Flexible tolling: the key to solving our congestion
Transit can't solve the problem, and we can't afford to build enough highways. So modern tolling, with prices varied by demand, will be necessary. Here's a look at how the Legislature is quietly laying the political and conceptual groundwork.
Start with the transportation facts of life. Population in the four counties of Central Puget Sound will have grown from the 2008 total of 3.6 million by another 1.4 million in 2040. Jobs will increase by 1.1 million, and — based on the region's collective proclivities to date — total vehicle miles travelled (VMT) by more than 40 percent.
Barring some big paradigm shift, the percentage of daily "passenger" work trips which occur on transit will grow from 8 percent of the current (2006) total to only 9 percent in 2040. For far more numerous non-work passenger trips, the transit market share stays at a scant 2 percent between 2006 and 2040, according to recent modeling. The vast majority of daily passenger trips occur in cars now and then. For work it's more than four of five, for non-work, about nine of ten. (The rest are split between transit, walking, and biking.) On the upside, there's a lot more ride-sharing for non-work trips; plus, per-capita VMT will continue to stay flat; and we can shave a bit off the expected growth in total VMT by meeting (elusive) regional growth strategy targets.
These are some of the sobering conclusions in a March 2009 background paper that's part of the Puget Sound Regional Council's "Transportation 2040" planning effort. Future projections may change slightly under new computer modeling in a draft environmental impact statement due out at month's end. But you get the idea.
The PSRC's 2040 picture begs a huge question: What to do about it all? And, as we'll see in a moment, it turns out that the state Legislature has some bold ideas of its own.
My own take: A comprehensive approach to managing peak-hour highway capacity in Central Puget Sound should be launched by bravely establishing — and soon — a seamless regional system of variably-priced, automated, and ultimately corridor-length tolling on highways and major state routes. This must be folded into a broader plan to develop stable long-term funding for the region's surface transportation network.
Automated, booth-less tolling with rates varying by demand levels is sometimes referred to as "value pricing." Under value pricing, if demand is higher during rush or "peak" hours (and it almost always is), so are rates; conversely, both tend to be lower, off-peak. This approach can be limited to a facility, such as the State Route 520 bridge, or the planned inland deep-bored tunnel on SR 99 in downtown Seattle. But value pricing can also be applied more sweepingly, in all lanes of an urban region highway corridor; or in some lanes, such as High Occupancy and Toll (HOT) lanes. We need a network of value-priced highways, or lanes on highways, that connect with each other across the metro region. Otherwise, their value to users won't be anywhere near optimal.
HOT lanes are free to transit and ride-sharers and — this is key — also available to solo drivers for a variable toll based on current congestion levels in the HOT lanes. HOT lanes may be built anew or can be converted from pre-existing High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) or carpool lanes. Their guaranteed swift travel times can not only benefit motorists, but pair well with beefed-up suburb-to-suburb express bus service, assuming traffic bottlenecks are fully erased on the bus routes. On State Route 167, south of Seattle, one HOT lane is in operation on each side of the highway on a sizable stretch of the road, in a four-year pilot project. It's a good start on the concept.
A one-size-fits-all approach to value pricing is not necessarily wise here, not yet. HOT lanes work best on heavily-used highways where solo drivers would actually want to pay for the express lane option. On less congested and incomplete highways that nonetheless require tolling revenues to be built out (think Washington's State Route 509, for instance), tolling all lanes using value pricing may make more sense than HOT lanes; who would pay for tolled express lanes they don't really need, when there's a free-flowing free option a lane or two over? If a facility over time becomes congested, then all-lanes-tolled can perhaps give way to a mix of HOT lanes and free lanes.
HOT lanes and other types of value-priced lanes are already in operation around the country and more are planned. Yet as always, it's California that's ahead of the curve. San Diego is already a leader in highway value pricing; and in the Bay Area, what's really on fire is a proposal for a full 800-mile seamless HOT lane highway system, now being advanced as AB 744 by Alberto Torrico, the Assembly Majority Leader. It's likely to pass before long, if not this year. The HOT lanes approach suits the jammed highways of the nine-county region, population 7.3 million. Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi, a Democrat, is enthused about the prospects for improved mobility, including express bus service.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, May 22, 8:29 a.m. inappropriate
The 167 flex tolling corridor experiment is a dismal failure isn't it Matt?
