Transit = Congestion Pricing
Posted by Fred Jandt
Mass Transit editor
Congestion pricing was the buzz word for a while in transit. London uses it to great success and Mayor Bloomberg wanted it for the Big Apple, but he couldn’t get it past the legislature. As with most concepts like this, congestion pricing only works if the public adopts it. And for New York, the public has already figured out the best way to move cheaply into the central business district (CBD) – MTA.
I read an article this week saying more people are taking shared-ride options (vans, trains) than taxis and limos to the airports in and around New York City. This can easily be chalked up to the economy cutting into the public willingness to pay associated costs of taking taxis and limos to airports, but there is more at play here. Public transportation has always been held to a different standard than other demand response services like taxis and limos — they have to stick to a schedule.
Sure, you can gauge the time to get downtown from the airport in any city, but you are at the whim of streetlights, traffic and most importantly, your driver when you get in a taxi or limo. Public transit on the other hand has to be places at certain times. Looking at a timetable, it’s not just about finding out when and where your bus or train is going to be for you to catch it, it’s also about seeing where (and more importantly when) it is going to be at your destination.
What’s one of the most famous political adages? You need to make sure the trains run on time.
Now consider this blog I ran across while looking for information on congestion. It’s interesting that, “from 8:00AM to 8:59 AM on an average Fall day in 2007 the NYC Subway carried 388,802 passengers into the CBD on 370 trains over 22 tracks. In other words, a train carrying 1,050 people crossed into the CBD every 6 seconds.â€
People have already chosen their form of congestion pricing and it’s public transportation. Consider the impact of taking those people off the trains and putting them into cars as the blog does. Gridlock doesn’t do the concept justice.
Congestion pricing is intended to convince people to take other means of transportation rather than using cars and trucks during high traffic periods, but in the end shouldn’t we just improve our transit systems instead?
It’s another age old adage at work — the carrot works better than the stick.
Thanks for reading the MT Position updated every Friday,
Fred
fred.jandt@cygnusb2b.com
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August 14th, 2009 at 8:42 pm
I cannot believe the number of large US cities that have airports 25-35 miles or further away from the center of the city that have no train service available! This is a much more sensible alternative than taxis or vans and yet this seems to be overlooked in transit planning.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:06 pm
IN RESPONSE TO ROBERTO:
Roberto, it’s no coincidence. Many of those cities planned to place the airport away from the general population for obvious reasons. When thos planes were being made, there were also (many) under-the-table deals for ground transport contracts. Private sector ground transportation is VERY lucrative. If you look deep into almost any major cities aviation history, you’ll see that franchises and monopolies were set up for not only ground transport and transfers, but parking arrangement as well. Mass transit issues weren’t seriously considered until the 1970′s when UMTA got involved with funding transit projects.
The thing is, how many airports that now have transit connections (surface or rail) go too far out of their way to let people know it’s there. Better to steer you toward the franchise van carrier or the taxi lanes.
My opinion.
August 14th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
Oops!
“thos planes” should read: those plans
Sorry for the spelling errors, folks.
August 28th, 2009 at 1:36 pm
In a sense, we have congestion pricing in our major cities. It’s called parking. Unless your employer provides it, a commuter will spend serious money for daily or monthly parking. How about raising those rates a certain percentage and applying the overage to help fund transit?
Locals who live in the city could be relieved of this burden, placing the costs on voters who don’t vote in the city. This tactic would be popular with city residents, because it would help ease local congestion, without placing the burden of the costs on local residents.