Quote:
Originally Posted by Aroundtheworld
I did my thesis on what a fair and efficient mobility pricing system would look like. It has the following basic tenets: - Existing tolls and taxes that pay for roads are eliminated. Property taxes that pay for roads would be eliminated.
- A Mobility Pricing charges vary by vehicle class, time, day and location of travel. This is done to eliminate recurrent congestion.
- Mobility Pricing Charges accurately reflect the cost vehicles impose on road infrastructure, health and the environment.
You can check out the presentation here
The big conclusions I found were: - Mobility Pricing would benefit all users (drivers, transit users, pedestrians, cyclists), but only if it is designed to reduce congestion.
- Both urban and suburban areas benefit.
- When congestion benefits are factored in, business and industry benefit as well.
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I went through your presentation, it makes quite a bit of sense. A few questions though, maybe other asked if so just tell me you answered and I'll read through the pages.
1. Was the benefit to businesses and industry contingent on the program being regional in nature versus just in, for example, Vancouver?
I'll give you an example, if I'm a delivery company outside Vancouver and I only have to pay mobility charges to deliver in Vancouver, would I not decide to either add a surcharge which could reduce my business, or not deliver to Vancouver, or eat it which means I lose out because I'm not getting benefits of reduced property tax being outside Vancouver? I understand it would affect each industry differently, but I could see quite a few where it would be negative. If I was a retail business in Vancouver though, it could also measurably reduce my potential customer base by reducing travel from outside the mobility area. Example, people outside Vancouver are less inclined to go into Vancouver to shop. Well at least by car. I'd imagine this affect is far less because your typical mom and pop shop relies on neighborhood traffic whereas big-boxes already don't really care about this because they are spread regionally.
Maybe it could still net benefit business.
2. Your presentation, like many I've seen, seem to only ever mention the reduction in traffic immediately following congestion pricing. I then see conclusions that it overall reduced traffic, but is that true long term in a city/region with increasing population?
I'll give you an example. When Air Care was put into place decades ago, it was touted as reducing pollution. We were told that pretty much until it was ultimately cancelled. The truth is, it didn't reduce pollution, instead if reduced the growth in pollution because there was a study released that showed pollution levels 15 years after had surpassed levels recorded when Air Care was put in place. So ultimately there was, 15 years later, as much pollution and more being added than before Air Care was put into place. The cause? The region doubled in size and more people just means more pollution.
Don't get me wrong, it was still good because it it was sizably less pollution regionally for the population we now had than had Air Care not existed.
Would that not be the case in some places also with mobility charges? Aka you can see numbers drop like 20% immediately. But in 10 years if your population doubles, you could very reasonably make up that gap and now have MORE traffic than you had regionally before mobility pricing. So would you not also need to continue with other programs like expanded transit, secondary modes of transportation, and heck even road expansion? Really what you'd be doing is slowing traffic increase and reducing gain per capita, so I'm still not saying it is bad.
Could just be that I'm being a pain with respect to using precise language when I see "traffic reduction" I wish instead it said "traffic
increase reduction." but then again that would likely confuse people like "long shorts" or "short pants"...
If we put in mobility pricing 20 years ago, Metro Vancouver had 2 million people. Today we have about 2.6 million people. That's 600,000 more people. I have my doubts that the reduction numbers 20 years ago would be > that added by 600,000 more people to the region. It seems more logical to me that we'd have seen a marked decrease in congestion immediately after then a slower increase compared to having no mobility charges over time as population increased.
But maybe I'm wrong. I'm just wondering if it would be better to do it regionally and still employ other programs to reduce traffic including more walkable regional centers, improvements in transit backbone and services, and a move toward electric and autonomous cars which by themselves will reduce traffic only because humans are terrible drivers in general and a lot of traffic is caused just by terrible drivers having licenses and crashing.
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And minimizing the parking permits too ("we made it low cost on purpose so you poor folk won't complain!") when there are plenty of renters who need vehicles who can scarcely afford a, what, mandated $300-400+ annually for a permit? And dozens more to pass through certain streets?
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