MoCo planners considering congestion pricing

Traffic in Montgomery County is terrible and getting worse, that much is clear. But instead of simply calling for more and more road widenings and other LOS obsession, the head of Montgomery County’s Planning Board is at least open to smarter solutions like congestion pricing.

According to the Gazette, Chairman Royce Hanson recently suggested the county consider congestion pricing “rather than continue to do what we’re doing.” Recent experience with worsening traffic in the county raises “serious questions about the extent to which we want to improve traffic flow at intersections versus moving to a system of congestion pricing,” in Hanson’s opinion.

Of course, no mention of congestion pricing is ever complete without the requisite knee-jerk (and misguided) equity argument, this time from Adrienne Gude, a staffer for at-large County Councilmember Marc Elrich. The Washington Post paraphrased Gude as concerned that “such fees could create a new set of inequities, in which lower-income residents would be forced to sit in traffic while those with more money could zip by.”

Repeat after me, Gude and Elrich: the benefits to lower-income residents from transit improvements that the zipping higher-income residents’ money would pay for far outweighs the inequity of differing speeds. There’s already a huge inequity between those rich enough to live near Montgomery’s existing transit stations or close to DC versus those who can only afford to live farther out. Congestion pricing would narrow that gap rather than widen it. The key is just to ensure the congestion pricing money goes to transit rather than paying for even more roads.