Road Pricing Is Best When Revenues Go To More Roads

"Our road systems are like relics of the former Soviet Union: socialist enterprises run by well-intentioned planners with no regard to the pricing and investment criteria that allocate other goods and services. Moscow citizens got relief from food lines by abolishing socialism and embracing capitalism. The market economy could similarly liberate road users from excessive congestion.

If pricing is applied to the scarce resource "road space," and the revenues are allowed to stimulate investment in new capacity - such as additional lanes or new technologies to speed traffic past bottlenecks - congestion could be reduced.

Unfortunately, some government officials and environmental activists embrace road pricing only to the extent that it will restrain the demand for road use, not to increase road capacity. They want government to spend road revenues for other purposes, particularly public transportation.

London's Mayor Ken Livingstone, for example, introduced "congestion pricing" in London in 2003, but surplus revenues are being spent on mass transit. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg advocates a similar scheme for his city.

How much worse does traffic have to get and how many more bridges have to fail before we abandon our Soviet-style approach to highway transportation and allow road users to get the roads they're willing to pay for? When will we apply to roads the pricing and investment principles on which we rely for electricity, telecommunications, and other necessities?"

Thanks to ABAG-MTC Library