Can LA Save Billions In Congestion Costs?

In recent years, air pollution and congestion have cost the average household in the Los Angeles Basin about $4,000 a year -- about $16 per workday. Since 1990 the average household in the South Coast Basin has lost four 40-hour workweeks a year to traffic delay. By 2010, if official models are right, smog costs could stay the same or decline, but congestion costs will rise to $2,850 a year per household, roughly $11 per workday. In 1997, after two years of deliberation and $1.5 million worth of study, Reduce Emissions and Congestion on Highways (REACH), a blue-ribbon California policy Task Force, unanimously recommended that full-scale emissions charges and congestion charges be studied and developed for the long run, and HOT (high-occupancy/toll) lane demonstration projects for the short run. Until the late 1990's emission, and especially congestion charges have not been popular with the general public, but, if the models and the Task Force's attitude surveys are right, adopting some combination of the two seems to be a "no-brainer" compared to all other alternatives, including doing nothing.

Thanks to Planning & Markets