Monday, June 25, 2012

Herbert Mohring on Congestion and Road Pricing

How To Reduce My Commuting Time (and yours) (Herbert Mohring, University of Minnesota Personalities, June 6, 2012)

Also discussed here: Essays in Transportation Economics and Policy: A Handbook in Honor of John R. Meyer (508 pages, Amazon paperback, published 1999)

Today the focus is on Professor Herbert Mohring, a pioneer in the field of urban transportation economics, who passed away on June 4, 2012 .

 

Key Quotes:   

“Professor Herbert Mohring of the University of Minnesota did much of the pioneering work in figuring out how large tolls should be. His best estimate was that an optimal toll on Interstate 35W would be of the rate of 20 cents per mile or about $2.00 to $3.00 for travel from the southern suburbs to Minneapolis”

“Congestion on roadways is an inevitable consequence of the way we charge travelers”

“Each traveler takes into account the time required to travel for himself or herself but rationally ignores the equal time cost imposed on others. The solution is to confront people with the true costs of travel in congested time periods”

“It is important the tolls be higher for peak times travel than for non-peak time travel in order to induce people to change their travel times to do so. It might even make sense to, in the toll revenues, to subsidize non-peak time travel!”
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