Articles

Congestion Pricing

Too many drivers and not enough roads -- traffic congestion is nature's way of telling us that we need a pricing system to allocate scarce highway capacity. VDOT is studying a plan to demonstrate that radical idea in Hampton Roads.

By Bob Burke

For long-suffering commuters in Hampton Roads, the answer to their woes might be just 15 to 20 minutes ahead of them. Or behind them. The problem with the region’s congested highways and river crossings isn't that the roads aren't wide enough. It’s that too many people are trying to drive on them at the same time.

That’s the theory, at least, behind “congestion pricing,” a concept that the Virginia Department of Transportation will explore in the coming months in a new study in Hampton Roads. The idea is that if you charge drivers even a modest toll for traveling during the crowded morning and evening rush hours, they’ll move their travel time a few minutes forward or back to beat the toll. Or, they’ll carpool, or ride the bus, or telecommute – all options that don’t currently don’t make much of a dent in traffic.

The drivers who change the timing of their commute will be using highway capacity that is paid but, for now at least, is underused. In a state that so far has decided not to spend a lot of money adding new highways, that’s a very appealing idea.

“It may force people to flex time” with their employers, says Dennis Heuer, VDOT district administrator in Hampton Roads. “It may force people that could work at home to work at home. People that are going to run errands in the morning may… run them in the afternoon because they don’t have to pay a toll.”

It’s not so appealing, though, if you’re among those workers who really can’t change their travel time – say, the thousands of military in the Hampton Roads region, or retail employees. Or if you are among those who can’t carpool because you’ve got to swing by the daycare center on the way home. Those commuters would take a financial hit from congestion pricing. But if enough other drivers change their schedule to make the road less crowded, at least they’ll get to and from work with less hassle.

What’s tricky about congestion pricing is that it challenges that stubborn expectation of many drivers that they should be able to drive where they want, when they want, and with whom they want -- usually by themselves. About 87 percent of Hampton Roads afternoon commuters travel alone. “It’s called hypermobility,” says Dwight Farmer, deputy executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission.

Farmer knows better than most how peeved people can get. Two years ago, he spoke in public about a study that showed how modest tolls (50 cents to $1) on the crowded Downtown Tunnel across the Elizabeth River could flatten out the peak congestion there. “The phone rang off the hook here,” he says. “People, said, ‘Just give Farmer a message. Tell him he’s an idiot.’”

But, then, people don't like paying tolls to build new roads either. They don't like higher taxes. And they don't like stewing in congestion. The fact is, motorists don't like any of the choices they're confronted with. The challenge for transportation planners is to devise solutions that yield the greatest gain in congestion mitigation while causing the least pain.

Congesting pricing might be one of those solutions. The concept has been gaining traction for at least a decade across the United States. Transportation planners and politicians in places such as Minnesota, California and Texas have used it on interstate highways with some success.

There are two flavors of congestion pricing, which is now more often called by the more politically palatable euphemism “value pricing.” One refers to the HOT lane proposals, such as the project VDOT is planning on the high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes on the Beltway in Northern Virginia. The project involves adding new lanes and charging a variable toll that would rise if the HOT lanes became too crowded. This approach adds capacity and a funding stream to pay for it, and guarantees that traffic in the toll lanes will keep moving. Critics call them “Lexus lanes” because the tolls can get so high that the less well-off are excluded.

The second congestion-pricing approach is strictly about managing traffic demand. That’s what VDOT is studying in Hampton Roads. It will look at the feasibility of value pricing on water crossings and interstates in the region – how much revenue it could raise and whether it could make drivers adjust their behavior enough to reduce congestion. The local office of engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff has been hired to do the study, which is being funded by VDOT and could cost up to $400,000. No timeframe for the study has been set yet. The results “would have to be presented to the metropolitan planning organization and then go from there,” Heuer says. "This is not something VDOT’s going to undertake on its own.”

