Pollack: Congestion pricing not a solution
Transportation Secretary Stephanie Pollack believes the state can and should take comprehensive steps to address worsening traffic, but the administration remains opposed to converting existing toll infrastructure into a system that alters roadway pricing based on time of day, Pollack said Tuesday.
At a Tuesday event on the statewide congestion nightmare, Pollack cautioned that traffic will always be a feature in and around Boston due to the city’s density and stressed that any strategy to mitigate it will need to involve multiple components, some stretching outside the realm of transportation.
She threw cold water onto the idea of congestion pricing, which would vary the tolls that drivers face to incentivize off-peak travel and disincentivize joining an already-clogged road.
“If your goal is to move people out of the peak, then there has to be time not in the peak that they could travel easier,” she said, pointing to data from the Tobin Bridge. “You can’t move people to 6 a.m. It’s already congested. You can’t shift the p.m. peak back to 4 p.m. It’s already congested.”
Supporters of the policy have pitched it as an important component of any transportation reform strategy, particularly after a Baker administration study concluded last summer that congestion has reached a “tipping point.” They argue that it can both influence driving enough to impact traffic and also raise revenue that can fund other transportation investments.
During a panel discussion following Pollack’s remarks, participants pointed to congestion pricing already in place in other cities, such as London and Stockholm, as a success that could be adopted in Massachusetts.
Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning at University of California, Los Angeles, said other strategies can help boost public transit usage, but that smoother, faster drives can best be achieved by implementing some form of toll on drivers.
“The only thing we’ve ever found that reliably makes a dent in that sort of problem is pricing the road because traffic congestion is caused by the road not being priced,” he said. “There are other things you can do and they have shown to make small dents temporarily, but really, you have this scarce, valuable resource, which is land in Boston that we’ve assigned to roads.”
Partnership for NYC President and CEO Kathy Wylde said much of Stockholm’s population initially opposed the idea, but that after a months-long congestion tax pilot, though, 52 percent of voters in the region approved a referendum in 2006 to implement the tax permanently.
“Once you have the experience, it works,” she said.
The House is preparing a debate this winter on transportation revenue, and leaders have not ruled out including congestion pricing. Several bills have included language piloting a program with similar mechanics.
Warning that there is no “silver bullet” to solve traffic woes, Pollack said the INRIX report that named Boston as having the worst traffic in America also ranked London — which has congestion pricing — two places higher in its list of most gridlocked cities across the globe.