minutes getting to work, the census survey showed. Carpoolers took just over half an hour to get to their jobs, and public transit riders commuted nearly 47 minutes to work.
Dubious honor

The longest commute times in the state belonged to residents of Contra Costa County, who spent an average of 32.2 minutes traveling to work. In the county, 7 in 10 drove alone, 11.8 percent carpooled and 8.8 percent took public transit.

Contra Costa, along with Riverside County, had the highest proportion of its residents traveling an hour or more to work: 17 percent.

San Francisco residents were the least likely in the state to commute by driving alone, with 37.5 percent who did. One in 5 reported having no vehicles available to them, a much higher rate than the statewide average of 3.6 percent.

San Franciscans were also the most likely to take public transit, with nearly one-third using buses, subways, trains or ferries to get to work.

For public transit riders in San Francisco, the average commute was 37.3 minutes - about 10 minutes longer than for carpoolers or solo drivers.

By contrast, in Los Angeles County, the 7.2 percent of residents who rode public transit to work commuted an average of nearly 48 minutes. Driving alone to work took Los Angeles residents an average of 27.4 minutes.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/...es-solo-driver-rate-4006497.php#ixzz2BUZBExIg

The Ontario government should put an end to free parking, not just for Toronto but all urban areas, to reduce congestion on the roads.

 

[GenerationW]

Who parks for free downtown?

 

[rbt]

Who parks for free downtown?

Most executives receive a spot. Most people who travel for sales would expense costs for their visits at head-office the same as they expense costs for travel (expensing stuff is their default).

All contractors will count it as a business expense and take the cost as an income tax credit. It's not free but can reduce the cost by 50%.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Most executives receive a spot. Most people who travel for sales would expense costs for their visits at head-office the same as they expense costs for travel (expensing stuff is their default).

All contractors will count it as a business expense and take the cost as an income tax credit. It's not free but can reduce the cost by 50%.

Also there is congestion not just in downtown, but also in the 905 (if not worse) and the outer 416. Most of the parking in the 905 is free, hence their congestion.

 

[gweed123]

Also there is congestion not just in downtown, but also in the 905 (if not worse) and the outer 416. Most of the parking in the 905 is free, hence their congestion.

The California program though sounds like a carrot, rather than a stick. By having the government put an end to free parking, you're very much talking about a stick.

Personally, I like the carrot approach more.

 

[Memph]

I don't think congestion is really the issue that needs to be addressed per se. The actual issues would

-eliminating/reducing the subsidy for driving by not charging drivers for the roads/parking they use
-reducing gas consumption, for environmental or energy independence reasons
-increasing mobility

If your goal is to increase mobility, congestion pricing isn't really a solution unless you're using the revenue to improve road or transit infrastructure. As bad as congestion might be, the fact that drivers put up with it means it's still better than the alternative (mainly transit). So forcing some drivers to use transit by making auto-infrastructure more expensive to use is not an improvement for them. That's why it's important to improve transit, or highways (but more realistically, transit).

As for induced demand, I often see people saying that increasing the capacity of infrastructure (with new highways, wider highways, or other improvements) won't reduce congestion... but that doesn't make sense. For example, lets say you have a road network where its users drive on average 30km, and congestion causes their commutes to be double in time, from 30 minutes without congestion to 60 minutes. Now if you increase capacity, people will drive further, but that doesn't mean congestion won't decrease. If people are willing to drive at most 60 minutes to work, and congestion is the same (doubling commute times, lets call this a congestion index of 2), that means commuting distances are the same, so if there's a capacity increase, it doesn't make sense that congestion won't go down. Rather, what you would see is maybe an increase in commuting distance to 40km, a slight decrease in commute times to say 58min, and a decrease in congestion from 2 to 1.45. This capacity increase has decreased congestion significantly, but commute times were almost unaffected in this theoretical scenario. Commute times should decrease, because I don't think anyone will decide to waste more time driving just because congestion is reduced, however, some people will take advantage of the decreased congestion to spend less time driving: I'm sure there are people who drive more than they'd like. Some might also switch from slower transit to the now more competive roads without changing how far they travel, which means their commute times will decrease too.

So, based on my logic, increasing capacity decreases congestion, increases how much people drive (aka mobility) and slightly decreases commute times... but it's probably really expensive. Congestion doesn't matter, what matters is how far and how long people drive. Is being able to drive further such a good thing? Yes, it means that you might have more jobs within a certain commuting distance, but you'll also have more people competing for jobs in your area, so overall, it's a relatively small benefit. Also, the amount of jobs within a commuting distance might not even increase that much since the decrease in congestion will likely encourage residents and businesses to be more sprawled out. On the upside, most people consider more space/lower land costs a good thing.

So in summary, I think increasing capacity will have benefits, but they will be relatively small, and it's very costly and has negative consequences on the environment and energy consumption.

You could argue congestion pricing make sense, because it forces people who aren't willing to pay for their road use to stop using it and take transit for instance, and it can also be used to pay for transit, so that those who switch to transit (and those who already have done so/pre-existing transit users) don't have to suffer from too low mobility.

