Rethinking the Politics of Freeway Congestion Pricing

摘要

A growing community of transport economists and urban planners has concluded that thebest solution to U.S. freeway congestion is to implement congestion pricing on all suchfreeways. At the same time, many political scientists and other political observersconsider doing so to be politically impossible, primarily due to strong opposition fromtaxpayers, voters, and highway user groups. Federal efforts dating back to the 1970s toinduce one or more urban areas to price its freeways have been unsuccessful, whichreinforces the political scientists' skepticism. This paper suggests that even if the politicaldifficulties could be overcome, the conventional model of freeway congestion pricing(charging all users the same variable price) may not be optimal, since it could well createmore losers than winners. In analyzing this conundrum, the author looks more closely attwo assumptions implicit in the standard congestion pricing model: uniformly applied(variable) pricing and all general-purpose lanes. Revisiting both assumptions leads to aproposal for multi-tier pricing on differentiated lanes, which the author suggests could bemore politically feasible and productive of larger economic benefits. This approach alsolends itself to being implemented in an evolutionary manner, in which each step isjustified on its own merits, without regard to the possible longer-term end state.