00648247

Component

This paper addresses the implications for congestion pricing of institutional, administrative, and political issues. Traffic congestion occurs within and across entire metropolitan areas without regard to local political or jurisdictional boundaries. It occurs on county or state roads or on federally aided highways. It is the noncongruence of the problem--traffic congestion--with preexisting institutional arrangements--governmental jurisdictions--that gives such force and complexity to the institutional question of who should be responsible for creating and administering congestion pricing. Moreover, congestion has become a regional problem affecting entire metropolitan areas, and the lack of regional institutions possessing sufficient power and authority to address and manage congestion at the regional level poses a major barrier to implementing congestion pricing programs. This paper discusses six institutional and administrative characteristics of importance to the question of what an idealized congestion pricing system would look like institutionally and administratively. These are: geographic scope, legal authority, financial capacity, degrees of autonomy, political accountability, and assignment of goals. An inventory is then made of the available institutional alternatives for implementing congestion pricing. The following 15 alternatives are described: annexation; voluntary cooperation; privatization; private coordination, planning, and policy promotion organizations; general-purpose local governments; special-purpose local governments; metropolitan districts; metropolitan planning agencies; state-mandated metropolitan planning; regional compacts; highway departments; federally rooted regional agencies; one-tier consolidations; two-tier consolidations; and three-tier consolidations. The strengths and weaknesses of these alternatives are then assessed.

This paper was presented at the TRB/CBASSE Congestion Pricing Symposium, June 23-24, 1993.

00648239

English

pp 216-249

1994

Transportation Research Board Special Report

0309055059

Print

References; Tables (1)

Alternatives analysis; Congestion pricing; Governments; Implementation; Institutional issues; Political factors; Socioeconomic development; Traffic congestion

Jurisdiction

Economics; Highways; Public Transportation; Research; Society; I10: Economics and Administration

TRIS, TRB, ATRI

Jun 23 1994 12:00AM

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