[lbo-talk] traffic news

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Wed Jun 11 12:16:46 PDT 2008


On Jun 11, 2008, at 1:40 PM, Dennis Claxton wrote:


> But Rand Corp. transportation expert Martin Wachs thinks it will take
> more. Even if fuel hits $5 a gallon, he said, congestion will merely
> thin at the margins -- meaning shorter rush hours -- rather than
> evaporate. "I think the price at which people will stop driving is
> much higher," he said.
>
> In central London, car traffic has dropped 20% since 2003, when the
> city began charging motorists a fee of about $16 if they wanted to
> drive into the city center. And there have been other benefits: Bus
> ridership has surged, and the tolls paid by drivers are being used to
> improve public transit.
>
> Congestion pricing "has worked around the world in about 100
> different places, 100% of the time," Wachs said.

Hmm, that's not what our resident anti-congestion-pricing forces said.

Doug



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