In the fifth chapter of "Moving Beyond the Automobile," we demystify the concept of congestion pricing in just five short minutes. Here you'll learn why putting a price on scarce road space makes economic sense and how it benefits many different modes of surface transportation.
In London, which successfully implemented congestion pricing in 2003, drivers now get to their jobs faster, transit users have improved service, cyclists have better infrastructure, and pedestrians have more public space. More people have access to the central city, and when they get there, the streets are safer and more enjoyable. While the politics of implementing congestion pricing are difficult, cities looking to tame traffic and compete in the 21st century can't afford to ignore a transportation solution that addresses so many problems at once.
Streetfilms would like to thank The Fund for the Environment & Urban Life for making this series possible.
<br>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>“Gridlock Sam” Schwartz:</i>
[00:13] Congestion pricing was invented here in New York City.
William Vickery in the 1950’s, an economics professor who later went
on to win the Nobel Prize for economics, came up with this concept that
one of the most precious resources in a city is space, and that space
needs to be priced, just like we price theatre tickets, we price the
airlines during the holiday season or hotel rooms, the same we should
price Fifth Avenue’s space. So congestion pricing is a way of
setting a price so that we can achieve a level of service. Stockholm
has congestion pricing. Guttenberg is about to do it in 2013.
Singapore has been doing it for over 35 years now. We go to London
and we see that they’ve introduced congestion pricing.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Lucinda Turner:</i>
[01:02] The main purpose of congestion charging is to reduce traffic
and congestion. So in cities like London, road space is a really
scarce resource and we’ve got lots of competing demands for that space,
we’ve got cars, freight, buses, taxis, pedestrians, cyclists.
We also want to use space for public squares, street cafés, things
like that. So congestion charging is a means of allocating that
limited space whereby motorists who want to drive on the roads within
the zone pay a charge. Everyday if they want to drive in the zone
they pay £8 and it applies Monday to Friday, 7am to 6pm. Since
the introduction of congestion charging we’ve seen traffic in the
zone reduce by about 20%. In practice, that means about 90,000
fewer vehicles in the zone everyday. In 2008/9 there was about
£150 million in net revenue the charging scheme raised. By law
we have to use that money to put back into the transport system.
And that was used for investment in buses, in cycling facilities, in
walking, in maintenance.</font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>“Gridlock Sam” Schwartz</i>:
[02:06] The people that are in their cars are moving faster, and the
people that are in the subways are getting some kind of revenue stream
that assists them in getting to their destinations faster. We’re
using less of the planet, lower carbon footprints, the air quality is
better. We’re all better off. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Tom Vanderbilt:</i>
[02:24] An economist would say you have a certain amount of a good,
how are you going to distribute that good? You can ration it by
price or by queue. If you sort of under price something, you’re
going to have a queue. When a store like Costco has these sort
of like Thanksgiving flat TV specials where there’s a flat TV for
$200, what happens? You have a line of people at the door in the
morning because it’s under priced TV’s. I think roads are
sort of the same way. We give away road space for essentially
nothing in this country. We have some of the lowest fuel taxes
in the world, they don’t pay for themselves. And it’s no surprise
that the result of that is our queues. We could choose to distribute
that space differently through pricing. You wouldn’t expect
to fly home at Christmas and pay the same for flying in the middle of
sort of September. When there’s peak demand in other areas of
life, you pay more. The roads we sort of just give it all away
and then we’re surprised. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Lucinda Turner:</i>
[03:15] Congestion charging helps to encourage people out of their cars
and onto other modes of transport such as public transport or cycling.
And our monitoring shows that about 70% of people are affected by the
charge have actually switched to other modes. When charging was
introduced, we saw an increase of about a third in the numbers of people
coming into Central London by bus during charging hours. About
half of this is directly attributable to congestion charging. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>Anne Korin:</i> [03:41]
At the end of the day it’s about the value of your time, your time
has a value. If it’s leisure time, if it’s work time, and
being able to pay to get home faster, pay to get to work faster, pay
to meet your friends faster, whatever it is that you’re going to do
we should have the ability to do that. So road pricing let’s
us do that. First of all we have an infrastructure problem in
this country. Secondly we have a deficit problem. Third,
oil prices are going up. So this is kind of a perfect storm of
concern. I think on the left and on the right there’s starting
to be a realisation that we need to find solutions that make sense to
fiscal conservatives, to environmentalists, to security folks, to people
that are looking at this from a transportation angle or an energy angle,
and it really can move us forward in terms of opening a more competitive
market among transportation modes. </font></p>
<p> <br></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"></font></p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman"><i>“Gridlock Sam” Schwartz:</i>
[04:28] Let’s face it, the supply and demand curve for gasoline has
always been related to the size of the middle class. Well folks,
we’re going to see a quintupling of the middle class with the Chinese
middle class coming online, the Russian and Eastern Bloc countries coming
online, that supply/demand curve means that that demand is growing.
Any world city that wants to compete in the 21<sup>st</sup> and is thinking
about the 22<sup>nd</sup> Century needs to think about congestion pricing. </font> <br>
</p>
<p><font size="3" face="Times New Roman">[music]</font></p>
Transcription Sponsored by: <a href="http://transcriptdivas.com.au">Transcript Divas Transcription Services</a>