Posted by:
Jeff Larson on
April 23, 2007 at
11:43AM EST
New York City's Mayor Bloomberg proposed a series of environmental remedies on Earth Day. One of them is an oft-discussed, oft scorned idea of congestion pricing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/nyregion/23mayorcnd.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
I'm not advocating this myself (partly because I have no backbone), but it's certainly an interesting discussion when it comes up.
But, of the sake of conversation, perhaps people here could be allowed to pay a premium to use the car-pool lanes on 93 or the Expressway.
Let's discuss.
(2) Comments
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Posted by: jfh on April 23, 2007 3:02PM EST
If the goal is to cut down on driving/pollution by raising the out-of-pocket costs to drivers, it seems like a hike in the gas tax would be a fairer solution. Of course the politics of this make it pretty infeasible.
If the goal is to reduce congestion in Manhattan, then this is a pretty interesting solution, especially since the money from this is earmarked towards better transit. While there's lots of room to debate the efficacy of transit investment in suburban and lightly urban areas, in a city with the density of New York, it's hard to make the case against forcing drivers to fund transit.
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Posted by: Aaron Read on April 25, 2007 11:37AM EST
I'd be all for implementing a surcharge on driving into Boston. But you can't just make driving unpalatable, you have to provide an alternative to driving that is made more palatable by comparison.
The obvious answer is the MBTA but I remember hearing that a large part of the reason why the T's service is so hideous is because they're routinely running at 120-150% of capacity. No wonder everything breaks and runs slowly.
So the only way for a driving surcharge to work is for the funds raised to be siphoned directly into the MBTA's budget. Along with a host of other reforms, of course.
But I suspect that alone wouldn't cut it. You'd need a broad-spectrum approach that helps reduce sheer distance between most peoples' homes and offices. Or encourages telecommuting. I don't think the funds raised from a commuting tax would realistically be enough to fund that big a proposal.
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