Congestion Charging

Two interesting perspectives on road pricing, from two interesting thinkers. Firstly Tim Harford asks why climate change (a potential, future problem) receives far more attention than traffic congestion (a real, current problem):

If climate change ever begins to have the same impact on our lives that congestion does today, it will be a dark day indeed. Think about the delays; the uncertainties; think about the lengths big-city dwellers have to go to in an effort to avoid traffic. Then think about how severely the climate would need to change before it had the same effect on your daily routine.

Secondly John Adams (with a letter in The Guardian), says that road pricing is not the solution:

Congestion pricing is not the answer. It will simply disperse the problem into those parts of the country currently least congested, encouraging yet more sprawl and low-density, car-dependent land-use patterns.

Whilst I'm at it, I should update my original post on John by linking to a city-planning trial run to remove traffic lights. According to The Telegraph:

"We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt,...It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk."

Comments

[Jim]

Tim Harford said:

"If climate change ever begins to have the same impact on our lives that congestion does today, it will be a dark day indeed."

Spoken like a true cosseted rich man. If congestion ever begins to have the impact on our lives that climate change is already having on some extremely poor people in far-flung parts of the world, that would be a pretty dark and unexpected day too. Climate change is not a 'potential, future problem', it is a real one that is already having an impact, one which will inevitably get worse. The question is how much worse.

[AJE]

I think it's fairly clear that Harford is addressing his likely audience, and whether or not that is "cosseted rich men" the point is valid. In an ideal world FT readers might treat far-flung parts of the world as they would their own backyard, but that seems awfully unrealistic as a behavioural assumption (i.e. self-interest and rational ignorance).

Regardless of how we might like things to be, given the way things are, I do think that our approach to congestion and global warming is inconsistent.

[Barbar]

Pop quiz -- what's the bigger problem:

1. Traffic congestion
2. People talk more about global warming than traffic congestion

Tim Harford seems to think it's #2. If not, why bring up global warming at all if you're interested in drawing attention to traffic congestion?