There's an interesting debate going on over London's "congestion pricing," which is a fancy phrase for the levying of confiscatory taxes on vehicle owners commuting to their jobs in the city.
Hard-left blogger Matthew Yglesias thinks it's a great idea: "Congestion pricing is working out great in London."
He cites this piece at the American Prospect, which praises London's taxes to high heaven - not only for apparently "encouraging" more people to take public transit, but for helping "lower income residents ... as most don't have cars, don't drive, and are more likely than wealthy residents to use public transit."
There you have it: The social engineering benefits of environmental programs. It's not just about reducing congestion or clearing the air of pollutants. We need to help the poor get a lift on city's gritty double-deckers!
(Actually, London's discontinued double-decker routes due to the disparate impact of that form of public transportation on the disabled.)
Being a car-loving Southern Californian, I don't cotton too well the the notion of congestion pricing.
A recent articles in the Los Angeles Times highlighting the London program's impact on the middle class only confirmed my suspicions:
The Hackings, like many of their neighbors, are a two-car family. Every morning, Giles Hacking gets into his Mercedes CL500 in West Kensington and drives to his office across town near London Bridge.
Sarah Hacking piles the three children into the Jeep Cherokee and drops them off at their schools. Often, her mother pitches in and delivers one of the youngsters.
Soon, though, multi-car families like the Hackings may be wishing all they had to contend with was London's $8-a-gallon gasoline. In an unusual municipal experiment aimed at fighting global warming where the rubber meets the road, the British capital in October is to begin imposing a $50-a-day carbon emissions fee on every gas-guzzling private vehicle driven in the central city.
Even for the Hackings, who live in one of London's better neighborhoods and earn a good income from an old family import/export business, that will be a significant jolt: $100 a day for the school and work runs, $150 if Grandma gets involved.
"It's outrageous," said Sarah Hacking, expressing a sentiment that appears to elicit a strong amen from many of those here who drive the big sport utility vehicles that Mayor Ken Livingstone refers to derisively as "Chelsea tractors."
"We'd have a massive loss if we tried to sell our cars. And I can't have a tiny little car because I have three children who go to three different schools," she said.
"At the moment, we just have to pay. We really have no choice."
The new fee, adopted by the mayor after a long consultation with the public, has prompted threats of a lawsuit from Porsche and anger from many London drivers, some of whom have vowed to make it a central issue in the campaign leading to the mayoral election May 1.
For five years, London has been assessing drivers a daily "congestion charge," now set at $16, to drive into the central city and a large swath around it, a fee designed to tackle the infernal bottlenecks that have turned much of London into a parking lot.
The program has become a test case for major cities around the world. The New York City Council this week voted for a three-year trial program that would impose an $8 charge on vehicles entering Midtown and Lower Manhattan, a plan that still needs approval from the state Legislature.
San Francisco has studied imposing a charge as a way of easing central-city traffic jams; cities in Norway and Sweden have also flirted with congestion pricing; and Singapore has been charging downtown drivers since 1975.
But London's pending carbon dioxide emissions charge goes beyond traffic control and establishes one of the first significant municipal climate change programs in the world.
Oh yeah, congestion pricing's "working great in London."
Note that if one owns a "low emitting" vehicle the city's going to eliminate the congestion fee.
I'd say the policy discriminates against middle class working families with children.
But hey, the poor will be able to get around town better!
Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times
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