“Bra!” to Congestion Pricing

The IMPACTS conference web site turns out to be a treasure trove of the latest information on how congestion pricing is working in the European cities that are trying it.

Below are a few slides from the presentation delivered by Gunnar Soderholm (PDF file), Stockholm’s Deputy Chief Executive Officer. If you are a transportation geek and you read Swedish, you will love this:

I need to double-check this, but from Soderholm’s presentation it looks like congestion pricing reduced the daily number of vehicles traveling in and out of the Stockholm by about 22% or nearly 100,000 vehicles total.

In September, three months before it started, public opinion was firmly against the idea of
congestion pricing. By May, after five months of living with the
system, public opinion had completely flipped. That is, if “bra” means “yes” and
“daligt” means “no.” If not, then, well, the Swedes hate congestion pricing.

Stockholm’s suburbanites appear to be in favor of congestion pricing at just about the same rate as the general population. Perhaps outer borough New Yorkers would be less opposed than people think if the revenues raised by congestion pricing were poured back into transit improvements.

Most remarkable, even motorists appear to be coming around to supporting congestion pricing. 

Experts were surprised by how relatively quickly and easily this high-impact change was adopted and accepted.

Congestion pricing is a single measure that can have a major impact on a city’s output of climate change-causing carbon dioxide emissions. Can you imagine a day when New York City’s transportation agency concerns itself with global climage change?