Road Pricing Is Best When Revenues Go To More Roads
Independent Institute research fellow Gabriel Roth advocates for road pricing to relieve traffic congestion but laments when the revenues are not directed to new road capacity but instead applied to public transit.
"Our road systems are like relics of the former Soviet Union: socialist enterprises run by well-intentioned planners with no regard to the pricing and investment criteria that allocate other goods and services. Moscow citizens got relief from food lines by abolishing socialism and embracing capitalism. The market economy could similarly liberate road users from excessive congestion.
If pricing is applied to the scarce resource "road space," and the revenues are allowed to stimulate investment in new capacity - such as additional lanes or new technologies to speed traffic past bottlenecks - congestion could be reduced.
Unfortunately, some government officials and environmental activists embrace road pricing only to the extent that it will restrain the demand for road use, not to increase road capacity. They want government to spend road revenues for other purposes, particularly public transportation.
London's Mayor Ken Livingstone, for example, introduced "congestion pricing" in London in 2003, but surplus revenues are being spent on mass transit. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg advocates a similar scheme for his city.
How much worse does traffic have to get and how many more bridges have to fail before we abandon our Soviet-style approach to highway transportation and allow road users to get the roads they're willing to pay for? When will we apply to roads the pricing and investment principles on which we rely for electricity, telecommunications, and other necessities?"
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Yes, exactly
The author was advocating for the privatization of all roads, or at least the entire freeway system (he was not specific about the degree of charging for road use). Then using the revenue from those "tolls" to put money directly into maintenance, more road capacity, and traffic flow technology as opposed to using it to fund a financial black hole like Medicare or the military.
The survey that lewyn referenced was asking about a small scale toll road like a stretch of interstate highway or a portion of a freeway loop like the ones that exist now. The "toll" road the author is thinking of is charging for the use of an entire transportation system. Therefore answer B is closer to what the author is talking about.
The obvious solution?
One of the introductory paragraphs in the author's article states:
"..too many people wanting to drive cars on the same roads at the same times of day will always cause problems."
Although this is a 'three part' part problem, the author's solution only focuses on the 'same roads' part, by building more roads. The other two parts he dismisses, calling the solutions of demand managment, such as funding public transportation misguided.
Im all for user-pay models that support the maintenance and upgrading of local infrastructure. However, using this money to add more roads to an expensive list of assets to maintain is not the answer. More roads do not mean less congestion. They just mean more maintenance costs.
privatize and deconstruct.
I think privatization of the roadways would be wonderful. Just remember what private industry was able to do with the streetcar system in this country. I envision a privatization plan that works like this:
First all of the transit riders in the country will form a mega-corporation, we'll call it General Transit (kind of like general motors...). We will bid on privatized road projects and promise wonderful public benefits. We will then roll out new technology which requires drivers to fill out reams of paperwork and purchase proprietary toll payment technology to use the roads. We will be forced to ban eating, drinking, talking on the phone and other distracting behaviors while driving because of our insurance liability. We will also turn to photo enforcement of speed limits - again due to liability insurance. All bridges will have giant yellow warning signs: "Roadway may collapse at any time, drive at your own risk" As the number of drivers declines we will put out press releases about what a wonderful job we are doing reducing congestion, but we will have to raise tolls to keep up the minimal maintenance on the roads (of course we will still make a profit from our other business sectors - chiefly from all the new transit riders). As the number of drivers further declines we will have to begin taking out road capacity, and since this is expensive, we will again raise tolls. As capacity declines and critical links fall out of the system, driving will become less and less convenient. By 2050 we will have fixed the roads so well that all of the people riding our transit systems will wonder how anyone ever could have sat in traffic and drove to the grocery store.
Relics of Bygone Economic Systems
Today's roads are like relics of the discredited Soviet economy, where artificially low prices created lines at the stores.
Fifty years from now, people will look back at the free-market approach of this article as a relic of another discredited idea, and a much more destructive one - the idea that we can let the market provide whatever consumers are willing to pay for, regardless of the effect on the environment.
Charles Siegel
what's the point?
this argument seems to miss the point of transportation. the goal isn't to just move more cars. it's to move people. (and an even higher goal would be to not even *need* to move the people in the first place.) it makes perfect sense to reinvest the revenue from transportation pricing back into transportation. choosing transit is simply wise investment.
Most people prefer a more "Soviet-style" approach
A recent survey asked people whether they would favor toll roads if
(a) the revenue was devoted to maintaining those roads
(b) the revenue was devoted to maintaining ALL roads
(c) the revenue was devoted to public transit
Only 47% favored the most free-market option (devoting the revenues to the toll roads only). By contrast, over 70% favored the other two options.
http://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/narsgareport2007/narsga2007fullpoll.pd...
Unless I am Mistaken
The author, Mr. Roth, was actually most closely advocating option B:
(b) the revenue was devoted to maintaining ALL roads
Mr. Roth's main point is that he supports the idea of charging for road use in general, but instead of putting the money toward public transportation or taking the money completely out of the transportation budget like some governments are planning, he wants the money to go toward maintenance on all roads and to add capacity where roads are most congested.
steve, from what i
steve,
from what i understand from your comments, you think that the author's argument talks about investing that money into transportation. I think what the author is saying is that the money shouldn't be invested in transportation, but into roads. Transportation would be investing it into roads, transit, bike paths, sidewalks, and any other people conveyance infrastructure. The author acts like he understands economics, but seems to be forgetting one of the basics: substitute goods. Transit can substitute for roads and still satisfy the consumer...either the author's love of roads or too much breathing in of car exhaust has blocked his understanding of his whole argument about free-economy.
I Agree with you though Steve: any moneys gained by road pricing should stay in the market good of transportation provision and not go to Medicare or whatever else.
I didn't get that at all...
I think the author is advocating for more privatization than your read implies. I think he even mentions something about private industry will be better at allocating the revenues towards new more critical projects (ie. roads). So in other words the government needs to get out of the way of private industrial decisions about where to build the planned toll roads, and future (presumably toll) roads.