a proposed exemption for lower
income residents.
According to Yermack there are no
technological barriers to offering
exemptions. “The system can allow
for an infinitive number of variations
and exceptions,” he says. “It’s more
about what the political process
generates.”
Are exemptions fair?
To this point John Rennie
Short, a professor of public
policy at the University of
Maryland and an expert in
urban planning, warns that
handing out too many
exemptions can be “a
slippery slope”. Short says: “The
more exemptions you give the more
it means you’re not pricing the
congestion properly and the thing
soon loses credibility.”
Another argument against
exemptions is that they are punitive
to everyone else, says Slevin. With
legislators setting a benchmark of
US$1bn
The expected
annual revenue from
the NYC congestion
scheme
Congestion in Manhattan is caused by the increase in ridesharing,
the way traffic lanes are used for construction purposes
and the way main traffic lanes are now pedestrian plazas and bus lanes.
None of those things are going to change with congestion pricing
Mitchell Moss, professor of urban policy and planning, New York University
Singapore has long
been at the vanguard
of congestion pricing –
having pioneered the first such
scheme back in 1998.
The ITS World Congress host
city is once again pushing the
boundaries of what’s possible
for urban road pricing with
a scheme to overhaul its
existing model with a new
GNSS-based system.
The satellite-based system,
which is expected to go into
service in 2020, will be installed
by a consortium led by the
Singaporean government –
through its telecommunications
subsidiary Singtel – and
Mitsubishi, at a predicted cost
of US$400 million.
The new technology is
intended to replace the current
tag and beacon system, which
collects fees through a mix
of on-board electronic tags
and license plate recognition.
The system relies on around
80 overhead gantries at entry
points to the congestion zone.
It was partly due to the
prohibitive cost of replacing
these gantries, which are
nearing the end of their useful
life, that the Singapore Land
Transport Authority (LTA) began
exploring less infrastructureheavy
solutions.
The new scheme dissolves
the need for gantries by
connecting motorists directly to
the global navigation satellite
system (GNSS). Under the
terms of the scheme motorists
will be mandated to have onboard
electronic tags.
The new system will retain
key elements of the current
scheme, most notably variable
pricing based on current
congestion levels. By leveraging
location data from the onboard
units the system will
also be able to collate real-time
traffic data that can be fed
back to motorists in the form of
traffic alerts and advisories.
Space solutions
Singapore is reinventing the wheel for congestion pricing
once again, by introducing the world’s first satellite-based system
Congestion targets
While the city has been vocal about
the revenues it plans to raise from the
scheme there have been no targets
offered for reducing congestion, even
though that is a stated aim of the
scheme. Slevin says the focus needs
to shift.
“We don’t have a traffic reduction
goal right now, only a revenue goal,”
says Slevin. “That’s something that
needs to be looked at because people
are watching in other cities to see
what happens in New York and we
absolutely have to make it a success
and make it something that other
cities want to replicate.”
But not everyone shares Slevin’s
belief that the New York scheme can
provide such a model. Mitchell Moss,
a professor of urban policy and
planning at New York University,
thinks the scheme will have only “a
modest effect on congestion.”
“Congestion in Manhattan is
caused by the increase in ridesharing,
due to the way traffic lanes
are used for construction purposes
and due to the way we’ve taken
main line traffic lanes and devoted
them to pedestrian plazas and bus
lanes,” says Moss. “None of those
things are going to change with
congestion pricing.”
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$1 billion annually to be generated
through the scheme “if one person
pays less then that just means
everyone else has to pay more,”
she says.
One group that will likely be
exempted are ride-share and taxi
firms since they already pay a
congestion fee surcharge on all
trips south of 96th street following
new rules brought in at the start of
this year.
While taxi companies have
fought to stop congestion pricing
ride-share companies like Uber and
Lyft support it, with Uber planning
a billboard campaign to promote
public acceptance of the scheme.
Above Singapore’s
satellite-based
congestion charging
system removes the
need for gantries
NYC Congestion Charge |
052 Traffic Technology International September/October 2019
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