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More from the impossible-is-catching-on-department. San Francisco is studying the idea of charging motorists fees—often called congestion pricing–for driving on some of its most-congested roads at peak hours.  The city has been inspired in part by London’s successful example, which mayor Ken Livingstone, in town for World Environment Day, has been talking up: Congestion has decreased some 30 percent—or 50,000 cars—in central London since pricing was implemented two years ago. (Many...

It’s a rare treat to read a dry, technical report and—almost by accident—learn something surprising, counterintuitive, useful and (at least to me) genuinely new.  Which is exactly what happened when I read this paper (beware, pdf) by Todd Litman at the Victoria Transportation Policy Institute.  The upshot:  raising vehicle fuel-economy standards, which always seemed to me like a good idea, may actually be counterproductive, even if they’re truly successful at...

The city council of Vancouver, BC, unanimously passed a resolution on Wednesday, asking the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia—the Crown corporation that provides most car insurance in the province—to introduce pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) insurance. PAYD insurance is a powerful way to improve transportation, save lives and money, and reduce energy use and air pollution. The Provincereports. Some of the reader responses to this article are negative. PAYD guru Todd Litman of...

The golden boy of Northwest news reporters, Timothy Egan, ventures to southern California to compose an excellent overview of the US trend toward high-occupant/toll (HOT) lanes in today’s New York Times. (Money quote: The Gubernator says, "Californians can’t get from place to place on little fairy wings.") All across the United States, variable tolls-congestion pricing-are becoming the new conventional wisdom about how to do road expansions. In a few places,...

Well, from the LA Times, at least.  The paper’s had a series of guest editorials about traffic, transit and urban planning—specifically, how sprawling, congested LA can get itself out of the fix it’s put itself into over the last 60 years or so.  The LA area is surprisingly dense, but the population is spread out fairly uniformly over a large area—which makes it very hard to service the region cost-effectively...

Cascadia’s guru on pay-as-you-drive (PAYD) auto insurance and related transportation pricing innovations is Todd Litman of the Victoria Tranport Policy Institute. He provides a useful summary of who’s doing PAYD in his newsletter, which I’ll simply insert below the fold. The growth of PAYD programs is very encouraging, because PAYD is among the most powerful incentives for sound transportation and land-use patterns. There are rumors that a Cascadia locale could...

Thomas Friedman’s usuallypitch-perfect commentary on energy and security hit some high notes yesterday, but it also went off key twice, in disappointing ways. First, the sweetest passage from his New York Times column: By doing nothing to lower U.S. oil consumption, we are financing both sides in the war on terrorism and strengthening the worst governments in the world. That is, we are financing the U.S. military with our tax...

Prices influence billions of decisions every day. But they often ignore social and environmental effects, yielding prices that are sometimes too high and sometimes too low. To correct these flawed economics, we can tax “bads” rather than goods such as paychecks; make the polluter pay through fees and permits; and align markets with public goods.

Mixed news for those of us who have been longing for a real low-mileage discount on our auto insurance: A new analysis of the prospects for pay-as-you-drive vehicle insurance (PAYD) concludes that it’s about three years away from broad implementation. The analysis cites a number of barriers for adoption by insurance companies—such as launch costs, the issue of privacy violations, and patent fees—but concludes that consumer interest, potential cost savings,...

For a while now, Northwest transportation experts and advocates have promoted pay-as-you-drive-insurance (PAYD), one of the most promising market approaches to reducing driving. We’re getting closer-Oregon passed a bill encouraging insurers to offer PAYD last year-but it hasn’t yet accelerated from “cool idea” into implementation. But it has in other places. As reported by Victoria Transport Policy Institute‘s Todd Litman, the latest is Dutch insurer Polis Direct, which announced this...