Congestion Pricing, the Route More Cities Are Taking

No mention of reducing peak congestion in urban centers via telework. Congestion is non-linear with traffic levels, and a permanent moderate reduction in traffic during peak periods would reduce/eliminate the need for congestion taxes for the foreseeable future. That might mean impacting dense urban centers but that isn’t a reason not to mention it...oh, that’s right, Bloomberg.

Point 5 asks who’s against it, without mentioning the largest and probably most impacted group...the people who actually have to pay money for something they didn’t need to before. How can they make such an elitist oversight...oh, it’s Bloomberg.

This is an “everybody’s doing it, why don’t you” article designed to generate interest in an idea that was/is unneeded for 95%+ of the US population, and may be increasingly irrelevant if telework is here to stay.

It’s safe to say it’s instinctively repulsive to most commuters. Commuting is viewed as an unpleasant but necessary task by those doing it. These are also some of our most productive people. The idea of making commuting more time consuming and/or more expensive for these very people is a very hard sell in a democracy.

You can see it in the number of “it’s not so bad/it’s progress/it’s inevitable” articles that pop up on the top of searches, which means people just aren’t buying it.

It’s not the kind of thing that generates a lot of civic pride either. “We’re so congested that you have to pay just to drive here!” was never anyone’s idea of a slogan.

Congestion pricing is the brilliant idea that traffic congestion can be alleviated by making the roads too expensive for poorer people to use during peak times.

It's very hard to see making the poor pay a regressive tax for traffic congestion, that they have no say in creating, as a social good.