Congestion charging is a really fascinating tool used by government; its purpose is usually two-fold: one, to reduce traffic congestion and pollution by charging motorists in certain zones of the city i.e. you drive in the zone, you pay the surcharge. Two, a lot of the revenue made from the charge goes into optimizing public transit systems i.e. subways, Bus Rapid Transit, trams etc.
According to the UK’s Office of National Statistics, people spend about 90 minutes each day traveling (commuting) on average – more time than they spend on childcare, sports, outdoor activities, shopping, social life and eating. If this time could be cut, we could hugely improve our social lives, families and leisure opportunities. Commuting has social and economic costs i.e. huge parking fees in the downtown area and time spent away from family. How do you get more of the middle to upper class to transition from their cars to public transit? Taking public transit can actually reduce commuting times because you avoid egregious highway traffic.
We need to make public transit more sexy in order to get people to use it. Making it sexy requires a lot of capital and financing. Congestion charging can provide the necessary capital to expand transit systems. You can make them accessible to every demographic of the city. Certain neighbourhoods in Manchester, England are totally isolated due to low quality/expensive public transit. This heightens poverty, conflict, racism, alienation and crime.
Public transit is expensive in Manchester because the system is struggling with operating expenses. A congestion charge could certainly provide some flow of capital to the system allowing it to improve in quality and be accessible to the city’s poorest.
Many people are fearful of public transit because it might be dangerous, crowded, noisy, smelly and uncomfortable. These are reasonable concerns that can be alleviated with funding, intelligent design and some creativity. A congestion charge is a smart economic approach for raising revenue because people will still behave (somewhat irrationally) by continuing to drive in congestion charge zones and pay the cost for doing so. Cities can benefit tremendously from such irrationality and secure even more funding for their public transit system. With more money and a few architects and planners on board, cities can really make their public transit services much more appealing.
A congestion charge zone cannot work in every city of the world, but we know it has been successful in London. If it could provide funding for expansion to include the marginalized, provide funding to make the system cleaner, more spacious and comfortable and provide professionals with a chance to minimize their commuting times, then it certainly has some notable benefits.
Key message: Congestion charging has multiple benefits. It may receive poor political acceptability at first, but the possible advantages are plentiful as evidenced in London, Stockholm and Singapore.
No comments:
Post a Comment