Report says that charging drivers to use roads will help with congestion
An interesting report stemming from Australia says that charging motorists to use roads would decrease traffic congestion while at the same time improving the overall efficiency of major cities.
The report is called: “Productive cities: Opportunity in a changing economy” and was written by the Grattan Institute, who was trying to address Australia’s traffic congestion issues.
Basically what they’re saying is that traffic congestion will not be solves simply by building new roads while ignoring the requirements for current road space.
The introduction of a pricing system – road-user charges, congestion charges or time-of-day tolling – would allow for the road space to be used much more efficiently, according to the report.
There’s also a psychological aspect to this, rather than the simply financial one, road-pricing systems that make the collective costs of driving more apparent at the time of travel and as such it will encourage the public to think about cars from a different perspective.
The established view of the car as something owned and mostly driven by just one person is starting to fray around the edges thanks to the spread of modern technology – Internet and wireless technology – which allowed for the development of car-share schemes, real-time ride pooling and peer-to-peer car rentals – all of which were unheard of a mere ten years ago.
The report continues to say that a system of road-user charging would help to raise revenue to increase the capacity of each respective city’s public transportation systems, especially busses by extending their reach and improving their efficiency and connectivity.
The report singles out buses because they can be deployed much quicker and at a lower cost than say the expansion of the heavy rail network which requires a very large up-front investment and it also takes a long time to be completed.
On the other hand, a bus will only travel as fast as the traffic around it, and without allocated road space for buses like priority lanes and priority signaling, these upper mentioned investment wouldn’t be optimal.
There is a precedent for this in London, where a day congestion tax is required for motorists who want to use the inner-city streets.
