I haven’t said much about congestion charging/road pricing on this blog in the past, and generally the reason for that is because I don’t actually know where I sit in regards to this idea. According to Wikipedia, Congestion Pricing is defined as the following:
…a system of surcharging users of a transport network in periods of peak demand to reduce traffic congestion. Examples include some toll-like road pricing fees, and higher peak charges for utilities, public transport and slots in canals and airports. This variable pricing strategy regulates demand, making it possible to manage congestion without increasing supply.
A number of cities around the world have developed congestion charging schemes – with perhaps the most famous being the one in London. The London scheme seems to have been fairly successful in reducing the number of vehicles entering central London on a daily basis, and thereby reducing congestion on the city’s inner-city streets. Singapore and Stockholm also have congestion-charging schemes. Other cities have somewhat similar schemes, with dedicated toll lanes offering some sort of congestion relief if you pay for it.
The basic premise behind congestion charging makes quite good sense actually. At peak times the supply of road space simply cannot meet the demand for it, so you get congestion. However, if you price that road-space – and in particular if you adjust the pricing of the space so that it reflects the demand for it (higher at peak times, lower and off-peak times), then you will price out of the market enough people to ensure the road-space remains congestion free (or at least will have reduced congestion). By pricing peak times high, and off-peak times lower, people are encouraged to use the road-space during off-peak times – therefore increasing the efficiency of its use. In places like London, the congestion charge has specifically been used to price people out of their cars and onto public transport – which gets to benefit from the money raised through the charge, a useful “carrot and stick” situation.
In cities like London, and perhaps New York City would be an even better example, the strength of the city’s core, the high-quality public transport options available make congestion charging a pretty attractive option to hopefully price people out of their cars and onto public transport, or at least to make them shift the time they drive from peak to off-peak.
But what about a city like Auckland? Would congestion charging make sense here? There are a couple of matters that make me fundamentally concerned that congestion charging is probably not the way for Auckland to go at the moment. Those are the somewhat fragile nature of our CBD, and also the lack of a high-quality public transport system with adequate capacity to handle extra patronage. Looking first at the nature of the CBD, it’s well known that only 12-13% of the Auckland region’s jobs are located within the CBD – putting a congestion charge around the CBD without taking this matter into great consideration could potentially disincentivise businesses from locating in the CBD – exactly the opposite to what we want to happen. The second matter is that until we have the CBD Rail Tunnel completed, there are going to be some very significant capacity constraints on our rail system, and until we have our whole public transport system far better integrated, it’s likely that a high-quality viable alternative just isn’t there yet to allow this to happen.
Aside from specific practical matters that relate to the Auckland situation, there are actually some general matters that deserve analysing in terms of questioning what the actual benefits of congestion charging are, and whether it actually would help achieve the goals of a more sustainable, efficient and effective transport system. Here’s what Paul Mees’s book Transport for Suburbia has to say about the idea:
The real problem with road pricing… is that it makes car travel more attractive, especially for those who can afford to pay the charge. Travel time has a greater influence on demand than price, unless prices are kept at punishing levels, so as incomes rise over time road pricing will increase demand in the same way as any other speeding-up measure. Congestion, on the other hand, gives even wealthy motorists an incentive to consider alternatives, as long as public transport is able to avoid the worst congestion through priority measures. That’s why European cities with relatively low car use have slow traffic speeds, while most US cities combine fast traffic with high car use.
In other words, we already do have a form of road pricing – it’s called congestion. If you’re on the road at a time when demand for road-space outstrips its supply, you pay for that – through being stuck in congestion and unnecessarily wasting time. One difference is that the cost is paid for in time, rather than through money. There are probably both pros and cons to this difference, depending on your political viewpoints. It would appear as though the “cost” of lost time is generally higher than the “cost” someone would have to pay as a “congestion charge”, which once again could be interpreted in two different ways – either that congestion charging seems to result in lower travel costs overall, so therefore has an economic gain; or on the other hand is actually an incentive for people to drive more frequently.
The overall point being that congestion charging could be considered as just another way to encourage people to drive more, by finding a way to encourage the more efficient use of the road system, when perhaps in actual fact what we really need to be doing is offering alternatives options so that fewer people choose to use their cars. Now I’m not sure whether I would write off congestion charging to such an extent though, as I think in some situations (generally I think where you already have high public transport use) it can be a method of last resorts to try and unclog the city’s streets. London has an excellent public transport system serving its city centre, as does Stockholm. The congestion charge in these cities seems unlikely to ‘unclog’ the streets to as great an extent where driving would become more attractive than catching public transport, walking or cycling – so therefore there appears less risk that it will encourage more people to drive.
However, in a city like Auckland, if we’re really trying to get people out of their cars and onto more sustainable and efficient transport modes, then I don’t really know whether congestion charging would achieve such an outcome. It Mees’s analysis is correct, and the time costs are greater than the monetary costs of the congestion charge, then it would seem as though congestion charging might just make driving more attractive, rather than less.
[Of course this assumes that people know the monetary value of the time they lose in congestion, which is a big if.]
Processing...
I’m definitely a fan of not expanding road space and massively improving PT service and priority before introducing congestion charging and we need the CBD to double in jobs before it becomes viable even then I think the politics of it are decades away at least…
Peak oil may take care of a lot of the problem too…
I don’t think congestion charging would work in Auckland for several reasons. Firstly the PT system is not sufficent in Auckland to act as a viable alternative to most journeys outside of the CBD and especially those going from one side to the other. Meaning many people would be forced to pay, who would be more than happy to take PT, and this money would most likely just be spent on collection costs. Secondly the cost of implementing such a system would be better spent on upgrading PT and instead using money from a petrol tax (such as the one we almost had) to help expand the system. A petrol tax has the advantage of taxing people based on how far they drive and also tends to discourage short journeys. A petrol tax also has no collection costs per se. Furthermore, I completely agree that blocking off the CBD will merely lead to businesses locating to areas in the suburbs which have cheaper land costs, and no parking restrictions – thereby doing the opposite of what is planned, rather perpetuating car dependency.
