Comment by kyboren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kyboren | Hacker News Reader

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I'm not disputing the negative externalities from traffic, nor the laudable goal of reducing the number of vehicles entering cities. I'm not even disputing the effectiveness of congestion pricing at achieving that goal.

But the mechanism here is highly unfair. It's obvious why rich people support congestion charges--they're rich! They don't give a shit about the $20 or whatever, and it clears the roads of those dirty poors making traffic. Bring it on!

Meanwhile the poor--already struggling with affordability and cost of living--are the ones who bear the burden. They can't afford the congestion fee, so they're forced to find some alternative way to get into the city. But that comes at an obvious utility cost; if that alternative was the best way for them to get into the city, they'd already be using it! And poor people are the ones with no time to spare, so choosing between spending $20 they don't have or spending 30 more minutes that they don't have is a Hobson's choice.

Here's my proposal: Every vehicle gets 60 free days per year with no congestion charges at all. Days 61-100 have a $1,000,000 congestion charge. Days 101-365 have a $10,000,000 congestion charge. Congestion charges will be reduced, however, to 0.1% of the driver's AGI (for days 61-100) and 1% of the driver's AGI (for days 101-365) upon application. Now even hedge fund managers in Connecticut will be inconvenienced in just the same way as poor people.

Yet somehow I believe that if that were how congestion pricing was implemented, all these Econ professors would magically discover what a bad policy congestion pricing really is!

Simpler idea that will get 90% of the benefit: amplify congestion pricing based on KBB value of the car. Zero enforcement complexity. Yes rich people could drive a shittier car to save their $5k per year or whatever, but most won't, and the few ultra-cost insensitive people will pay for vast numbers of the most cost sensitive.

Imperfect but much better than existing implementations. Really, though, the goal ought to be not only to reduce congestion, but to fairly distribute the net gain of utility among those affected.

A marginal $20 has very little utility to rich people, but 15 minutes saved in traffic has large utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility gains to the rich.

A marginal $20 has tangible utility to poor people, and 15 minutes spent finding alternative transport also has tangible utility. Congestion pricing results in large utility losses to the poor.

KBB values are an imperfect proxy for individual monetary utility but could definitely be used to more fairly distribute the utility gains from congestion pricing.

Yep, in sync with all of the above

The main problem with that scheme is that its imprecision falls exactly where I think we need the highest precision: The ultra-rich. If they're just a passenger in their driver's black SUV (maybe $100k KBB tops), they're not paying anywhere close to a commensurate share of their income on congestion fees. The upper middle class BMW driver, on the other hand, gets screwed (relatively speaking).

The congestion charge should reach each person using that infrastructure in a way that fairly impacts their available individual utility. The impracticality of achieving this goal is why, in my opinion, congestion charges are bad policy.

Avoiding a policy that makes life better for nearly everyone because it doesn't make life bad enough for the top 0.0001% is so absurd that I honestly can't believe it's the source of your real opposition.

Given the extreme wealth disparity in this country, there will be virtually no policies at all that achieve your platonic policy-making ideal. Should we just have no laws at all?

If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.

Good, because it's not. The inevitably unfair distribution of utility gains and losses is why I think congestion charges are bad policy. The fact that your proposal leaves a giant loophole for those whose utility gains are the largest is, I think, quite a reasonable objection.

> If you really care to deal with the extreme high-end, there are other mechanisms that are easier to do at small n, such as having a superlinear vehicle registration tax.

The extreme high end don't register super fancy vehicles, and if they do, even superlinear registration taxes would be a much smaller marginal utility hit than would be fair--and once again, would be an unfairly large marginal utility hit to the upper middle class.

Can you name some policies (traffic related would be great, but curious in general) that achieve your ideal?

What ideal, exactly? A fair (re-)distribution of utility?

How about "free" school lunches?

Progressive income taxes come close, though ideally they'd have more brackets with higher rates and the brackets would be graduated by both wealth and income.

The "gas guzzler" tax in California seems pretty fair to me, as does the "polluter pays" principle in general.

Specifically traffic-related: I like how California does HOV/FasTrak lanes. There is a separate lane (or even a separate segregated roadway) with free access for "high occupancy vehicles" (2+ occupants, rarely 3+). However, individual commuters can pay (with FasTrak) for access to the lane. The cost is set dynamically depending on traffic conditions; it's a realtime market for spare capacity unused by actual HOVs. (It could still be improved, though, with an AGI coefficient, but I digress). Anyway, the most important part is there are always cost-free freeway lanes available; there's always an option just to sit and wait without additional payment.

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