By
Robert H. Nelson, Ph.D.
Most
people think traffic jams are a fact of life.
However, we could eliminate traffic congestion
with the stroke of a pen. Traffic jams are the
inevitable and foreseeable consequence of
government policy. If we changed the policy, the
congestion would disappear.
In
the United States – with a few toll road
exceptions – the use of highways is free.
Imagine what would happen if seats to
Redskins games were offered for free.
It would be like current traffic jams:
Mobs of people would show up early, they
would jostle for places in line, and only a
fortunate few would get through the stadium gates
and obtain seats. In
effect, the “hassle” of getting into a
Redskins game would substitute for the price that
we now pay for seats.
Our
present highway system works like that.
It might be described as a last bastion of
socialism in the United States.
Under socialism, everyone is equal –
equally poor. In
Northern Virginia, we are all equally stuck in
traffic.
In
the old Soviet Union, the price of apartments was
very cheap, but you had to wait fifteen years to
get one. The
price of meat was subsidized, but it took hours of
waiting in line to buy any.
When communism finally died in the old
Soviet Union, the one immediate change most
noticeable in the daily life of the citizenry was
the elimination of lines.
Market prices, instead of waiting in line,
became the rationing device for scarce goods and
services.
In
Northern Virginia, we could do the same thing with
traffic congestion – the long waits in traffic
would disappear as rapidly as the food lines
disappeared in the new Russia.
All we have to do is to price the use of
space on our highways at its market value.
In
a market, when something is scarce, you pay more
for it; that is elementary supply and demand.
The available space on our highways is
scarcest at peak hours.
If you want to drive at 2:00 a.m., there
should be no cost to anyone.
If you want to drive at 8:00 a.m., many
thousands of other people want to drive then as
well, more people than the highways can
accommodate. Instead
of raising the price, however, we use the old
socialist approach – everyone has to wait in
line for an extra twenty minutes to one hour as
traffic jams steadily increase during rush hour.
Proposals
to eliminate traffic congestion through highway
pricing at peak times are nothing new.
Columbia University economist William
Vickery won a Nobel Prize in economics in part for
developing the economic details many years ago.
What is new is low-cost technology to
implement congestion
pricing of highways.
Satellite tracking systems now make it
possible to follow the precise highway location of
any vehicle by time of day.
Trucking companies at present routinely
monitor the locations of each vehicle in their
fleet for management purposes.
We could easily do the same for cars.
It would be like a satellite-based
“Easy–Pass” system.
If
you wanted to cross the Potomac River on the
Wilson Bridge, use the Beltway, or drive on I-66
at 8:00 a.m., you would have to pay.
It would be similar to a cell telephone
system. You
would pay depending on where you are, where you
are going, and the time of day.
A computer would keep track, and at the end
of the month you would get a bill.
Highway
users might could see on a screen in their cars
what they were paying at any given moment.
If they wanted to plan a future trip, they
could inquire as to what alternative driving times
and routes would cost.
If the price were too high, they could
choose a different route, travel at a different
time, or join a car pool.
Once the kinks were worked out, traffic
jams would be eliminated.
If traffic started to build regularly –
say at the Wilson Bridge at 5:45 p.m. – the
price would automatically increase.
The price might have to be adjusted a few
times, but we can be sure that the lines would
eventually disappear.
Some
people will object, no doubt, that highway pricing
favors the rich. Because
they can afford it, the well-off will be able to
sail along the Beltway at the prime times without
any delays. It
is true that in any market system the rich are
more likely to drive Mercedes Benzes and the poor
used Chevrolets. That
is how market capitalism works.
However, we must realize that a highway
pricing system will raise large revenues.
These revenues could be used to improve the
public schools for the urban poor, or perhaps
reduce the sales tax (a regressive tax that
disproportionately falls on the backs of the
socioeconomically disadvantaged).
The
“smart growth” movement is feeding off
suburban discontent with traffic and other
inconveniences of increasing numbers of people
moving into new areas.
This is a legitimate complaint.
However, smart-growth proposals merely
address the symptoms of the problem and, in fact,
make things worse. Smart-growth
proposals to increase densities actually jam more
cars into less space.
The
real cause of traffic congestion is the absence of
any pricing system for the use of our highways.
Real “smart growth” would address this
problem directly. If
we really want to be smart, we should abolish our
socialistic system of free public use of highways
and instead finally put market methods to work in
this outmoded area of our economy.
--
August 19, 2002
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