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Originally Posted by someone123
Congestion pricing has rarely been in place in cities that have built projects like that.
It's nice in theory as a user pay system but it's hard to implement it in a non-distortionary way. If it only applied to the peninsula then it would encourage businesses to move elsewhere and there's already lots of congestion in other areas. It could be revenue-neutral or fund infrastructure but in practice that's often not how it plays out. And there's some overhead cost just to having the infrastructure for the pricing and people having to worry about it. On some level the economic ideal is dynamic pricing that always keeps traffic flowing but in practice people want to be able to budget.
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I think people often forget that congestion pricing isn't adding a new change, it's just converting one type of unproductive congestion charge (mainly frustration and lost time due to traffic) into another (money). Roads have a capacity limit and there's no way to physically exceed it. When demand exceeds capacity, the limit comes either from the toll imposed by congestion which charges people by increasing the time it takes to get anywhere or in the form of money. The only difference is that if the peninsula had a congestion charge but no congestion, the charge would be a disincentive while the lack of congestion would be an incentive. So the two would counter balance each other. That said, there's no reason a congestion charge would need to apply specifically to the peninsula. It could be applied to whatever area(s) we wanted to decongest.
I agree that dynamic pricing is ideal, and yes people want to budget but the current congestion toll doesn't offer that either. The amount of time it takes to make a journey can vary, sometimes significantly, and there's no real way to prevent that. Yet many people still choose to drive. The only difference is that now there's no way to avoid that unpredictable charge which affects both motorists and transit users (other than walking or biking) while with dynamic pricing people would completely avoid the issue by using transit. That said, dynamic pricing isn't necessary for congestion pricing. You can have a more stable price as long as it's the right level. Same as other types of pricing such as products in a store. The price adjusts from time to time but not constantly or unpredictably.
Quote:
Originally Posted by someone123
In Halifax there are a lot of obvious next steps for transportation infrastructure that haven't been implemented yet due to political reasons, and overcoming that log jam is the best thing that could happen. Bringing in congestion charges without adding the kind of infrastructure that NYC or London have (which is never going to be built in Halifax) is the worst of both worlds. You get small town infrastructure with big city annoyances.
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It isn't adding a big city annoyance, because we already have one - congestion. How the whole topic began. So we'd just be changing the form that annoyance came in. The only difference is that instead of the time and money from congestion just being wasted, the money raised can be used for better infrastructure. Obviously not NY or London style infrastructure, but the right amount for the city size. The only reason they need much of the transit infrastructure they have is because of the higher density and much greater travel distances.
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