Komanoff on the C-Charge
Charles Komanoff reports from Gauangzhou:
With double-digit rises in car ownership and the city’s relentless expansion outpacing even the rapid provision of transit, the idea of charging a toll to drive into Guangzhou’s city center is gaining traction. The rationale is clear: drivers who pay only for their own lost time but not for the time their trips take from other drivers have little incentive to prioritize trips by car.
Singapore, London and Stockholm have been using congestion pricing for 35, 7 and 3 years, respectively, and the meeting featured detailed reports on how these cities overcame the political hurdles and improved traffic dramatically through tolling. Nevertheless, a congestion pricing plan proposed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg died in the state legislature in 2008. In my talk, I drew these lessons for Guangzhou from New York’s failure:
• To succeed politically, congestion pricing must produce dramatic increases in travel speeds — at least 15 percent — in the charging zone. (The Bloomberg plan promised only a 7 percent gain.)
• The toll must align benefits with costs. In New York, a hefty taxi surcharge — on the entire fare, not just the “drop” — would ensure that residents of Manhattan, who use taxis rather than private cars, paid their fare share.
• Transit improvements financed by the toll revenues must be instituted ahead of time, and fare reductions guaranteed.
The stance of the domestic transportation experts here has been one of cautious interest: appreciation of congestion pricing as a virtually fail-safe tool, tempered by awareness that politics leaves little room for error in designing the toll, choosing the tolling technology, and marketing the program.
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This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 1:33 pm and is filed under Cars, Cities, Commuting, Congestion. 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.
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March 24th, 2010 at 2:09 am
For a simple paper I wrote for a class at UIC on implementing cordon or time-based congestion charging, my conclusions included one of the same points as Charles Komanoff: Transit improvements must be provided BEFORE the toll comes into effect.
March 24th, 2010 at 1:22 pm
A congestion charge paid by taxi riders will be offset, perhaps completely, whenever the taxi spends less time than it otherwise would have stopped or traveling under 6mph, which adds 20 cents per minute to the fare.
Also, each taxi will be able to carry more fares each day.
Win - win. Hard to believe the Time is Money people who seem to dominate the city still can not get a congestion charge in effect.
March 24th, 2010 at 11:34 pm
don’t like the taxi surcharge idea. we should be rewarding good behavior — taxis and car sharing services are great, relatively speaking — more of it, and less of private car use, is what we want. one taxi serves how many trips in a typical day? 20? 30? more?