Posted Fri, May 22, 8:54 a.m. inappropriate
This kind of massive tolling of freeways will do nothing but reduce people's standard of living unless there is some incentive for businesses to offer flex hours or work-at-home days for those jobs where strict adherence to 8-to-5 scheduling is not necessary. There's a reason traffic is heaviest during the rush hours: People have no choice whether they commute during those hours. It's a requirement of employment. Unless that issue is addressed, this is just one more burden for working people to bear, and one more reason businesses will flee the Puget Sound area.
Posted Fri, May 22, 10:24 a.m. inappropriate
This entire discussion is just incredibly stupid. There is only one option that makes any sense, and it is not even being considered:
STOP GROWTH!
When something is causing a problem, you try to stop that thing from happening. The problem here is obvious:
THE PROBLEM IS GROWTH!
How do we stop growth? Pretty ease, in my opinion. Raise taxes on business in this state until businesses stop locating here, and the businesses which are here stop expanding. At the same time, increased business taxes will generate revenues for infrastructure maintenance.
It is absolutely obvious from this article, and other articles like it, that growth is very expensive to the ordinary citizen. Growth is going to LOWER our standard of living by making everything -- including travel -- much more expensive. So why do we want to encourage growth, since it is so obvious that GROWTH IS THE PROBLEM!!!!
STOP GROWTH!
This is not complicated.
Posted Fri, May 22, 10:27 a.m. inappropriate
I definitely thin 509 should be tolled, with commercial trucks paying more than passenger vehicles.
I have a hard time seeing HOT lanes on I5 (Seattle to Northgate) unless the express lanes are somehow retrofitted into two-way traffic. One of the pitches used to support light rail has been "adding lanes onto I5 would cost $ billion (maybe 30?) so build rail instead. A big question with tolling is always whether it actually results in additional capacity.
There is no free lunch when it comes to transportation. It is really hard to tell the total costs of our "system", including maintenance and replacement, from the current pricing system. Some stretches simply cost a lot more than others.
Posted Fri, May 22, 10:56 a.m. inappropriate
As long as I am alive I will oppose tolling of any kind on any of our state's highways, and I will make it a litmus test of support for any elected official.
Posted Fri, May 22, 11:24 a.m. inappropriate
Lincoln sez: "How do we stop growth? Pretty ease, in my opinion. Raise taxes on business in this state until businesses stop locating here, and the businesses which are here stop expanding. At the same time, increased business taxes will generate revenues for infrastructure maintenance."
As Spock would say, Fascinating.
Mr. Lincoln, exactly how are people supposed to live and pay their bills without any businesses? Where is the money going to come from to support our bloated state government? Not all of us have family trust funds to live off of like a bunch of Kennedys or Rockefellers. People need jobs. And well-paying jobs do not exist under oppressive governments. The business climate in Washington is bad enough without turning it into Venezuela del Norte.
Posted Fri, May 22, 11:36 a.m. inappropriate
Well, I guess we could always raise the gas tax......
Actually, if the HOT lanes or "flexible tolling" discussed in the article were put in place, people would have a choice of staying in the lanes that aren't tolled. I do agree that on 509 and maybe also 167, it might be smarter to toll all the lanes, or you wouldn't get that much funding out of it. Both of those extensions are critical.
And if anywhere near another one-and-a-half million people are moving here in the next few decades, as projected, we'd really better get busy to make sure the roads don't become more gawdawfully jammed up than they are now.
Seriously, picture I-5, I-405, 520, 90 under that 40 percent increase that's expected in vehicle miles travelled.
It's never terribly pleasant to pay taxes or fees. But we're already paying a time-lost tax. I can only assume the people who object to tolls value their time at a very low rate. I don't.
Posted Fri, May 22, 11:47 a.m. inappropriate
To some extent, road problems solve themselves. If traffic jams, people find other ways.
Proximity is a huge one. That can require spending more (which tends to be offset by lower transportation costs) or accepting less square footage, but it's a viable alternative. People survived, somehow, before 2,500 sf houses were prevalent.
Thankfully we're adding to transit capacity. It's a huge advantage, letting us move people far more efficiently than roads.
We're also adding bike infrastructure. A little can go a long way.
Yes, as roads tighten, more businesses tend to have different hours. This tends to be stuff like trucking (and those dependent on it, like manufacturing) first, because the actual business function depends on movement, not just employee commuting. But it can become more prevalent if enough people ask for it and it doesn't get in the way of function.
We'll have a bit more telecommuting. The numbers are still small, and nothing like we expected a decade ago, but it's gradually turning into a major factor.
As for "not growing," yeah, let's solve our problems by destroying ourselves.
