Clearing traffic shouldn't come at a price

Congestion can give you a headache.

So can all this talk of "congestion pricing," the rage among some transportation experts.

In theory, congestion pricing is supposed to ease traffic jams. How? By charging commuters more to drive during rush hour and less during off-peak hours. U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary E. Peters, in a visit to the suburbs on Thursday, said she supports the idea.

But as we have noted before in this space, we are not convinced congestion pricing will work in the real-life commute. In looking at a proposal to establish this pricing scheme on an experimental basis along parts of the Jane Addams Tollway (formerly the Northwest Tollway), we found that motorists could end up paying more and spending more time getting to work or getting home, depending on the time of the rush hour.

Certainly one of the potential advantages of congestion pricing is that it would have more people looking at public transit to avoid the higher rush-hour tolls. If so, that would mean fewer vehicles on the road.

But this, too, is problematic. Those who travel from suburb to suburb don't have regularly scheduled and convenient train service to their work destinations as do those who commute from the suburbs to their jobs in Chicago. After a few frustrating days of taking multiple forms of public transportation to get to work, which only adds time to the commute, you can bet these suburb-to-suburb commuters will just climb back into their cars and pay the higher tolls.

Not only does Peters think congestion pricing is a good idea. She also wants to allow states to put tolls on the now fee-free interstate highway system. What's next? Putting government cashiers at checkout lanes at the end of our driveways?

Thankfully, congestion pricing is not getting warm support from one key lawmaker in Congress, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee. And Peters won't be around much longer to push the idea in the waning days of the Bush administration, though we do like some of her other ideas, such as consolidating divisions of the Department of Transportation to save money and improve management.

What are good alternatives to congestion pricing? Why not focus more on mass transit at a time when high gas prices likely do have more motorists wanting this option. Invest in convenient suburb-to-suburb train/express bus commuter options that are now missing instead of fiddling with the financing of roads.

And before Washington even considers raising the price for the privilege of using the roads, Congress needs to make roadkill of the billions of dollars in wasteful road and bridge projects that lawmakers routinely insert into road bills.

Peters could do her part in trimming the fat. She has two drivers that take her from place to place, according to The Associated Press, at a cost of $128,000 last year. She could drive herself. And in the process, ease a little of that pricey congestion in a stuffy, deficit-ridden federal budget. Easier to push for new fees on roads when you aren't doing the driving during rush hour.