![]() But experience in cities that implement pricing shows public opinion can flip from opposition to support when the benefits become obvious. Polling shows little enthusiasm for congestion pricing now. The Fair and Efficient plan offers a promising approach that cuts congestion and improves equity that the city will want to consider as it moves into discussion with community stakeholders about next steps. This new study lands just weeks after the City of Seattle published its Phase 1 summary report that surveyed the lessons from other cities that have implemented congestion pricing solutions. For those earning close to minimum wage, the value of the super Orca card after subtracting what they would pay in tolls is more than 5 percent of their annual income. ![]() Original Sightline Institute graphic, available under our free use policy.įor low-income workers downtown, the Mobility Fairness Program would represent a meaningful decrease in costs. The analysis also shows that high-income households would pay most of the toll revenue, which makes sense because high-income drivers make up a disproportionate share of the auto trips into downtown. The program would generate at least $130 million per year in gross revenues.Uber, Lyft, and taxis would pay a charge per ride delivered. The maximum charge any private vehicle would pay per day is $3.80. ![]() Drivers would only pay once, for the most expensive hour the vehicle traveled within downtown.Tolls would range from zero on weekends, between 11 pm and 5 am on weekdays, to $1.50 at midday to $3.80 during the afternoon rush hour.Auto trips during commute hours would decline by 7 percent.Consequently, transit trips into downtown would increase by 4 percent, even without investments in new transit service. Bus transit speeds would increase, and so would ridership.Auto travel time to and from downtown would decline by 30 percent during the morning and afternoon commute.He mixed in local research on how drivers respond to price changes and insights gathered from other toll projects across the country.įrom all the number crunching emerged a picture of how Fair and Efficient pricing could work in Seattle: He took an enormous dataset of regional trip-making behavior from PSRC and combined it with new public data from Uber (the study sponsor) on hour-by-hour travel speeds on the street network. Kitchen used to work at the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), which develops long-term transportation plans, so he knows his way around the regional data. It’s called Fair and Efficient pricing and it’s the brainchild of Matthew Kitchen of ECONorthwest, a local economic consulting firm. With gas tax revenues projected to fall because of rising fuel efficiency and vehicle electrification in the next decade, the region needs a new approach. In 2014, state and local governments within the four counties of central Puget Sound levied $7.8 billion in taxes to pay for roads, transit, and ferries that fell most heavily on the poor. Because of Washington’s exclusive reliance on sales, gas, excise and property taxes, the poorest 20 percent of households spend nearly 18 percent of their income on those taxes while the wealthiest 1 percent pay just 3 percent. Washington has the most regressive tax system in Cascadia or, in fact, anywhere in the United States, so any plan to make transportation fairer and faster should get a close look. They would also waste less time stuck in traffic because commute speeds would increase by as much as 30 percent. Workers in downtown Seattle-Cascadia’s biggest jobs hub-who earn less than the median income of $35 per hour would, as a group, receive more money for mobility than they would pay in tolls and transit fares, according to the proposal. Few low-income households would pay the toll and the revenues from higher-income households could put free, multi-modal transit passes in the hands of low- and moderate-income people who travel to downtown. A new proposal to break gridlock in downtown Seattle offers a progressive approach to get traffic moving. Critics of congestion pricing argue that the policy favors the rich and hurts the poor.
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