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April 10, 2008 1:17 PM

"Congestion Pricing" on Roads--What It Isn't

Matt Rosenberg over at Cascadia, here, has a useful post on "congestion pricing" for roads and the systems in downtown London and Singapore, which are cordon pricing. Cordon pricing is where the authorities cordon off the downtown and charge a toll for anyone who crosses the boundary. Basically, it's a toll to go downtown, usually variable by time of day. The idea is partly to decongest the roads, but mainly is to get you to take the bus.

The idea proposed for the Seattle area is congestion pricing on the floating bridges (and maybe later on I-5). It is not cordoning off an area. It is tolling a road. For the people in Bellevue, the effect would not be much different than cordon pricing, but for the people in Shoreline, Lake Forest Park, Renton, Burien, etc., it would. And for the people of Seattle it would. Congestion pricing is about decongesting specific roads (and paying for them, though that is no longer the main idea). Congestion pricing it is not as transparently a program of lifestyle management as is cordon pricing. It also would appear to be cheaper, because on a bridge you need only one toll station, probably only in one direction, whereas on a cordon plan, you have to build a kind of Berlin Wall around a whole district and have various Checkpoint Charlies. People here are not ready for that, and I can't guess when they ever will be.

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Posted by Publicbulldog

3:57 PM, Apr 12, 2008

Congestion pricing is a cop out social engineering scheme that is good for Lovie and Thurston,and bad for Sanford and Son. We wouldn't need it if we developed high speed transit instead of development opriented transit.By switching to High speed rail for commuters,and industrial cannabis for fuel with little Carbon and no sulfur we will exceed our climate change goals.
Without High speed rail(levx),or Cannabis fuel ,we will all have to move into high rise housing and live like lemmings.