Congestion toll in Boston?

www.bostonglobe.com

Most Mass. voters oppose congestion pricing, new Suffolk/Globe poll finds - The Boston Globe

More than 69 percent of the 500 registered voters surveyed in the Suffolk/Globe poll said they would not be willing to pay to drive to downtown Boston if there was less traffic.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

More than 69 percent of the 500 registered voters surveyed in the Suffolk/Globe poll said they would not be willing to pay to drive to downtown Boston if there was less traffic. That far outpaced the 26 percent who said they would; 5 percent said they were undecided.

It’s not as if residents say driving around the state is getting any easier. Fewer than half of those polled — 46 percent — said their daily commutes have stayed the same over the last year, while another 32 percent said they had gotten “slightly” or “significantly” worse. Just 10 percent reported it had improved.
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KCasiglio said:
www.bostonglobe.com

Most Mass. voters oppose congestion pricing, new Suffolk/Globe poll finds - The Boston Globe

More than 69 percent of the 500 registered voters surveyed in the Suffolk/Globe poll said they would not be willing to pay to drive to downtown Boston if there was less traffic.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
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I hate the Globe, the headline is so misleading. The poll shows that people wouldn't want to drive downtown if they have to pay, THATS THE POINT! That people choose other forms of transportation to get downtown.
 
soundguise said:
Isn't this basically saying that congestion pricing would work really well?

It would prevent a lot of trips by car into downtown.
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Yeah, that's my take, too. If the Globe really wanted insight on the idea, they would have also asked whether that 69% would no longer come to Boston, whether they would come by mode shift, and probably whether they would grudgingly pay more while not liking it if this became a reality. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of trips from the burbs into the city are not reduceable, so people will actually have to figure out their best option, which may or may not be paying a fee, but the implication that 69% will simply no longer come is just complete nonsense.
 
Also, the exact same thing happened in NYC. The month before congestion pricing went into effect, it polled at 32% in support vs 52% opposed amongst city residents. Since its implementation, it has consistently polled favorably amongst city residents. We just need politicians who have the guts to see through policy that is extremely well researched, but is initially controversial.
 
theSil said:
Also, the exact same thing happened in NYC. The month before congestion pricing went into effect, it polled at 32% in support vs 52% opposed amongst city residents. Since its implementation, it has consistently polled favorably amongst city residents. We just need politicians who have the guts to see through policy that is extremely well researched, but is initially controversial.
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Manhattan is waaaay more important to the NYC area than Downtown is to Boston though.
 
The geography and small size of Boston really doesn't make this a great proposal either. You'd really need at least Cambridge on board, and I'm sure the Brookline people would be furious if mode shift was to just run up the gut of Route 9 until you hit the Boston municipal border and then park, causing more traffic for them. Would the transponders just be on freeway exits in the downtown core? London, New York, Milan and other places that have done this have unambiguous high density urban areas that are both commercial and residential and are always choked with traffic. They also all have VASTLY superior public transit systems to Boston that make mode-switch feasible.

I'd love to have permanently car-free parts of the city and to have congestion pricing, but we're not there yet for Boston in my opinion.
 
Congestion pricing is a good idea in theory, but the MBTA needs to be more reliable before it can realistically be implemented. I just don't see the political support materializing without better T service.

There also needs to be clear communication about which projects would be funded by congestion pricing.
 
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themissinglink said:
There would also need to be clear communication about which specific proposals would be funded by congestion pricing.
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Yeah this is the where I'm at. We should be at the point where we can at least study and debate specific proposals. At a high level congestion pricing has been shown successful enough in other places but it's an open question how/if it would work here. The discussion would be better informed by a few alternatives to consider, looking at who should be exempted/discounted and how much, rates for different vehicle types, etc.

Even if not a general congestion pricing scheme I would at the very least like to see a pricing schemed designed to encourage right-sizing freight and delivery. Every tractor trailer turned into a box truck, or box truck turned into a van, etc is a huge win.
 
samsongam said:
I hate the Globe, the headline is so misleading. The poll shows that people wouldn't want to drive downtown if they have to pay, THATS THE POINT! That people choose other forms of transportation to get downtown.
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The single question they asked is so incoherently worded it's hard to have gotten any straight answer whatsoever out of it. "Would you be willing to pay IF there was less traffic?" Not "Would you be willing to pay FOR there to be less traffic", but as if the traffic had already magically disappeared and the roads were empty. Like it was the middle of the night or middle of the COVID pandemic or something.

Seriously...who words a question like that? And it was the only question on it that they asked amid a whole grab-bag poll of unrelated issue questions, so there's nothing in this poll to drill down on either. Trash article blown up out of a mangled non-question.


And...fully agreed with the other points made: you can't have a congestion pricing debate without narrowing down what the proceeds are actually going to pay for. If it's something people want, like more transit funding/expansion, it'd probably be much more popular in polling than throwing the proceeds in a great big mystery box!
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
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The single question they asked is so incoherently worded it's hard to have gotten any straight answer whatsoever out of it. "Would you be willing to pay IF there was less traffic?" Not "Would you be willing to pay FOR there to be less traffic", but as if the traffic had already magically disappeared and the roads were empty. Like it was the middle of the night or middle of the COVID pandemic or something.

Seriously...who words a question like that? And it was the only question on it that they asked amid a whole grab-bag poll of unrelated issue questions, so there's nothing in this poll to drill down on either. Trash article blown up out of a mangled non-question.


And...fully agreed with the other points made: you can't have a congestion pricing debate without narrowing down what the proceeds are actually going to pay for. If it's something people want, like more transit funding/expansion, it'd probably be much more popular in polling than throwing the proceeds in a great big mystery box!
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"Would you be willing to pay to drive downtown if there was less traffic?" Well if majority of people said yes to this then all those people would still be driving downtown which means there would be....just as much traffic as we currently have now.
 
sneijder said:
"Would you be willing to pay to drive downtown if there was less traffic?" Well if majority of people said yes to this then all those people would still be driving downtown which means there would be....just as much traffic as we currently have now.
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1) You don't need all or a majority to stop driving, you just need some to stop driving -- a reduction in cars.
2) Examples from every city that has implemented congestion charges shows this reduction.
 
I'm sorry if congestion pricing is as popular as the Red Sox front office, but that's reality. Why should you pay attention? Because if this scheme gets implemented people are going to put an initiative on the ballot to repeal it the first chance they get. Why wouldn't they if the plan is undefined and the money goes into the black hole that is the T? Raising fees on people in the middle of economic uncertainty is a one way ticket to unemployment for a lot of politicians.
 
JeffDowntown said:
And we probably need a plan that forward funds the transit upgrade investments, before the revenue comes in from the toll.
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Another reason we need to really get into the weeds. The MTA was able to borrow against future congestion pricing revenue to make much needed capital improvements...given that we're in year two of using the millionaires tax for operations idk if we could do the same. But I don't have any sense of what the revenue would be because we don't know what the proposed tolling scheme would look like.
 
A non-botched poll question with some degree of follow-up questioning would sure help for starters.

Why are we even prognosticating what "reality" truly is when this single throwaway poll question was so badly-worded that nothing substantive can be drawn from it? Purpose-and-need need to be defined to even breach the subject, and so does--per all other discussion here--the specific funding targets (and specifics on what it won't be funding to allay fears of misappropriation). I'm sure in the decades and decades prior to NYC's congestion toll there were tons of long-forgotten mangled polling questions that didn't ultimately say anything predictive about where public sentiment would stand because they were too mush-mouth worded to make logical sense.

Step #1 would be demanding the Globe and Suffolk do better than this at breaching the damn question.
 
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