I’ve been asked to sum up ideas at a conference on congestion and I realise just what a difficult issue it is. Congestion is the result of a combination of economic success and transport policy failure. In a rational world, there would be sufficient incentives to ensure enough people did not jump in their cars every time they wanted to get somewhere, even to the local shops.
Congestion, in other words, is the result of market failure because road space is the last ‘good’ (in the economic sense) that is supplied free at the point of delivery and therefore is only rationed by queuing. A pure free market economist, therefore, would welcome pricing road space high enough to ensure a free flow of traffic everywhere. Oddly, that too would accord with an environmentalist, view, too where the aim would be to reduce the most damaging form of road transport, which are slow moving vehicles. The problem, however, gets more complex because once roads become clearer, more people would be attracted onto them and they may not be particularly price sensitive.
Other than road charging, there are other ways of reducing congestion. Providing more roads space, obviously, is one but that is impossible in urban environments today, both politically and practically. Reallocating road space is another, as with bus lanes. The theory, there, is that since more people travel on a bus, then it is right for the bus to be allocated extra space. However, in purely rational terms, this does not quite work, as the bus lane remains unoccupied for a large proportion of the time.
In a way, the only solution is to start from scratch. If one were developing a new city, surely the centre would be pedestrian only, with regular and frequent buses, trams and trains bringing people there. Deliveries would be allowed for a couple of hours early in the morning but there would be no place for private cars. A rational approach to congestion, therefore, would move in that direction over time, gradually squeezing cars out of city centres.
That leaves, however, an even more intractable problem over what to do with roads in suburban areas. These are just a few initial thoughts and any others from blog readers would be most welcome!
Congestion dilemma
Thursday, 7 February 2008
posted by Christian Wolmar at 04:46
5 Comments:
Roads may be "supplied" free but all travel must cost time and/or money. I cannot quantify what I am about to say, but several factors come to mind which help to explain Congestion which are not aspects of economic policy success, e.g.
1. People travel further to work than before. That is because jobs are less permanent and because jobs tend not to be in residential areas.
2. People travel further to do basic shopping than before. That is because High Street shops and corner shops have been displaced by fewer, but bigger, supermarkets and hypermarkets.
3. Goods travel further than before, because they tend to be produced in larger, more concentrated units than before, both on a national scale and a world scale.
Robert
The fundamental problem here is that transport has become a victim of the growth opportunities it originally created. We wouldn't have large metropolises if we had not built extensive roads and railway systems both to and within them. My concern has always been if you provide more transport capacity - more people move into the area to fill it up. More must be done to encourage development in smaller towns and cities and create a more balanced population distribution. Britain would have half the transport capacity problems in both terms of road, rail and air if so many people weren't all crammed into London and the Home Counties.
You are right to equate supply of road space in the way you do – I once read that it was allocated on the ‘soviet model’ – ie the state provides what they provide and it is only rationed by queuing. However, no doubt a free marketeer would also apply their logic to land use and whoever paid the highest would get to use it – so a road builder if they could pay for it, could out bid an office or house builder and build more roads (assuming drivers were prepared to pay) – thereby lies madness so ecologists would not go ‘all the way’ with this logic.
Robert is correct in citing all those causal reasons (and I would add that the growth of the dual income household makes car use higher since without that both wage earners need to work in the same locality – not always an option).
It amuses me that retailers in particular have driven down prices by transferring part of the cost of the goods back to the purchaser – ie once they had to bring everything to your local high street, village shop or corner shop using an expensive (but probably efficiently organised) distribution system the price of which was added to the item you bought. This was because the avg buyer could only travel on foot to the shop (and only store perishables for a limited period). Now all of that distribution is ‘privatised’ – since many consumers drive to a limited number of large retail points – and the buyer now meets all those costs (time, cost of fuel, purchase of vehicle etc) – the retail industry operates ‘warehouses’ called supermarkets and expects buyers to go to those warehouses. Interestingly, internet shopping reverses this (which is why you often pay a delivery charge to recognise the shift of costs back to the retailer!).
Employers have caught on to this in the same fashion, by making places of employment on business parks without enough population movement to justify proper bus services – for public transport users the best ‘business park’ is always the town centre – the traditional hub of transit system!
Dan
A much higher proportion of people have to live in town centres. BUT The problem is we already have examples of pedestrianised town centres which are unpleasant places to be outside shopping/office hours, and other towns with empty flats which are proving hard to sell or rent.
Since I am working in a company (as opposed to studying at the university), I am always amazed by the hundreds of people coming at the exact same time each morning at work and leaving at the exact same time each evening.
Because of this, peak trains are overflowing with passengers ("super dense crush-load" as one Indian Railways exec would say) while off-peak trains are basically transporting empty seats from one place to another.
I think it would be really beneficial for all of us if the government would launch a nationwide plan to spread worktimes
across the day.
Plus it would be cheaper because we wouldn't need more trains in the peak than off-peak.
Just my £0,02...
Vincent
Paris, France