Seattle’s Road Pricing Pilot Project

Traffic Choices Study: Summary Report - A Global Positioning System Based Pricing Pilot Project: Evaluating Traveler Response to Variable Road Tolling Through a Sample of Volunteer Participants (40 page pdf, Puget Sound Regional Council, Seattle, 2008)

Today’s focus is a summary report of a study completed 3 years ago aimed at assessing the feasibility of congestion and road pricing using GPS technology in a medium sized city which has endured considerable delays because of traffic congestion. The report concluded that large (“dramatic”) economic benefits could be realized by such a system but that public concerns need to be carefully considered – and a number of issues are listed.



Key Quotes:

“congestion in urban areas is getting worse. The standard approaches, such as building more roads, urban mass transit systems, even better land use planning, are not doing enough to solve the problem”

“they spend 40 percent more time traveling by automobile during peak periods than they would spend if congestion were not present. Estimates of the cost of congestion..range from between $1.5 billion to $2 billion annually”

“roadway pricing is based on charging a variable toll: one that is higher on congested routes at congested times, offering a lower cost option when demand is less.”

“Primary aims of the study were to:

• accurately describe behavioral response to congestion-based tolling of roadways
• better understand issues of policy related to implementation of road tolling
• test integrated system of technical solutions to problem of tolling large network of roads without deploying substantial physical hardware on the roadside
• familiarize the public and policy makers with road network tolling
• generate price response data for use in other modeling and analysis
• develop an understanding of technological applications and standards, and
• better define a set of policy issues to be addressed in actual program design”

“Conclusions of Traffic Choices Study:

1. Observed response of drivers to tolls suggests there is a dramatic opportunity to significantly reduce traffic congestion and raise revenues for investment….. A conservative analysis of the benefits of network tolling in the Puget Sound region indicates that the present value of net benefits could exceed $28 billion over a 30-year period.
2. Not all aspects of a road network tolling system have been fully demonstrated yet. But the core technology for satellite-based (and whole road network) toll systems is mature and reliable…..The costs for GPS-based tolling systems are dominated by the initial investment in in-vehicle tolling equipment, and the communication of data during operations.
3. A large-scale U.S. deployment of a GPS-based road tolling program will depend on proven systems, a viable business model, and public acceptance of underlying concepts.. Road users are particularly interested in the question of how revenues will be used”

“Heavy vehicles are tolled on major roads in a few European countries, and the Netherlands is making real progress toward a national kilometer charging program to be implemented for heavy vehicles in 2011 and all other vehicles by 2016”

Related articles

• Mayor urged to tackle congestion (bbc.co.uk)
• Go with road tolls, Environment Commissioner tells GTA (thestar.com)
• Road tolls can reduce traffic and pollution: watchdog (ctv.ca)
• Study: Building Roads to Cure Congestion Is an Exercise in Futility (dc.streetsblog.org)
• Public-private toll project nears bidding (ajc.com)
• Managing Traffic Congestion with Rewards (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)
• Road Pricing Demonstration Project in UK (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)
• Tax cars coming into the city: report (heraldsun.com.au)
• Building More Roads Only Causes More Traffic (fastcompany.com)