Posted Fri, May 22, 11:49 a.m. inappropriate
PS, I think a gas tax increase is far better than a toll, even if it's more difficult politically. Gas taxes are vastly easier to enforce, because you're doing so at gas stations and not millions of times per day. Cheaters (thieves) can mess with transponders, and much as people drive across town to save a dollar on toothpaste, they'll take idiotic detours to avoid tolls. Also, a gas tax encourages efficiency.
Posted Fri, May 22, 7:52 p.m. inappropriate
Mr. Lincoln, exactly how are people supposed to live and pay their bills without any businesses?
In California, Oregon, Canada, or anywhere else they want to, that's how. Just NOT HERE. I want people to stop moving here. I want people to leave this area. If the jobs leave, people will leave with them. If we stop creating jobs, people will stop moving here.
Is that too complicated for you?
Posted Fri, May 22, 8:01 p.m. inappropriate
How many BILLIONS of dollars are we wast, er spending on light rail ? And where is the discussion of how we are going to ramp down the gas tax as all these tolls pop up ?
Sounds like this piece of cra, er work is nothing more than an effort to create ANOTHER layer of bureaucracy that will really not solve a thing, there will still be congestion as more people move here, that want to drive their own vehicle for the sake of comfort, safety and convenience and there will still be NO new freeways to meet the demand.
You people mocking Lincoln don't realize that the crap envisioned by this article will really help to stop growth. Maybe that's what the demos want. The businesses that decide to stay here will support the ultimate eventual size of the local population.
In the meantime, come live in the N. end of the beautiful Rainier valley or in Chinatown. Experience the crime, drugs, drunks, 24/7 fire/siren runs, the low flying helicopters, lack of parking and high rents that characterize a high density, diversity of transit pleasure palace. Oh, and get yourself a concealed carry permit.
Posted Sat, May 23, 3:50 a.m. inappropriate
Matt, you start with the transportation "facts" of life. But projections and estimates aren't facts. Indeed, the issue should be how to manage population growth towards a particular number rather than how to pay and build for some arbitrary forecasted 25-year growth number. I've heard the PSRC people discuss their population forecasts and they say that roughly half the projected growth is indigenous (i.e., children and grandchildren of current residents) and the rest is endogenous (i.e., people moving in to the region). They say that basically we need to plan to be what the Bay Area is now. I think it's absolutely critical to analyze various population growth scenarios and manage towards one with a much smaller growth rate. That would be responsible leadership and management.
Unbridled population growth (i.e. Growth Non-Management) brings with it the chaotic government and infrastructure mess we have now, with no one in charge except churlish infrastructure unions who are sucking government dry. Consider that the 520 bridge cost $21 million and took three years to build in 1962 That's about $160 million dollars after adjusting for inflation. To replace the existing bridge, which has performed quite well for over 45 years, the proposed cost for replacement is now at $4.5 and $6.7 billion in 2008 dollars. That's a 29X to 40X cost increase.
(An aside. Ross Hunter has called the thing a mitigation project with a bridge attached to it. To build the bridge itself--less all the east and west construction projects--costs $2.4 Billion. Interestingly, the bridge proper costs only about $750M, engineering about $400M, inflation and risk $570M. mobilazation $180M). Why not build the bridge and toll for just the $2.4 billion cost alone as part of phase one construction? )
Will we be getting a bridge that is 29 to 40 times better than the existing bridge? Haven't construction techniques and materials become more efficient over the intervening decades? Does the state really need to pay 25 to 35 times what it used to pay? Why in the world stick with a system that costs 30X what it used to cost?
Let private developers build private toll-ways and bridges and we will get them, at half the price at least and in half the time. Also, let the state pay less than the prevailing wage, instead of turning the state into an offshoot of the United Auto Workers, whereby entitlements render an entire workforce inefficient, uncompetitive, and unproductive.
I don't blame unions for the problems that exist. What has happened is simple human and economic nature. The state unions have a monopoly that they control by controlling the election of our representatives. They have worked selfishly for their self interest, just as any good corporation is supposed to work for its shareholders. The problem is that the unions do not represent the people of the state, and are not in charge of the services they perform for them, i.e., the unions are not accountable or responsible for the overall performance of services. The people of the state want constant improvement in the services that are provide and constant improvements in productivity across all of state government. Coming up with new taxing and tolling methods doesn't solve the core problem, which is the ridiculously over-priced infrastructure construction and maintenance system.
