Tag: congestion tolling

California local governments push congestion tax to get into LA

Posted on by
Link to article here.California Cities Push Congestion Tax
Southern California governments lobby to impose congestion tax on Los Angeles motorists.
The Newspaper.com
April 4, 2019A group of California counties and cities is desperate to join European colleagues in imposing a congestion tax on commuters. The Southern California Association of Governments issued a federally funded report last week exploring the feasibility of tolling drivers who enter downtown Los Angeles, raising money for transit and bicycle lanes.The study looked at various LA neighborhoods to determine where gridlock could best be exploited to raise funds. The options included Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), Hollywood, the downtown area, the San Fernando Valley, Santa Monica and Westside. The researchers said the tax would increase the number of people using bicycles by nine percent and walking by seven percent. According to the report, Angelenos will enjoy paying the charge because of these benefits.

“The Mobility Go Zone Program is expected to improve mobility and the transportation-user experience,” the report explained. “In practice, this means people will enjoy travel time savings to get to their respective work, leisure, school or other destinations.”

The introductory rate for the charge would be $4, paid by vehicles entering the charging zone during peak periods. Automated license plate reader (ANPR or ALPR) cameras would track cars and bill drivers who lack a FasTrak toll transponder. Comparable European cities have a congestion tax rate of about $15 per trip.

Over a decade, the operational costs of paying third-party vendors to collect the toll would run $326 million, including $15 million for the cost of toll collection equipment. The tax itself would collect from motorists between $87 million and $135 million per year for a net profit of $69 million per year.

The report concluded that the congestion tax would increase carpooling by 51 percent and reduce automobile miles traveled by 20 percent, reducing pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Such a tax would could be a tough sell to the public in Los Angeles. As the 1980s band Missing Persons put it, “Only a nobody walks in LA.” When the question was put to residents in Manchester, England, in 2008, some 79 percent voted against the idea of a congestion tax.

The idea of congestion charging was popularized in the UK in 2003 when London’s mayor at the time, Ken Livingstone, imposed the tax. In 2008, Livingstone was defeated by six points by Boris Johnson who campaigned on scaling back the charging zone.

Transport for London data show that the congestion charge has failed in its stated goal of controlling traffic levels downtown. Documented journey times inside the charging zone in 2007 were the same as in 2002, before the tax was collected, according to a 2008 report. An independent study found no reduction in pollution within zone. Currently, about half of the $360 million paid in tolls annually goes to the overhead cost, leaving $178 million in profit — most of which comes from late payment penalty tickets.

A copy of the report is available in a 5mb PDF file at the source link below.

Source: Mobility Go Zone Pricing Feasibility Study (Southern California Association of Governments, 3/31/2019)

OUTRAGEOUS: MoPac tolls top $8 to use toll lanes in rush hour

Posted on by

Tolls top $8 for commute on newly opened MoPac toll lanes

It didn’t take long for toll rates to exceed affordability. The newly opened toll managed lanes on MoPac (from Lady Bird Lake to Parmer Lane) in Austin topped $8 to go 11 miles, and cost $6.28 to drive the northern 6 miles during the evening commute. That’s just in the first week of operation. If you think that’s insane, that’s because it is. No one should have to pay over $1 a mile to get to or from work in a reasonable time. Texans pay a litany of road taxes, primarily the gasoline tax, to pay for public highways. Twice in as many years, Texas voters gave the largest boost in road funding to the state highway fund — totaling nearly $5 billion more per year. Yet supercharged toll roads continue to come online virtually unabated.

Toll managed lanes like those on MoPac use congestion pricing. The toll you pay no longer relates to the actual cost of building the road you’re driving on. Now tolls vary based on the level of congestion, rising and falling continually throughout peak hours, potentially changing in 5-minute intervals. Toll roads often provide time reliability, but today’s congestion tolling means you don’t have price reliability. A study done in 2016 by the Texas Transportation Institute at A&M, found that congestion tolling both angers and confuses the public. It states one of the biggest challenges is public acceptance.

According to the study, the top three reasons the public dislikes congestion tolling are: opposition to paying more to travel on top of what the public is already paying for roads, the complex requirements for using the lanes that change based on region, time of day, number of people in the car, and price, and the tax burden on lower income drivers without good non-toll options.

To add to the outrage, the MoPac toll project was fully paid for by the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) with $200 million in gasoline taxes. No debt was owed to build it. When the public balked at the double tax scheme of making drivers pay a toll to use a road their taxes paid for, officials turned it into a loan to be paid to the local transportation policy board who will use it to build other roads MoPac drivers may never use.

Taxpayers also ended up paying $38 million more for the project than estimated, and it was over two years behind schedule in opening, with the prolonged construction negatively impacting businesses and commuters alike. Because of the legal troubles of dealing with the design-build contractor, CH2M, the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (CTRMA) will issue debt to pay-off the contractor to make potential litigation disputing various change orders and additional work go away.

Even with the $38 million in additional costs and the agency having to issue some debt to finish paying the contractor, the $20 million in debt issued is a drop in the bucket and no excuse to charge Austinites tolls in perpetuity to use lanes their taxes already paid for. The debt is due to the project’s gross mismanagement by a rookie agency, the CTRMA, that lacks the accountability and depth of project management experience of TxDOT (that our taxes already pay to operate). So Texans are paying taxes upon taxes to build and maintain public highways thanks to this duplicative, wasteful, mismanaged bureaucracy running the show.

Given that the CTRMA’s Executive Director who oversees a dozen employees makes $366,112 a year compared to the $299,812 salary of TxDOT’s Executive Director, who oversees 11,000 employees, you get a glimpse at the Texas-sized toll bureaucracy problem. State lawmakers have long excused digging into the financial waste and mismanagement at TxDOT because the state lacks the funds and resources to audit an agency that big. How will adding nine more of these mini-TxDOT’s known as Regional Mobility Authorities solve the problem? It exploded the waste ninefold.

Taxpayers will continue to face a logjam of ill-conceived toll projects just like MoPac all over the state despite Governor Greg Abbott’s campaign promise to fix Texas without more taxes, fees, tolls, or debt. Why? As long as local transportation boards known as Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) continue to push for toll slush funds to fund a host of local pet projects, the governor’s highway commission has shown little appetite for bucking them. Voters need to get engaged or risk being priced off their public roadways altogether. If congestion tolls are starting out at over $1/mile in peak hours, imagine what they’ll be next year or in 10 years. There is no legal requirement to remove tolls from these highways, even when there’s no debt owed. Expect Texas commuters to do a full court press to change that when the legislature reconvenes in 2019.