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MAY 2003
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Regional Regional News and Events
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OPINION: Londons Daring Traffic Move: Successful, But Right for Us?
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By Neil Pierce
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 Word of Londons congestion pricing scheme an $8 charge each day for any vehicle that video cameras spot driving in the traffic-strangled city center broke on a startled world in February. Drivers would have to register for daily use via cell phone, Internet, or at retail shops across the city. The fine for not registering: $128.
So strong is our global reverence for cars that no world city has dared try such a scheme since a single (and highly successful) plan was instituted in authoritarian Singapore in 1977.
Predictably, opponents saw immediate disaster if the London plan, a brainchild of the citys controversial Lord Mayor, Ken Livingstone, actually took effect. Average speeds of 3 miles an hour, said critics, would paralyze large parts of the city. The rush of new passengers would engulf the citys public transit system. The system of 700 video cameras to read license plate numbers would misfire and crash.
But Livingstone persevered, the system kicked off February 17, and now weekday traffic in the eight-square-mile central London zone has declined almost 20 percent. Result: normally clogged streets have opened up. Taxis are abundant; red double-decker buses make their rounds much more rapidly. About 100,000 people pay the toll each day; the cameras catch 3,000 or so scofflaws who then are ticketed.
The jubilation in London is still a bit tentative. Some retailers and restaurants complain their sales are off, and its not clear if the main culprit is an Iraq-war-triggered tourist decline or reluctance of motorists to cope with (and pay fees under) an unfamiliar new system. Still, theres huge excitement in the very idea that world cities have a new way to confront the auto thats had such an impact on their quality of life in the past half century.
Its been an epic mismatch, writes Randy Kennedy, reporter and columnist, in the New York Times Magazine. The car helps to create sprawl which, he observes, pulls people and power from cities. The car then returns to attack the city, forcing it to cede sidewalks to streets, trolley tracks to traffic lanes, whole neighborhoods to expressways. Similarly, the great urban writer Lewis Mumford ruminated about a tomb of concrete roads and ramps covering the dead corpse of the city.
Cities, thank heavens, have proven too resilient for such total disaster. As Kennedy suggests, spots like Times Square sometimes reveal armies of angry pedestrians crowded around SUVs pinioned in crosswalks, the drivers inside easily outnumbered 100 to 1.
So interested are major cities in subduing the congestion dragon that Derek Turner, the official who developed the London plan, has actually quit his position to start a global consulting firm. Turner claims ripples of interest from cities across Europe, North and South America, and Asia. Some 70 cities recently sent delegations to London for a detailed briefing on its plan.
The mayor of the American city that needs radical traffic reform the most Michael Bloomberg, leader of historically clogged New York has shown interest in traffic restraint ideas. And small wonder: By some estimates, traffic congestion costs New York as much as $4 billion in lost productivity each year. The Brooklyn Bridge, with its trolleys and traffic lanes, carried 426,000 people a day in 1907; now its congested, all-motorized traffic lanes carry less than half as many.
But Bloomberg now faces such a deep budget crisis that hed be in no shape to take on the auto clubs, road builders, garage owners, and assorted angry constituents whod likely line up in moderate to rabid opposition. And if theres another mayor of a major American city considering taking on the Auto Goliath, he hasnt said so out loud yet.
A big plus for congestion pricing is that technology now makes it so feasible: with video cameras (like Londons) tracking license tags, or transponders on windshields, checkpoints and visual inspections are no longer necessary. The technology can even adjust pricing to known hours of the day and actual highway conditions. The principle is simple: You pay for what you use.
But is the idea ripe for many cities? Probably not. As serious as traffic has become nationwide, only a few San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Washington, Atlanta, and Chicago spring to mind seem to suffer enough to make logical early candidates.
And theres a final imperative: a strong public transit system. If thousands of commuters are to be priced out of their cars, strong rail and bus alternatives must be available. Wisely, a big chunk of the $200 million the London scheme is expected to raise yearly is to be plowed back into improving transit.
Urban congestion pricing deserves a place on the American urban agenda. The health of our cities demands it. But without a commitment to robust, improved transit, the discussion may not be worthwhile.
Copyright © 2003 Washington Post Writers Group
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