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The Curious Politics of Congestion Charging

I’ve often thought it interesting that congestion charging tends to appeal to aspects of both the right (e.g., free-market economists) and the left (e.g., public transportation advocates). You might say that the economists want better roads and less trafic, while the public transport people want more government directed toward their favored mode (and away heavily subsidized roads).

In any case, this left-right alliance was made strikingly clear in the recent response to U.K. transport secretary Geoff Hoon’s recent gloomy comments on the prospect of nation-wide road-user pricing, as the FT notes here.

Stephen Glaister, director of the pro-motoring RAC Foundation, said a system of direct charging for road use was vital to providing the revenue for expanding the road network.

Stephen Joseph, executive director of the pro-public transport Campaign for Better Transport, said a road-pricing system was inevitable if growing congestion on Britain’s roads was to be tackled and demand managed.

It’s hard to immediately think of another issue which unites these disparate groups, if for different end results.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Cities, Congestion, Traffic Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “The Curious Politics of Congestion Charging”

  1. Peter Smith Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    if self-proclaimed free-marketeers are not bashing road/auto/oil subsidies, then they are not free-marketeers at all — they’re only people trying to further concentrate wealth and power amongst the already-very wealthy.

  2. gibbo Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:45 pm

    The breakdown of this apparent alliance, at least in the US, often comes over three points — congestion charging, such as HOT lanes, is too often coupled with privatized roads, where the divide can reappear. And, for dynamic pricing schemes, do you price with the goal to maximize revenue, or to optimize traffic flow? (subtle difference, but speaks to intent) Finally, both the right (free marketeers vs. driving is a right) and the left (get cars off the road v. social equity) are hardly united on the issue.

  3. David Levinson Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    But, real free marketers also want private roads, and environmental advocates probably don’t, at least they want all of the profits from roads to be recycled into transit. So long as we don’t really have road pricing, I suspect this coalition can hold together, but once we get into implementation specifics (public v. private, area-based v. facility based, new roads v. old roads, regulated profit maximizing v. welfare maximizing, etc.), the groups must divide. Glaister is an academic economist with a distinguished record on the subject, I doubt AAA in the US would support road pricing of existing free roads.

  4. Tom Vanderbilt Says:
    June 5th, 2009 at 5:30 pm

    These are good points; it seems like an uneasy marriage of convenience that will ultimately not be able to sustain its own contradictions.

  5. Nick Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 2:49 am

    Ex Transport Secretary. Geoff Hoon resigned on Friday.

  6. mikey2gorgeous Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 6:24 am

    Of all ‘pro-motoring’ groups the RAC is probably one of the more level-headed.

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How We Drive is the companion blog to Tom Vanderbilt’s New York Times bestselling book, Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us), published by Alfred A. Knopf in the U.S. and Canada, Penguin in the U.K, and in languages other than English by a number of other fine publishers worldwide.

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