2007 Foundation for Economic Education. www.fee.org
September 18, 2007
by Becky Akers
Becky Akers is a freelance writer who lives in Manhattan.
To combat the rush-hour traffic threatening Western civilization, American mayors are flocking to "congestion pricing." This scheme is popular worldwide because it combines yet another automotive tax with surveillance cameras at every intersection.
The theory fueling congestion pricing is the one spanning our automotive lives: driving is a "privilege" government dispenses. Driving at rush hour is an even bigger privilege. So far the state has granted this privilege for free (yep, the dozens of highway, gas, sales, license, and car taxes we pay don't count). But the gravy train is ending. There's no reason we should expect to drive cars we've bought on roads we've paid for when everyone else does. That's not how the market works, say politicians who've ridiculed, regulated, and mooched off the market their entire careers. Willfully confusing supply-and-demand with control-and-command, they insist that roads at rush hour are a scarce commodity. Serfs who want to use them then will have to pay. A lot. Hopefully, that will force commuters onto mass transit, clearing the streets for Leviathan's limousines.
Congestion pricing does thin traffic a bit, anywhere from 13 or 16 percent (in Singapore and London) to 20 percent (Stockholm). But reducing traffic is only an excuse. The state's real reasons for pushing this deviltry lie in its cameras and cash.
London's socialist mayor imposed congestion pricing on his hapless subjects in 2003. Drivers who enter "the zone between 7 a.m. and 6:30 p.m. [notice the expanding definition of "rush hour" as "daylight"], except on weekends and holidays," pay about $16 per day; they are billed when computers match their addresses to the "multiple images of [their] license plates" captured by "700 video cameras," as the New York Times explained in 2005. The cameras have since multiplied because congestion pricing, like all government programs, continually expands. Meanwhile, "there is nowhere in London you can avoid getting photographed and recorded," according to Yosef Sheffi. As director of the Center for Transportation and Logistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he advocates congestion pricing for Boston. He dismisses those who object to starring in surveillance films as hopelessly outdated: "There is also fear of privacy issues. According to the CEO of Sun Microsystems, 'You have no privacy in today's age. Get over it.'" Accurate if tragic advice for Londoners, whose city "has the most surveillance cameras per capita in the world: one for every 55 people...."
New York City's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, longingly eyes those cameras and their loot while ignoring the congestion government causes. Tolls rob drivers at most entrances into Manhattan, backing up traffic for miles. Garbage trucks block streets as a couple of workers slowly pitch an apartment building's mountain of trash into the hopper. These civil servants are never ticketed however many cars pile up behind them. The City also regularly closes roads for everything from street fairs to 9/11 commemorations. Taking even a single side street out of play on this densely populated island creates huge jams while depriving drivers who pay for roads of their use. Yet rather than resolving these mundane problems, Bloomberg highlighted congestion pricing in his blueprint for tyranny, "PlaNYC," unveiled last April. He billed it "the most sweeping plan to enhance [sic for "fundamentally rearrange citizens' lives per Mike Bloomberg's whims"] New York's urban environment in the city's modern history." Remember that this guy obsesses over what his fellow citizens eat and where they smoke; you can imagine how few details of their lives escape PlaNYC's unhealthy interest.
Bloomberg's ploy enables the City's government to wreak even more havoc than it already has. It will force people to live where they don't want to ("Use upcoming rezonings to direct growth toward areas with strong transit access"), in ways they don't want to ("Continue to develop programs to encourage home ownership, emphasizing affordable apartments over single-family homes"), while raising their taxes ("Continue to pursue creative financing strategies to reach new income brackets"). Altogether, it contains a staggering 127 "initiatives." These include pushing commuters onto the subways via an $8 tax on each car entering certain parts of Manhattan. Both the price and the area covered by this double-dipping will rise faster than baking bagels; they already have, even in the planning stages. Proponents in 2005 and 2006 were suggesting a $7 tax on roads between the Battery and 60th Street. Now they've upped not only the amount but the northern boundary, which extends to 86th Street. Look for the street number and the price to continue escalating.
Peddling Snake Oil
With help from cronies in business and the media, Bloomberg has been peddling congestion pricing as zealously as snake oil; he even taught bureaucrats from other cities how to foist it on their denizens. If you live in Albuquerque, Austin, Chicago, Houston, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, or Trenton, tremble: your masters took lessons from Mike. Which recalls Charles James Fox's lament regarding King George III: "It is intolerable that it should be in the power of one block-head to do so much mischief."
Bloomberg excuses his mischief because of a study predicting the state of the City over the next 23 years. Our taxes bought this forecast from McKinsey & Co., a firm that employs a bevy of very expensive "problem solvers" but not a single seer. No doubt its "study" -- the term charlatans use for a guess gussied up in jargon -- is as wrong as the advice it gave AT&T in 1983, when its "problem solvers" allegedly pooh-poohed cell phones as no more than a niche market. Yet Bloomberg dictates "sweeping" changes in New Yorkers' lives because these oracles pretend to know what will happen two decades from now.
We expect no better from politicians and their consultants. But how to explain congestion pricing's embrace by a conservative think tank? It's called a "market-based" solution to traffic, as though entrepreneurs charge customers multiple times for the same service. Joining them in this slander are the corporate elite, specifically the Partnership for New York City, "a select group of two hundred CEOs ('Partners') from New York City's top corporate, investment and entrepreneurial firms" and its constituents. David Rockefeller founded the Partnership in 1979 with a chilling objective: to "allow business leaders to work more directly with government and other civic groups to address broader social and economic problems in a 'hands on' way." Who knew that CEOs stranded in traffic is a "broader social and economic problem"? No doubt they will glide about town more pleasantly when everyone else is banished to the subways.
Perhaps that's why the elites forever hype mass transit. A serf's place is on a bus or train: he shouldn't be clogging the roads for his betters. Under congestion pricing, taxpayers who refuse to submit to the subway's indignities (which now include random and warrantless searches), who prefer the freedom and independence a car brings, will pay for their uppity attitude.
Yet again.
US Senator Lincoln Chafee -- who was defeated last year for re-election -- revealed Sunday to the Providence Journal that he had quietly "disaffiliated" in his voter registration from the Republican Party two months ago. Chafee said he hadn't mentioned it until now simply because nobody had asked before. The NRSC spent a significant amount of money on advertising that helped Chafee narrowly survive a conservative primary challenege. Chafee emphasized he still feels close to many in the Rhode Island Republican Party, but his objections were entirely focused upon the national party. "It's not my party any more," he explained. Chafee's criticism was mainly focused upon three areas: "abandoning fiscal conservatism" by passing tax cuts without spending cuts and thus creating a "permanent deficit"; the Iraq War; and the lack of GOP support for environmental protection. Chafee says he very much enjoys his current job as a distinguished visiting fellow at Brown University.