I will now get off my high horse and agree with you that tolling is coming and that it is the right approach to turning transportation into a public utility like electricity or water or sewer, where infrastructure projects are tied to charges to customers. This is the only sane way to drain the infrastructure funding cesspool. Right now we have a dysfunctional ferry system, a bloated light-rail system, a severely underfunded highway system, and the tragedy of the commons on steroids.
Ultimately, every ride you take in a car, bus, bike or on light rail must be, and will be charged, and for the most part, infrastructure will be self-funding and self-maintaining based on usage. The entire system of taxing and borrowing to finance infrastructure projects is just a horribly bad way to fund infrastructure. It's broken, archaic, and ineffective and over time should be taken out back and put out of its misery. This will take a decade or two or three, but eventually the a public utility approach with user charges paying for the whole thing (along with appropriate government subsidies for different types of users) will be the smart, sane way to do transportation.
The technology may not be production ready, but the technology for doing all this is easy enough. All we have to do is marry GPS, credit card processing, and wireless communications and we can easily and fairly bill everyone for their trips using the road-ferry-mass transit system. It should be noted that with a 100%-tollable system, we can tune the system to meet throughput goals, revenue goals, and I bet, even population goals.
Posted Sat, May 23, 8:31 a.m. inappropriate
"On less congested and incomplete highways that nonetheless require tolling revenues to be built out (think Washington's State Route 509, for instance), tolling all lanes using value pricing may make more sense..."
Don't you see, on the date that project is completed traffic will mushroom, as Southend commuters seek easier and faster access to lower Seattle. Thus, this project has perhaps the highest IRR in that most of its infrastructure -- even the Duwamish Bridge has been rebuilt-- is already in place.
On the surface, bad news for the people of Burien who up to this point have had their own private freeway. (And if you care that much, just don't toll from there...) But that City, working through a 40 year slump, might (might) be revitalized by the additional traffic passing through.
Start there first.
Posted Sat, May 23, 10:51 a.m. inappropriate
Lincoln says with an imperious and sarcastic tone: "Is that too complicated for you?"
Not complicated at all. In fact it's downright imbecillic. However, my family has lived in the Puget Sound area since well before Washington became a state and I'm not going anywhere. And I expect to have a job, because I'm not going to sacrifice myself on your altar of negative population growth. You can try to throw Washington back into a subsistence agrarian economy if you want. But I see our state as perfectly situated to take advantage of world trade and technology, and I won't just passively sit by while luddites and big-government types destroy our economy. But if it's any consolation, I think we can maintain prosperity just fine without the decades-long influx of Californians we've been subjected to.
Posted Sat, May 23, 12:10 p.m. inappropriate
Fantastic discussion that you've provoked, Matt. It's a problem without an easy/palatable solution. We have entered an era where this situation is going to be the norm, whether it be at the local, state, or federal level. We don't have enough money to provide the services that people are clamoring for. People don't want their taxes or fees raised. Policy "A" raises taxes and/or fees. People complain. Policy "B" cuts services to match revenues. People complain. The politicians attempt to lay back until they can determine which side has the most votes. People are used to getting roads without tolls. Gas taxes are falling precipitously as people shift to more fuel-efficient cars and even electric cars, and the feds' higher MPG standards will heighten this problem. The states have to fill this gaping hole from somewhere: user fees (tolls, vehicle miles traveled) seem fairer than registration fees (fixed amount per vehicle, no matter how many miles driven). I agree with dbreneman that this could lower standards or living, and so they are also because of not fixing our congestion problems and having people congeal in traffic jams. I like the idea of users paying the cost of the facility, e.g. VMT with reduction the gas tax (which would become, in essence, a "green" tax), but with everyone also contributing for the convenience of having that facility there, e.g. registration fee. But, it doesn' t make any sense unless alternatives are provided, e.g. flextime, a lot more public transportation choices than there are now, the most cost-effective ones as opposed to light rail (I agree with steptoe.fan to some extent on this one), etc.
Posted Sat, May 23, 1:48 p.m. inappropriate
Think long range, big picture. Road user fees with off-peak discounting, rural area allowances, impoverished traveler allowances, and all manner of other twiddling for various legitimate interests yet to be determined are an alternative to the present system of paying for roads. Of course the money collected needs to go to cost-effective transportation improvement, not a small matter.
As I wrote a few years ago in a project for Matt's employer: "Directly and simply stated, the challenge is to link government’s transportation revenue requirement of approximately $6 million daily in central Puget Sound region to 80 million regional daily vehicle miles per day. The average price per mile computes out to just 7.5 cents per mile. Under a Travel Value Pricing scheme this could be adjusted up to (say) plus or minus 90% to reflect the congestion level and facility cost during which a vehicle’s mileage is consumed. Consumers in California are already willing to pay 50 cents per mile for a desired ten-mile toll-road quick ride through congestion on one of the new High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes built there in the last decade."
