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If highways push traffic onto local roads, why not toll them too?

February 2, 2011 By Stephen Smith

Peter Gordon blogs about a paper he presented at the Transportation Research Board conference in DC:

My friends and I just presented this paper at the Transportation Research Board meetings in Washington DC. We tested the effects of tolling Los Angeles’ freeways in the peak hours (we tested 10 cents and 30 cents per mile). It’s a simulation on a real network and many substitutions occur. As expected, peak-hour freeway speeds increase, some people switch to surface streets and that traffic slows, some switch to off-peak hours and some (very few) travel less. And politicians take in a lot of money! That’s for the 10-cent toll. The 30-cent toll overloads the surface streets. Many other options can be tested, including only tolling some of the freeways. Planners have voiced concern that tolling the freeways would overload surface streets. There is probably a “sweet spot” that can easily be found. We also plan to look for effects on freight travel as well as travel by income groups.

He’s established that “very few” people lessen their travel. And if the the number of people who switch to off-peak hours is small compared to the number of people who move to surface streets (and judging from my very cursory perusal of the paper, it seems like this is the case), then tolling is just shifting the burden from highways to local roads. This could be a problem since local roads, unlike highways, are paid for almost entirely out of general revenue, not user fees. It seems like the rational thing to do at this point is to argue for tolling local surface streets as well, perhaps through a congestion charge. Maybe I missed it (like I said, I didn’t read the presentation paper thoroughly), but his talk of a “sweet spot” in the summary makes me think he didn’t consider tolling local roads to be an option.

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Filed Under: infrastructure, Transportation Tagged With: congestion pricing, highways

About Stephen Smith

I graduated Spring 2010 from Georgetown undergrad, with an entirely unrelated and highly regrettable major that might have made a little more sense if I actually wanted to become an international trade lawyer, but which alas seems good for little else.

I still do most of the tweeting for Market Urbanism

Stephen had previously written on urbanism at Forbes.com. Articles Profile; Reason Magazine, and Next City

Comments

  1. Ilpo says

    February 3, 2011 at 3:46 am

    see above

  2. Ilpo says

    February 3, 2011 at 3:48 am

    Once the local roads are clogged then the ones that balked will pay the toll. The toll needs to increase to keep the balance. Need to leave the local roads toll-free but slower.

  3. Owen says

    February 3, 2011 at 4:30 am

    The local roads in question aren’t the ones in your neighborhood, of course. Thy’re the feeder streets and likely to be paid for out of state and federal general funds as well as property taxes.

  4. Stephen says

    February 3, 2011 at 4:38 am

    Maybe it’s different out on the West Coast where there’s not much street connectivity outside of highways, but here on the East Coast, there are plenty of “backroad” routes that barely use any numbered highways at all.

  5. Mike M. says

    February 3, 2011 at 5:05 am

    Though we haven’t seen a congestion fee for surface streets yet appear in the USA, even when they start to appear then I think it would be very politically difficult to implement

    people love to drive for free, especially when there aren’t effective alternatives, though LA has better public transit than most people think

  6. Alon Levy says

    February 3, 2011 at 7:55 am

    Depending on where the tolls are, they could apply to all travel – for example, if they’re based on chokepoints, like the Manhattan congestion pricing or bridge toll plan.

  7. Junction614 says

    February 3, 2011 at 3:06 pm

    Perhaps instead of tolling local roads, which seems logistically difficult, the focus should be on promoting market parking rates. Take away free parking at the destination and you can shift drivers to transit and active transportation alternatives lowering the burden on both highways and local roads.

  8. Stephen says

    February 3, 2011 at 4:16 pm

    I think we need an all-of-the-above approach, although I think you’re right that parking will be both logistically easier to price (and allocate!) according to the market, and will yield higher dividends in terms of “marketness,” in that parking today is probably underpriced to a larger extent than local roads.

  9. Paul Souders says

    February 3, 2011 at 7:52 pm

    Toll the OFF ramps?

  10. Focus503 says

    February 4, 2011 at 12:46 am

    Shifting the burden to someone else (ie ‘externalizing costs’) is the American way!

Trackbacks

  1. Tweets that mention If highways push traffic onto local roads, why not toll them too? | Market Urbanism -- Topsy.com says:
    February 3, 2011 at 2:47 am

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Market Urbanism and Ilpo Lehto, hengels. hengels said: @marketurbanism If highways push traffic onto local roads, why not toll them too?: Peter Gordon blogs about a pa… http://bit.ly/ihMuVQ […]

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