Bart Hinkle at the Richmond Times-Dispatch strikes again, demonstrating once more that he’s one of the few editorial writers in Virginia with an interest in broadening the transportation debate beyond the taxes-or-no taxes dead end. Today he starts with the question: “From 1985 to 2004, the number of cell phone subscribers in America rose 5,300 percent. So why don’t the networks suffer from paralyzing gridlock?”
The answer: Because they use congestion pricing. “You … pay service charges depending on how long you talk and where you go while you’re talking. … Those service charges enable the phone companies to build more towers and extend their service even further. The system pays for its own growth.” If cell phone companies use congestion pricing, why not VDOT?
Hinkle kindly quotes some of my writing on Bacon’s Rebellion, and even cites one of our readers — Larry Gross, I believe it was — who used the cell phone analogy in one of his comments. It can get lonely out here in the blogosphere. It’s nice to have a friend in the MSM.