--- Dwayne Monroe <dwayne.monroe at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Perhaps not. But as I wrote above, the current
> question is whether
> the proposed system will accomplish the goals set.
> To me, that's much
> more compelling than a debate about price signals.
>
[WS:] But this is a wrong question to ask. The proposed (or existing) system was an already compromised by the political process boondoggle, just like Clinton's health care reform. It was so compromised that it was obvious even to advocates that it would not work. Analyzing such a system can only yield negative answers.
Therefore, the right question to ask is whether a congestion fee system can possibly work, and if so under what conditions. This was precisely what I tried to do. It may turn out that the conditions under which congestion pricing has a chance to work are politically unacceptable or even that any such plan is politically DOA as I argued in a separate posting. However, anecdotes about the ex-CIA operatives being paid exorbitant consulting fees, bureaurcratic boondoggles, or the boogey man of panopticon are simply distractions from answering these question.
If you want to build something you first need to specify under what conditions it will work, and under what conditions it will not. For that, you need a theoretical model. Only when you have that model you can examine the failed or deficient implementations to understand what failed and why and what needs to change to prevent those failures. Predicting inevitable doom from the hitherot failures is self defeating. This reminds me of an early 20-century scientist (his name escapes me) who was "proving" the impossiblity of space flights (in his argument, no fuel could generate enough energy to lift its own weight to the orbit.)
To reiterate this discussion should answer three questions:
1. What are technical requirements of the tracking system to make it both effective and cost efficient?
2. What are the socio-economic aspects of congestion pricing i.e. at what price we can expect significant behavior modofication and what cost that price pose to thetarget population?
3. What are the political aspects of implementing congestion pricing that is technically and socio-economically effective (per questions 1 & 2)?
Wojtek
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