Implementing an Urban Congestion Charge

Posted by on . 16 comments.

How do you do it, asks commenter low-tech cyclist. Well, here’s how London does it:

Cameras at entrances, exits and around the zone read your number plate. They check it against a database to work out whether you’ve paid already, are exempt, or have a 100 per cent discount. We keep checking the database until midnight the following charging day.

If we get a match, we automatically delete any images of your vehicle from the database.

If we don’t get a match, we check and validate all the images and send a Penalty Charge Notice to the registered keeper of the vehicle.

There are about ten different ways to pay, including online, by phone, and at physical locations. It’s basically like the District’s existing speed cameras, only everyone pays. So, not that tricky.

Comments

  1. Doug says:
    April 21, 2010 at 12:00 pm

    Not that tricky, but maybe a little creepy.

  2. jim says:
    April 21, 2010 at 1:57 pm

    Less creepy than speed cameras, whose chief weapon is surprise (nobody expects a District speed camera). The entrances to the London Congestion Charge Zone are both signed at eye level and have prominent pavement markings. It would be a very distracted driver who entered the Zone without being aware of it.

  3. Ben Ross says:
    April 21, 2010 at 3:32 pm

    In Norway, it’s done with toll booths at the edges of downtown. Proposals to toll the East River crossings in New York amount to the same thing, since there are already tolls on the Hudson crossings that are used in part to support transit.

  4. low-tech cyclist says:
    April 21, 2010 at 3:39 pm

    Thanks for the explanation, Ryan!

    I think I’d want some pretty strong legal guarantees of privacy and confidentiality, like those surrounding individual Census records, before I’d accept such a system. The past decade has made many of us painfully aware that any data sources that law enforcement and intelligence agencies can abuse their access to, they will abuse their access to.

  5. low-tech cyclist says:
    April 21, 2010 at 3:45 pm

    Ben – maybe it’s possible to do congestion charges via tollbooth in Norway, which has less than 5,000,000 people in the entire country.

    But if one of the goals of congestion pricing is to reduce congestion by taxing it, I think that would backfire here. The congestion would take place in the lines to pay one’s toll, rather than inside the congestion district, but it would still be congestion, and it would be nasty.

  6. David Sucher says:
    April 21, 2010 at 4:27 pm

    “I think I’d want some pretty strong legal guarantees of privacy and confidentiality…”

    Is it possible?

    Proponents claim that records will be confidential. I am dubious that they won’t be pierced.

    Consider a “ticking-bomb” scenario — sneer if you like but the fear will be used. And, in fact if it were genuinely true, who would deny security forces the right to look at records?

    “Information wants to be free” and that’s true for secret police as for anyone else. If a record exists, especially the records of millions and millions of people, there will be a way to get at it.

    The difference, in anticipation of the retort, is that Census data is not as timely and valuable as records of who went where when and who met whom etc etc and that goes for divorce lawyers as well as police.

  7. jim says:
    April 21, 2010 at 8:49 pm

    I don’t see the privacy argument. If you don’t want to be photographed entering a Congestion Charge Zone, don’t drive into it. Such zones are rich in other travel modalities. Park outside the zone and take a cab, a train, a bus. Bicycle. Walk.

    It really isn’t necessary to drive. That’s the point.

  8. City Comforts says:
    April 21, 2010 at 11:09 pm

    Jim,

    I hadn’t really thought of it but your remark prompts me to consider that some people might be so hostile to cars and drivers that some would be delighted to hack the system and open up the records i.e. people who drive should be punished and exposed. That’s the sort of attitude which some might see in your remark.

    Just as an aside, if you are sincere in promoting congestion pricing, I wouldn’t argue very publicly that “If you don’t want to be photographed…don’t drive into it.” It doesn’t sound to me like a political winner.

    Try something more like “If there are congestion charges then affluent people can drive more easily.”

  9. jim says:
    April 22, 2010 at 12:51 pm

    David,

    It has been proposed, in order to facilitate a VMT tax, that all cars be equipped with GPS devices which would report their whereabouts. The ACLU has been highly exercised about this proposal on privacy grounds. On the other hand, my mobile phone (and probably yours) contains a GPS device that reports its whereabouts. My car contains an EZ-Pass which, every time it passes a transponder, reports its whereabouts. The ACLU is not exercised about these apparently similar situations. Why not?

    The phone and EZ-Pass reporting is avoidable. If I am traveling somewhere I would prefer that the world not know about, I can turn my phone off (or leave it at home); I can remove my EZ-Pass (or wrap it in foil) and avoid toll roads on my route. The VMT tax monitoring device, on the other hand (like Orwells’ telescreens) can’t be turned off. If I wish to travel somewhere that can only be reached by car, I cannot avoid the world knowing about it. It is the compulsory nature of the surveillance to which, I assume, the ACLU objects.

