Four hundred thousand people drive into D.C. each day for work and for fun, and the fact that none of them pays for the traffic and pollution they create has peeved more than a few city denizens. Asking drivers to cough up a few bucks to access our fair city is not a new idea, with everyone from local residents to the Post’s Marc Fisher airing the idea out. Even Mayor Fenty (following the lead of his NYC BFF Michael Bloomberg) has said he’s considered the idea, recently telling WTOP radio, “You do have a lot of commuters who use our infrastructure and don’t pay any taxes.”
Councilmember Marion Barry jumped on the bandwagon as well, introducing legislation yesterday along with Kwame Brown and Harry Thomas to study the idea of assessing commuters and tourists a fee by placing toll booths at all of the city’s street entrances.
Now, we could be hearing ol’ Marion wrong, but did he say tollbooths? It’s not that the idea of a congestion charge is bad. Similar fees have been quite successful in cities such as London, Stockholm, and parts of Singapore, and it’s worth exploring if it could work for D.C. It’s the idea of putting a tollbooth on every road that crosses into D.C. that is astoundingly impractical. Tollbooths mean lines of idling cars inching forward to hand over their money, creating both traffic and pollution – two of the problems congestion fees are supposed to help with. The use of EZ-Pass tags could speed things up, but they are far from universal. The construction, maintenance, and staffing of tollbooths would also lessen the revenue generated by congestion pricing, further counteracting its purpose. Let’s also not forget that, with dozens of main roads and side streets to cover, the logistics of such an undertaking are, well, illogical.
Like we said, it’s possible that Councilman Barry was simply confused (wouldn’t be the first time), and he really meant to propose the sophisticated electronic toll collection systems that have been set up in other cities that charge a congestion fee. If that’s the case, we suggest he hop on over to the Wilson Building to amend his proposal. If not, we have to declare this idea dead on arrival.
Photo by billjacobus1
