Andrew Coyne transportation lecture at SFU - Easing Congestion in Metro Vancouver
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 5 окт 2024
- Andrew Coyne gave a lecture at Simon Fraser University on February 25, 2014, on a unified approach to pricing cars and transit.
Transit advocates commonly suppose that subsidizing transit more heavily will induce more people to give up their cars, thus alleviating congestion. The evidence for this is scant, while a better solution is at hand: pricing roads.
Not only would road tolls automatically make transit more competitive with cars, but surface transit users would also benefit from the faster traffic flows that result. Pricing road use is the only effective way to induce people to drive less: indeed, as road use is at present rationed by time rather than money, other proposed methods (e.g., wider roads, carpooling, synchronized lights, etc.,) end up inducing people to drive more, since they reduce the time-price of using the roads. Put the revenues from road tolls toward subsidizing transit? No: subsidized transit suffers from much the same defects as subsidized roads-both mask the real price of resource use, and both encourage sprawl. Moreover, to the extent subsidies make transit less dependent on riders for revenues, they lessen incentives to innovate and improve service.
About Andrew Coyne:
Andrew Coyne is a national columnist for Postmedia/National Post and has been a regular contributor to The National's At Issue panel since 2005.
Raised in Winnipeg, he went on to study at the London School of Economics and is a fellow of the School of Public Policy and Governance at the University of Toronto. Over the past two decades he has been an editorial writer and columnist for The National Post and The Globe and Mail. He has also contributed to a number of other publications including The New York Times, National Review, Time and The Wall Street Journal.
Andrew has won two National Newspaper Awards and the Hyman Solomon Award for Excellence in Public Policy Journalism.
Learn more about SFU City Program certificates for mid-career professionals:
URBAN DESIGN CERTIFICATE
www.sfu.ca/urban-design
Excellent lecture and exemplary lighting and video quality. A pleasure to watch! Thank you, SFU.
This is literally the best and most well spoken talk I've ever heard about Urban Transportation.
This is a very well-articulated argument for congestion pricing. Well done!
Contrary to what Coyne says, public transit does have enormous positive externalities. Transit infrastructure development yields huge gains in the value of properties surrounding transit stations, so if that value is captured by the public sector (as is done in Hong Kong) then you can fund a good transit system rather than prohibitive user fees.
Payment in time actually seems like one of the most equitable ways to pay for road use. By the laws of physics everyone has an equal amount of time at their disposal. 24hrs/day. So payment in time gives everyone equal access. If you charge people in money (tolls) for road access, then you're just giving the wealthier people a free pass on the express lane, while poorer people are faced with a potentially prohibitive barrier to mobility. (Basically this is the argument that can be made against all consumption taxes.) Ha! I'm not surprised to hear that LA has private highways. Thank you USA. Why don't they just have real-time road-space auctions like they do for parking spots in SF?
To me a reasonable solution would be to build a transit system that's superior to car travel, like you can see in some european countries. When trains travel at more than 160 km/hr sitting in a car doesn't look so good anymore. Transit infrastructure development yields huge gains in property value, so if that value is captured by the public sector (as is done in Hong Kong) then it's easy to fund a good transit system.
+Alex G Andrew's toll ideas are smart but still rubbed me the wrong way - but I couldn't put my finger on why. You hit the nail on the head with your equal amounts of time description.
fairly mind numbing could read one simple paper not much here or to hear