Would Congestion Pricing Ease Traffic?

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A controversial plan to raise money for road projects and help ease this area's traffic congestion is about to be studied here in the Washington area, if the federal government agrees to fund the project.

It's called congestion pricing. It reportedly works in London and Stockholm but has never been tried here.

That may change. Washington area governments are thinking about charging commuters a fee to drive on existing roadways during rush hour.

"It's a pretty heavy duty approach," says Ron Kirby, director of transportation planning for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.

"It's really driven by a recognition in a congressional reports that the gasoline tax is running out of gas," Kirby says.

Charging user fees, he says, might also reduce traffic.

"The argument is that a lot of folks that are caught up in the congestion really don't need to be there at that time and could easily adjust if there were, you know, an incentive to do so, and then the people who really do need to be there would have a much better travel condition," said Kirby.

Some commuters say they don't have a choice.

"People have to get to and from work and we have 9 to 5 jobs," says Carla Hill who commutes from Maryland to the District of Columbia every day. "You have set work hours so I don't see how that's going to really deflate the transportation problems. I don't."

Neither does AAA.

"They call that trying to reduce travel demand. We think that's bogus," says AAA Mid-Atlantic's Lon Anderson.

Anderson says he supports tolls along new roadways like the ICC in Maryland and Beltway HOT Lanes in northern Virginia.

But "to take a congested road out there that's not a toll road, that's not new capacity and say 'well maybe if we charge tolls on our rush hour we could reduce traffic,' we think that's a bad idea," said Anderson.

COG's Kirby says all they're doing is seeking federal funding to study the matter. "It's a great theory. The technology's there. But it's going to impact people's lives. And that's the issue."