The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board has issued its final report on value pricing (congestion pricing) for the Washington metropolitan area: “Evaluating Alternative Scenarios for a Network of Variably Priced Highway Lanes in the Metropolitan Washington Region.”
From my quick perusal, the report does not make any recommendations. Instead, it lays out three congestion pricing scenarios for the region and lists topics for future investigation. I don’t have time to dig into the document today, but I post it here for the reference of those who would like to examine it.
Hat tip to Jim Wamsley, who writes as follows:
Some selected quotations from Professor Vickrey’s 1959 presentation to Congress provide an excellent starting point and context for the work reported in this study.
“Under urban conditions we cannot have both free flowing rush hour traffic and the absence of user charges or other constraints on highway use. One or the other of these desiderata must yield.”
“Recent technological developments in electronics have placed within reach and within reasonable cost the possibility of assessing against the users of metropolitan streets and highways a set of charges that can be tailored about as closely to the costs occasioned by the actual usage as these costs themselves can be estimated. This can be done without interrupting or even slowing the flow of traffic, and at a cost that will be minute compared to the savings produced in inducing a more economical and less congested pattern of traffic flow and a more economical apportionment of traffic between the various available modes of transportation. It would, moreover, go far toward solving the financial problems associated with the provision of the expensive facilities required to provide adequate transportation in a modern metropolis.”
“Pricing of highway use will thus make it possible to provide at reasonable cost uncongested and speedy transportation anytime, anywhere, and for anyone for whom the occasion is sufficiently urgent to warrant the payment of the corresponding charge. Without pricing, it is very likely that during the rush hours this degree of freedom of movement would not be available to anyone at any price.”
“It is accordingly of the utmost importance, in evaluating plans for traffic facilities, to consider the various ways by which their use may be suitably controlled.”
Almost fifty years later we now take up again the basic principles enunciated by Professor Vickrey and many other distinguished economists, planners and engineers, and present them for public consideration in a new context.”
Eric Weiss with the Washington Post gives his spin on the report here.
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