Autonomous vehicles work. They are already replacing full-time service drivers in Uber, Lyft, and taxis. Delivery vehicles might come soon. Corporate fleet vehicles. And the big jump, of course, will be when they're available as private vehicles. It's possible that the costs are high enough … [Read more...]
Congestion Pricing: Traffic Solver or Sin Tax?
The goal of congestion pricing is not to penalize car trips but to smooth demand over a more extended time to reduce congestion. Unfortunately, many new congestion pricing schemes seem designed to ban cars rather than manage demand for car trips. This article appeared originally in Caos … [Read more...]
Interview with Parking Guru Donald Shoup
Marcos Paulo Schlickmann, a transportation specialist and collaborator at Caos Planejado, our Brazilian partner website, recently interviewed Professor Donald Shoup, who answered questions about private and public parking issues. Private parking Marcos Paulo Schlickmann: What is your opinion on … [Read more...]
Rothbard The Urbanist Part 7: Pricing Highways
Surprise!! I've had the intent to wrap-up the Rothbard The Urbanist series for a long time, and it's been sitting on my todo list for over 6 years. I want to thank Jeffrey Tucker, then at mises.org, and now at FEE.org and liberty.me for enthusiastically granting permission to reprint excerpts … [Read more...]
If highways push traffic onto local roads, why not toll them too?
Peter Gordon blogs about a paper he presented at the Transportation Research Board conference in DC: My friends and I just presented this paper at the Transportation Research Board meetings in Washington DC. We tested the effects of tolling Los Angeles' freeways in the peak hours (we tested 10 … [Read more...]
Bloomberg pokes (again) at hornet’s nest of entitled drivers
The New York Daily News broke the story yesterday that New York lawmakers are once again trying to push congestion pricing through the state legislature, a task at which Mayor Michael Bloomberg failed in 2008 after meeting fierce resistance from outer borough and suburban drivers. Learning from his … [Read more...]
Links
1. Laneway housing, Vancouver vs. Toronto. 2. New York state lawmakers want to ban using a phone or listening to headphones while crossing streets. Unfortunately for us pedestrians, there are very few limited access, grade-separated walkways, so in essence this would criminalize listening to an … [Read more...]
London congestion pricing, then and now
It's already Sunday and I've exhausted my cache of unread blog posts from the week, so I went in search of new blogs to read and can across this really good one: Spatial Analysis. A post from December has this set of maps – private turnpikes in 18th century London and the congestion zone map in the … [Read more...]