The Not-So-Free Freeway

When people on the political left and right start advocating the same things, watch out. It's gonna happen. So what do liberals and libertarians agree on today? Congestion pricing.

And what is congestion pricing? It's the idea of charging people to drive on the busiest streets at the busiest hours. Libertarians have been pushing this idea for years. Their notion: toll lanes on expressways. Tired of sitting in traffic? Jump over to the toll lane (formerly known as the HOV lane) and you can zip to work . . . for a price. Under most of these proposals, drivers would attach electronic devices to their cars to be read by toll-lane sensors. The sensors would charge your toll-payment account automatically, depending on the time of day and length of your drive.

At first, liberals were aghast at the idea of charging people to drive on freeways that were meant to be, well, free. (Critics called them "Lexus lanes," because they thought only rich people would use them.) But they're coming around to the notion, although in different ways and for different reasons.

The liberal idea: Charge people to drive in congested downtowns. This idea comes from London, where Ken Livingstone, the colorful leftist mayor, pioneered the concept. Livingstone was uninterested in speeding yuppies' journeys to work. He wanted to thin downtown London's traffic. And he didn't want people to place sensors on their cars. He used security cameras, where were common in London, to record license plates. The plate numbers are compared to computer records of those who've paid to drive in an eight-square mile area of London. If you've paid the $14 fee, great; if not, expect to receive a $260 fine.

In both ways, congestion pricing seems to work. That is, it does appear to speed yuppies to work and discourage driving in congested areas. (Traffic in downtown London has declined by a third since Livingstone imposed the fees in 2003, while transit use — particularly on buses — is up.) And it's coming to a city near you.

Tolling the freeways is the first to take hold, and it's spreading fast. The latest: The Georgia Department of Transportation is preparing to add toll lanes to two interstate highways near Atlanta. Under a preliminary plan, there would be two additional lanes on each side of I-75: a toll lane for trucks only and an HOV/toll lane for motorists. An HOV/toll lane would also be added along each side of I-575.

Charging to drive in downtowns hasn't taken off yet, but it's being talked about in New York where a business group, the Partnership for New York City, is urging the city to look at it. In many respects, Manhattan would be a perfect test case; it is, after all, an island with a limited number of places to enter and exit. And there are lots of cars there: 840,000 a day south of 60th Street, the New York Times reported recently.

Still, this is such a new idea, politicians are proceeding cautiously. "Although we're always open to ideas from the business community," a spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg told the Times, "this isn't on the mayor's second-term agenda." (Bloomberg later repeated that he had no plans for such a fee.) But even radical ideas can become mainstream thinking seemingly overnight. Consider, for instance, the idea of charging people to drive on freeways.