There’s good reason to punt the concept to politicians. Talk of using congestion-pricing on the Downtown Tunnel died after the public protests. But Farmer says the public doesn’t yet get the concept. “It’s not about pricing, it’s about the threat of pricing,” he says. The tunnel tolling concept would have raised only about $6.5 million a year, which isn’t much considering about 100,000-plus vehicles go through there every day. But the money isn’t the point. “Only a very small percentage of the motoring public would ever pay the maximum,” he says. “If people don’t ever so slightly change their behavior, then the program is a failure.”

And, of course, drivers who do choose to – or have to – pay the toll would get a less-crowded highway. “Right now we don’t have any incentives or disincentives” to driving, Farmer says. “You can pre-fill your gas tank and pre-pay the gas tax, and then your decisions on travel have nothing to do with purchasing the commodity at the time you want to use it. I hate to say it, but we make a lot of poor decisions that give us what we collectively have, which is congestion in the peak hour.”

Glenn Havinoviski, vice president for transportation technology with the Fairfax office of Wilbur Smith Associates, calls congestion pricing “a tough sell” to the public because it doesn’t give drivers an option at the time they want to travel. “At least with ‘Lexus lanes’ it gives you a choice to use it or not,” he says. “It can’t be a once size fits all, or in my view it’s going to be inequitable. You have to provide choices.”

Farmer responds that adding highway capacity by taxes or tolls doesn’t treat the average worker much better. Either way they’ll have to wait years for relief, he says. “So what happens to the working stiff then?”

Implementing a congestion-pricing system almost certainly requires managing a region-wide network, which could be complicated. Tolls would likely need to be placed on already-congested routes to discourage drivers from using them. There would have to be a way to tell drivers what tolls they would pay and when they took effect.

A few cities overseas have tried congesting pricing in different ways: Singapore uses a variable toll and collects it electronically, while London has a fixed toll for all vehicles entering its central downtown. The 2003 Hampton Roads study looked at seven alternatives - including increasing transit use, flex schedules and telecommuting - for easing congestion in the Downtown Tunnel, which carries Interstate 264 traffic under the Elizabeth River. This tunnel is the region’s most congested. Its capacity is 75,000 vehicles a day, but it carries more than 100,000 vehicles a day with backups of more than two miles during peak times. Spillover traffic from drivers trying to avoid backups was affecting downtown Norfolk and Portsmouth.

The 2003 study predicted a 50-cent toll would cut traffic by 7.5 percent during peak periods. A 75-cent toll would produce a 12.5 percent drop, and a $1 toll would reduce traffic by 15 percent. Twenty percent of drivers would use carpools or transit, while only 5 percent would take alternate routes. The rest simply changed the times they drove.

In just the two years since that study, driver's options have proliferated. Many companies are equipping employees with cell phones, laptops and broadband access that give them the flexibility to work at home one or more days a week, or even to vary the times they drive to work. Two companies, Trichord and TrafficLand, provide services that keep subscribers posted on traffic conditions on their routes to and from work so they can adjust their travel plans. Meanwhile, a VDOT-funded company, Herndon-based NuRide, has set up a state-of-the-art online ride-finder service. Someone looking for a carpool can simply plug in a date, a starting point and a destination and find if it matches with someone else's entry. NuRide may expand its service from Northern Virginia to other Virginia regions. 

The coming VDOT study may well ill show that tolls could change motorists' behavior and reduce congestion. But Farmer is under no illusions. He knows that it will take a major effort to convince commuters that they should pay tolls on roads that have already been paid for.

But he's hopeful. Farmer points out that people already deal with value pricing in things from parking to cell phone service to reserved seating in a theatre. “Everything has a premium. If you want a front-row seat, you have to pay more,” he says. “As long as people perceive the cost of a trip as only the cost of the gas in the car, they’re going to make some decisions that turn out collectively to be not as efficient.”

Bacon's Rebellion News Service

October 8, 2005