Study finds congestion pricing doesn't hurt the poor
Dateline:
08/19/2008One of the long-held arguments against congestion pricing or toll lanes is that they're not fair to low-income users. The tolls are the same for everybody and low-income earners get hit the hardest, so goes that line of thinking.
In fact, pretty much every politician I spoke to in the San Gabriel Valley has raised that point when talking about the proposal to convert the carpool lane on the 10 and possibly the 210 freeways into toll lanes.
Two local academics have concluded otherwise: tolls are a pretty fair way of raising money to build road capacity. In fact, they say, it's fairer than most other funding schemes.
The study comes from Lisa Schweitzer, an assistant professor of policy, planning and development at USC, and Brian Taylor, a professor of urban planning who heads up UCLA's Transportation Studies center. Taylor, in particular, has long been a vocal advocate of congestion pricing. The study has been published online in Transportation, an academic journal.
Their study is based on the toll lanes on the 91 freeway in Orange County. The two authors found that medium- and high-income earners tend to use the lanes the most -- and therefore are the ones paying for the debt service on the lanes.
They also looked at a scenario in which sales taxes collected from across the OC would be used to pay for the toll lanes. In that case, they concluded, low-income earners would be paying millions of dollars in taxes for something they don't use. Here's the key passage from their paper:
"Using sales taxes to fund roadways creates substantial savings to drivers by shifting some of the costs of driving from drivers to consumers at large, and in the process disproportionately favors the more affluent at the expense of the impoverished."
I spoke to Schweitzer earlier today and she made it clear that she doesn't buy the congestion pricing-hurts-the-poor scenario. In her view, congestion pricing is a way to ration a resource often in short supply -- space on the road. She likes it because those who use it pay for it and that puts a direct cost on driving, instead of indirect costs such as at-large sales taxes.
"I think the equity issue is a magic bullet," she said. "Food prices go up, housing prices have gone up since Jesus was a carpenter, but no one" -- politicians, that is -- "ever brings that up."
I'm guessing some readers do not agree with the ivory tower on this one. Please direct your thoughts to the comment board.
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