 

[Rainforest]

As for induced demand, I often see people saying that increasing the capacity of infrastructure (with new highways, wider highways, or other improvements) won't reduce congestion... but that doesn't make sense. For example, lets say you have a road network where its users drive on average 30km, and congestion causes their commutes to be double in time, from 30 minutes without congestion to 60 minutes. Now if you increase capacity, people will drive further, but that doesn't mean congestion won't decrease. If people are willing to drive at most 60 minutes to work, and congestion is the same (doubling commute times, lets call this a congestion index of 2), that means commuting distances are the same, so if there's a capacity increase, it doesn't make sense that congestion won't go down. Rather, what you would see is maybe an increase in commuting distance to 40km, a slight decrease in commute times to say 58min, and a decrease in congestion from 2 to 1.45. This capacity increase has decreased congestion significantly, but commute times were almost unaffected in this theoretical scenario. Commute times should decrease, because I don't think anyone will decide to waste more time driving just because congestion is reduced, however, some people will take advantage of the decreased congestion to spend less time driving: I'm sure there are people who drive more than they'd like. Some might also switch from slower transit to the now more competive roads without changing how far they travel, which means their commute times will decrease too.

Your theory applies if the congestion is distributed evenly across all roads in a region.

But in reality, congestion is often caused by several bottlenecks along each popular route. In that case, the "induced demand" theory probably makes sense. Eliminating one of the bottlenecks slightly improves the flow, but that attracts enough new riders to worsen the other bottlenecks. Eliminating all bottlenecks is too expensive, or impossible for legal reasons (roads cannot be widened etc).

Example: Allen Road terminating at Eglinton. Building an underground extension of Allen up to Bathurst or Davenport is not prohibitively expensive, but is of little use as the bottleneck will merely move 1 or 2 km south. The area's local street greed cannot absorb the stream of cars that Allen Expressway emits.

An underground extension all the way to Gardiner could possibly improve the flow on Allen. But that would be astronomically expensive, and if we can get that amount of funding, we are better off investing it in the DRL subway.

 

[Rainforest]

Also there is congestion not just in downtown, but also in the 905 (if not worse) and the outer 416. Most of the parking in the 905 is free, hence their congestion.

According to my observations, congestion is worst in the "old" parts of the city, including most of the downtown streets. Roads in 905 and outer 416 have left-turn lanes, and many parking spots are off-street. The traffic tends to move OK between major intersections (although it takes a lot of time to get through intersections).

On the "old" streets, the right lane is often blocked by parked cars, at the same time the left lane is blocked by cars trying to make a left.

 

[M II A II R II K]

Confronted With Congestion Pricing, People Clamor for Transit, Gas Tax

Read More: http://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/01/2...on-pricing-people-clamor-for-transit-gas-tax/


The biggest barrier to acceptance is the simple fact that people don’t understand transportation. The participants in the study didn’t know that funding was a problem or a cause of many of the inadequacies of the system. They didn’t know how much the gas tax is, that it doesn’t rise with inflation, or that it hasn’t changed in 20 years. They don’t see themselves and their own driving as contributors to the problem of congestion. They blame construction and other drivers, anything but their own driving. They assume that congestion pricing can’t work because everyone on the road is there because they have to be.

- Even the most car-centric people — those who live far outside the urban core and drive alone to work — thought it was important to build more transit and facilities for biking and walking. In fact, these improvements were, to many, a prerequisite to any pricing change. It would be seen as a goodwill gesture from the government, to show that it’s not just making a “money grab.” If congestion pricing would bring about more travel choices, it would be worth it, respondents said. But those choices need to be in place before the cost of driving goes up, so that people can opt out from day one.

- What they feared most was the implementation of a complex, opaque system that would charge them for doing something they think they have no choice but to do. They want to maintain control over their own lives and transportation — something they clearly have already lost, if they think they have no option but to drive alone on congested roads at rush hour. If any congestion pricing plan is to be enacted, participants want to make sure there’s accountability and transparency on the government’s part, especially to show them what concrete benefits the changes would bring.

Participants were asked to consider three scenarios for congestion pricing:

Scenario 1: A Priced Lane Network — variably priced lanes on all freeways, as well as some other major roadways

Scenario 2: Pricing on All Roads and Streets — variable per-mile pricing using vehicle-based GPS systems

Scenario 3: Priced Zones – drivers pay a fee to enter or drive within a designated area

Brookings and the TPB made several suggestions as to how governments could build support for congestion pricing, based on their focus groups and other experiences of road pricing around the world.

Emphasize the benefits, not just the costs. And be specific.

Conduct pilots or trials so people can experience the system before a final decision is made.

Educate the public about the transportation funding shortfall and the need for creative solutions.

You don’t need to educate people about congestion. They experience it every day. Tap into that experience to get them to frame the problem themselves. “If the public defines the problem they take ownership of it and will be more willing to make hard choices about how to solve it… Do not presume you know how to frame the issue or proposal.”

Keep it simple. People are wary of complex schemes and are more likely to support simple solutions — like raising the gas tax.

Acknowledge people’s skepticism and rampant distrust of government. They’ve been paying for years into a transportation system everyone acknowledges is inadequate. They don’t know that they haven’t been paying enough — they blame public agencies for mismanaging the money.

Show the public that you have exhausted all other options.

Retain choice. Veterans of road pricing say citizens need the option to say no. “They need choices about how they get around, some of which are less expensive,” the report said. “The public will also push back against projects that appear designed to force behavior modifications.”

Recruit a champion. Politically, congestion pricing isn’t going to go anywhere without a popular political figure out front, leading the charge.

.....

 

[Hipster Duck]

The California program though sounds like a carrot, rather than a stick. By having the government put an end to free parking, you're very much talking about a stick.

Personally, I like the carrot approach more.

My experience is the opposite: it's the sticks that work. Carrots usually don't entice people other than those who would do so anyway.

Think about the plastic bag user fee versus the carrot method, where some stores would invite you to save 5 cents if you didn't use a plastic bag. The former worked, the latter generally didn't.
Another example is organ donation: we have an opt-in program and we have a critical shortage. Australia has an opt-out program and they don't.