Vehicle usage metering has all sorts of other benefits related to congestion management, environmental management, and paying for parking. Privacy of movement can absolutely, positively be guaranteed in the system design if we all insist.
Read vehicle metering entrepreneur Bern Grush's take at http://www.grushhour.blogspot.com/, including:
QUOTE
Seven Myths of Congestion Pricing
I will be tracked
Transit must be fixed first
This is just another tax
It’s unfair to the poor
I already paid at the pump
So just increase the gas tax
I should pay less because it’s near my home
UNQUOTE
Posted Sat, May 23, 3:23 p.m. inappropriate
The scheduled corridor tolling+funding studies are a very positive step.
But I agree that care must be taken, especially with the SR 167 and SR 509 studies, to compare and contrast money raised by tolling all lanes versus just one or two (in a HOT lanes set-up). On I-5, I-405, SR 520 and I-90, HOT lanes make sense, and would raise goodly sums, provided the state can bite the bullet and commit to tolling corridors not just sections of them.
I think it would be fruitful if the mainstream media here could, in future reporting, manage to enlarge the tolling discussion to more than just the latest facilities being discussed for tolling, such as this bridge, or that tunnel. It is the regional overlay that matters, and it's fairly obvious that's where things are headed.
Without a coherent and continuous auto-tolling system, at least on the highways (I fear we're not quite ready for arterials and side streets), the money spent setting up isolated tolling projects is, if not quite wasted, poorly invested. It's rather akin to the carpool lanes that peter out as, or before, a merge point with another highway.
It's very striking how small a portion of overall daily trips in our region today are on transit and how few will be in the future, without, as the article says, a big "paradigm shift."
This "paradigm shift" can only happen if the serious approach to auto-tolling is taken, first on highways and eventually arterials, as well. We would see far more ride-sharing for work trips, far more tele-commuting, and, given fast, frequent and comfortable express bus service at rush hours, far more transit usage, as well.
It would seem to me that so-called "Greens" in Seattle and environs ought to be fully in support of the type of tolling regime discussed here.
But for the most part, and sadly, they would rather mutter into their soy chai about how treating cars and highways as an inevitable fact of life, even under a bracing capacity rationing approach which would greatly encourage other transportation choices, instead merely facilitates our "auto addiction."
You can already predict their reaction to extending routes 167 and 509, two projects which make a world of sense. The good news is that fewer and fewer decision-makers take seriously the all-or-nothing nostrums of the Seattle-region Sierra Club, nor those of the other hard-core enviros in these parts.
I doff my hat to the state for stepping up the pace of change in this area of transportation policy. Now, keep at it, and accelerate, please!
Posted Thu, May 28, 3:12 a.m. inappropriate
While this article deserves all the readership it can get, it tip-toes too quietly to the truth. VMT charging on the entire network is needed now, not "eventually". "Now" means to start now and be done in 12 years. Talk to Congressman Oberstar about waiting and studying and pondering. You can't do what the February 2009 NSTIFC report prescribes by spending the next ten years debating how many more HOT lanes we can squeeze in. Just how many stents can you install in a diseased heart before the patient dies?
The route to VMT via a long dalliance with HOT is circuitous, expensive and a dangerous, self-satisfying distraction from the task we must face. After investing zillions in inflexible and inefficient roadside infrastructure in order to get "people acclimated to paying a fee for use of [roads] at a peak period of time", as Mary Peters put it at a speech at Brookings in April 2088, we will not be further ahead in our relative ability to manage funding, congestion and emissions. Why? HOT lanes, like so many stents, are local network solutions. HOT provides a motorist with a conduit around a blockage for a couple of bucks. Those that elect to use them are only too happy. Those that do not, because they don't have one on their particular way, or cannot afford to use them, or are too stupid to do so keep the essential disease process in place. HOT is a temporary "lease on life". It does not solve the problem.
Posted Thu, May 28, 12:13 p.m. inappropriate
Reinforcing Bern Grush from Toronto, our local road pricing guru at Puget Sound Regional Council taught me that there is a world of difference between optional HOT lanes and shoulder-to-shoulder pricing of all our major thruways, the direction that PSRC -- bless their hearts -- is taking us in "Transportation 2040" long-range metropolitan planning. The draft EIS for comment on this Plan is scheduled for release on Friday, May 29.