I can’t see congestion charging being very useful in Auckland, partly because congestion isn’t that bad on central Auckland streets most of the time. It’s nothing like London or New York where loads of the roads are (or were) constantly clogged. My completely uninformed view is that it is primarily Auckland’s arterial routes and access roads to them that get very congested. Perhaps if some schemes like pedestrianisation of various roads in central Auckland (parts of Queen st, for example) were introduced and that caused more congestion (that is, people didn’t take the hint and start using PT) congestion charging might be worth considering. In current conditions, I agree with you that people would likely just avoid the charged areas.
I agree, until we have a semi decent PT system we shouldn’t even consider it. The growth of rail (even though it was from a low base) is showing that when there is an decent option available then people are prepared to use it. I also agree with David about the CBD not being that congested, it is more the motorways approaching it and the main arterial roads that are the problem, as an example I can walk out onto Albert St outside work at almost anytime of the day and find the road empty of cars and buses. The only way to avoid destroying the CBD would be to charge all of Auckland but that could be done easier and cheaper by a petrol tax. We should also look at why businesses are choosing to move out of the CBD and come up with some strategies to reverse that.
I think a toll on motorways however would work though
Bill, but wouldn’t that just shift traffic onto local roads? Not exactly what we would want I reckon…
I think it is worth investigating to see how much a system for the CBD would cost, and how much revenue would be brought in. Would be cheaper and easier than other cites as there are only about 20 entrance points to the CBD, if you count the CBD as the island surrounded by motorways.
The CBD tunnel is going to require some local funding, at least to pay off a loan. Congestion Charging could bring in part of the money needed to fund that. However would not bring it in until CBD tunnel opens and buses are improved.
@Luke – I think the outcome would be to shift people onto local roads and off the motorway and force business to relocate to avoid the congestion charge. A more equitable and fair system would have been to have kept the petrol tax and used revenue from that to take out a loan for the CBD tunnel seeing as we probably have no chance of this government funding it. I can only hope that with Labour actively campaigning on the CBD tunnel and the airport and shore lines that it becomes an election issue and thereby National perhaps agrees to it in hope of getting a 2nd term.
I cant see how a congestion charge of a few dollars a day would cause CBD businesses to relocate. The shareholders wont be paying the charge and any managers will not even notice the cost of it.
Overall having fewer cars in the CBD will make it a nicer place to be, and will be easier to remove road space.
I think there is a fair bit of psychology involved here. With a bus/train it is obvious how much each journey cost as you have to pay before you commence the journey.
With car travel there is much more of a disconnect as you may only fill up once a week, and at an irregular time or day, so you dont know how much every journey is costing you. With congestion charging it makes people think more about the cost of a journey.
Having raised this issue to start with, I would add, in a good example of Be Careful What You Wish For, that:
What has been said here about congestion charging is also true of downtown parking restrictions having the side-effect of pushing jobs out of the CBD. Which simply tells us is that workplace parking policy has to be dealt with on a region-wide basis. Congestion could also have the effect of dispersing jobs out to the periphery of the region – because the contrapeak flow journey is generally a lot less congested than the peak flow one.
I don’t believe the dispersal of jobs is a big issue as long as we have a carefully constructed structure plan for the city that prohibits such activities. If a congestion charge was created, the structure plan would have to work in with the vision of the city to make it work.
I believe that if a congestion charge was created in the CBD, it would remove joy riders and chauffeuring wifes that enter the city during busy times. Such an idea could successfully be introduced with the removal of any parking levis or making parking in the city cheaper, meaning that only those who need to be on the street at any given time will be there.
Brent – the thing is that the CBD isn’t that congested, it is the main roads that suffer the worst of the traffic so it probably wouldn’t make much of a change to the area.
Luke – the thing is businesses want to attract staff and for most people if they were given the option of driving a bit further each day or pay a fee they would drive further to work, this combined with cheaper land rates would make businesses think twice about being located in town.
Many people are traveling to the CBD however, and its about those people. These people have a range of different ways they can travel to the CBD, more so than many other areas of the city.
By removing some of the parking costs and adding a toll, the travel behaviour will change. This approach is more about hitting the cars that are on the road and not cars that are parked.
Its important that the new integrated ticketing system will allow for tolling option.
Road pricing does not have to be a charge around the CBD only, that is just one example of road pricing. It may soon be possible to have a comprehensive road pricing system where road users are charged for every k on every road based on the time of day, type of road etc. This type of system is proposed in the Netherlands, where they are planning on phasing out all petrol taxes etc over the next few years. If this is the case, then it will not necessarily hurt the CBD. In fact it may help the CBD by encouraging people to live close work, and conversely encourage businesses to locate close to as many people as possible.
I see it as being analogous to the ‘no free parking’ concept discussed here previously. If you set the price to the right level, there will be availability for people who really want to use the network, and therefore less reason for continual expansion.
It is also more economically efficient. At the moment a trucking company (and therefore the wider economy) might lose significant amounts of money due to congestion, because a few people want to drop their kids off at school instead of having them walk. The trucking company would be very willing to pay the extra to ensure they get fast consistent travel times.