Political Calculus of Congestion Pricing

Many scholars have argued the political viability of congestion pricing depends on how toll revenue is distributed, and that pricing schemes need to create more winners than losers to gain acceptability. This calculus is inadequate because it does little to create claimants for the toll revenue who will champion pricing the freeways. Rather, such a calculus simply attempts to pacify opposition. A more promising approach to creating support for tolls is to return the freeway toll revenue to the cities which the freeways pass. Returning the revenue to cities with freeways is fair because it compensates these cities for bearing the local external costs of a regional system, and gives them the resources to help mitigate freeway caused problems. It is also efficient, in that it will give an already organized lobbying group an incentive to champion tolls. The paper uses Los Angeles County to illustrate how distributing toll revenues to cities with freeways can increase political support for congestion tolls. Since LA freeways are not located in the highest-income cities in the county, our proposal coverts congestion tolls into financial support for the county’s lowest-income cities. Seventy of the 88 cities in Los Angeles County would receive toll revenue, and the estimated revenue for the recipient cities would almost double these cities’ general fund revenues.

• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • King, David A
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 85th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2006-1-22 to 2006-1-26
• Date: 2006

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: CD-ROM
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 85th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers CD-ROM

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Congestion management systems; Congestion pricing; Freeway management systems; Freeway operations; Operating revenues; Political factors; Revenues; Toll collection; Traffic congestion
• Uncontrolled Terms: Toll revenue redistribution
• Subject Areas: Finance; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01026036
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 06-2703
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Jun 28 2006 8:47AM