> But it can be counter-argued that the price has not
> been set high enough. For example, very heavy fines
> and penalties for drunk driving do reduce (but not
> eliminate) drinking and driving. One can argue that
> such penalties are regressive, unfairly penalize
> people who have no alternative modes of
> transportation, not 100% effective and so on - but it
> is diffciult to argue that their severity does not act
> as behavior modification.
This statement shows clearly what the problem with your participation in this conversation has been: you equate drunk driving with ... driving! Setting, and raising the price of Bad Behavior a) can work; b) seems fine to me.
But: driving is not Bad Behavior! Driving is something that we as a society have been forced to do by policy decisions; driving will only go down if policy decisions can un-do some of these incentives. Slapping a price on the behavior without correcting the incentive is whack-a-mole. If you can find a way to discern between Bad Behavior driving and Not Bad Behavior driving, let's see it. I've listed before things you can use as a much better approximation of driving: the purchase of a vehicle, for instance[*].
In the 50s, when this all really took off, a decision was made to let the inner core of many cities rot, and provided tax and other incentives to move those who could go out to the suburbs. Roads were built right along with it, standards for how much subsidy would be made were established, etc. You know the drill. A car culture was *created* ... not *chosen* ...
I don't think we have to convince anyone of what to fix, we just have to do it. There's the small matter of paying for it, and I'm on record as saying that progressive taxation is the way to buy most anything that's good for all of us.
> congestion/user fees are a lousy way of eliminating
> congestion and reduce carbon emissions - because they
> will most likely be defeated by the political process
> in the US.
I accept your apology.
/jordan
[*] Mere purchase of a 10mi/gal car doesn't indicate that you actually will pollute more than, say, a Prius (consider someone who drives as much as me -- 3k/yr -- in a Hummer vs a 100k commuter in the Prius); but it's a much better approximation than using "driving into the CBD of New York City" ...