From an efficiency standpoint, a ('marginal') subsidy to an alternative can work the same way as a charge for congestion. Distributional consequences are different, obviously. The subsidy requires more revenue from the fellow behind that tree.
I don't know why charges wouldn't work. It's just that the charges we have tend to be too small. We certainly saw a change in driving behavior from the change in gas prices.
Yes, with no alternative the charge just screws over the people who can't afford it. Moreover, it doesn't make the rest better off either, since their benefit from the reduced congestion is offset by the freakin toll. The benefit comes in the form of the proceeds of the toll, which as Jordan says might wind up anywhere.
Sadly in the U.S., public spending often requires some appearance of dedicating revenues from some particular source. My pet peeve about the left in this vein, it appeals to people to support higher taxes because they won't have to pay them -- they will fall on "the rich." With real social democracy, most people would have to pay more taxes than they do now.
Jordan Hayes wrote:
> Dmytri Kleiner writes:
>
>> IMO, fees should only be used against congestion ...
>
> ... and we're back around to the central thesis of this thread: fees are
> a lousy way to combat congestion. If congestion is "bad" because of
> extra pollution, extra stress, lost time, lost GDP, wasted resources ...
> the best way to combat congestion is a combination of offering
> alternatives and removing artifical chokepoints in the form of
> fee-collection devices.
>
> I don't think it's fair that people can just say "congestion pricing
> works to combat congestion" without having looked at all the evidence to
> the contrary (even though a lot of it appears in the archives of this
> list; you don't have to look far!). It simply doesn't work, and it's
> failed bad policy; this is doubly-so when you try to support the idea
> with the notion that the money you raise with said pricing will be used
> to fund the missing transit: first, it will never happen; and second,
> the transit alternative has to be there BEFORE you charge. Finally,
> what will happen to transit funding once-and-if you achieve the decrease
> in Bad Behavior ...?
>
> This is exactly what happened in many states with education funding and
> the lotteries: once they relegated funding to the lotteries, they can
> cut funding because the math-challenged didn't buy enough tickets. You
> have to keep the funding in the General Fund, or you risk giving it back
> later.
>
> "Congestion pricing" is just a thinly-veiled emotional antagonism
> against "drivers" without a second thought to why it is people drive or
> what can be done to mittigate the real problems surrounding
> transportation policy in the US.
>
> /jordan
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