    Congestion Charge Zone monitoring is more like EZ-Pass or my phone than it is like VMT tax monitoring. It is avoidable. I can reach any destination within a Congestion Charge Zone without driving a car. It is the nature of such zones that I can do so. The purpose of the charge is to incentivize travelers to use some other travel modality within the zone than driving.

    I am sorry to have to spell the concept out so verbosely, but my attempt to be more concise led to your remarkable misreading.

    Finally, the purpose of a congestion charge is to reduce congestion. Not just so that drivers can drive more easily. In London, the average speed of buses traveling through the zone has increased as well. And taxicab journeys take less time (and therefore cost their patrons less), too.

  10. David Sucher says:
    April 23, 2010 at 11:40 am

    Jim,
    I won’t try to persuade you.

    As a practical reality, Americans are compelled to use automobiles to get around, with (perhaps) the exception of parts of Manhattan.

    There will be an (at least) 20-30 year period in which people can actually get around a region by using public transit and that assumes that we are actually doing anything. During that time — a “generation” at least — there will be many years of potential abuse.

    That’s my concern.

    Maybe more important, I don’t believe the politics are possible. Whether one agrees its a good idea or not, I believe that there will be an uproar to a congestion pricing system unless the public can be persuaded that an iron curtain of information can be maintained, which I personally do not think is possible.

    Let’s be clear — I am not against congestion charging as a concept — I just don’t think it can be done.

    Btw, while I understand that the purpose is to allow all vehicles to move more freely, one of the benefits is to allow rich people to drive more easily. That political fact will be widely broadcast.

    There are a host of other issues — and I am thinking of Seattle’s geography — which can/will adversely impact neighborhood livability on congestion pricing.

    Overall, with very very few exceptions, congestion pricing in most cities is not worth the political energy.

  11. low-tech cyclist says:
    April 28, 2010 at 9:24 am

    “Congestion Charge Zone monitoring is more like EZ-Pass or my phone than it is like VMT tax monitoring. It is avoidable. I can reach any destination within a Congestion Charge Zone without driving a car.”

    Sure, it’s avoidable, but it’s a hell of a lot more work and hassle to do so than to pay cash for your toll on the NJ Turnpike or take the battery out of your cell phone.

    The reason you’d take a car into a Congestion Charge Zone is the same reason you’d use a car there now: because you’re already in a car to begin with, and the time and energy cost of switching modes of transportation is often a good deal higher than the savings in either of those that you’d experience by getting on the bus or subway.

  12. Joey says:
    April 28, 2010 at 9:04 pm

    I’ve thought a number of times before about how the London system could be applied in the United States.

    I think it would be far less feasible here (though perhaps not impossible) for the sole reason that we have 49 different licensing bodies in the Mainland portion of the United States (not to mention 10 in Canada and 31 in Mexico). The congestion-charging authority would have to be able to look up address information nationwide (or Continent-wide) and then be able to act on nonpaying violation-notice scofflaws.

    Sure, this is nominally done for parking tickets now (as I’ve received a mailing in Virginia for a DC parking ticket), but should I never set vehicle in DC again, it’s unlikely they’d ever come after me, because of the expense.

  13. low-tech cyclist says:
    April 30, 2010 at 9:47 am

    Joey – I’d say that’s more of an argument for than against feasibility, with the key being your last clause: “should I never set vehicle in DC again, it’s unlikely they’d ever come after me, because of the expense.”

    The same thing would be true of enforcing a congestion district: if you drove in a congestion district just one time but didn’t pay the fee, the effect on both congestion and the finances of the district would be trivial. So it wouldn’t really matter if they didn’t come after you.

    But a repeat scofflaw would presumably find flashing blue lights in his rearview mirror before long.

  14. trisnowlaharwetan says:
    May 1, 2010 at 7:51 pm

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  15. Omri says:
    May 7, 2010 at 3:06 pm

    Here’s how you implement a congestion charge without imposing a surveillance infrastructure on your city:

    1. raise parking rates for public parking.
    2. lay a tax on privately owned parking spots.

    No cameras. No databases. No billing.

  16. jim says:
    May 10, 2010 at 8:10 am

    Congestion tolling may be coming to the DC suburbs:

    http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Fairfax-eyes-more-tolls-to-fund-high-speed-transit-network-92876159.html

    I’m not sure that Fairfax County has the power to toll roads; the state may have to grant it. An alternative would be the NVTA, which already exists, which the state already granted power to tax (but the courts said it couldn’t). The state, though, can grant authorities the power to toll: MWAA collects tolls on 267.