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congestion pricing @ San Francisco County Transportation authority
The SFCTA - San Francisco County Transportation Authority currently conducts a "mobility, access and pricing study" to explore congestion pricing opportunities. Several workshops and lunch webinars are organized to inform and gather feedbacks from San Francisco citizens and Business about the upcoming pilots scenarios on congestion pricing. The following post are insights from Wednesday 07/27 and thursday 07/28 workshops.
First of all, we would like to say that here at Utilisacteur have been really happy to see some great user participation tools employed to generate and manage user feedbacks such as real time voting, opinion scales ... Those public and open discussion spaces around both the previous studies made on the subject and upcoming project scenarios and possible guidelines introduced an estimated +5 year project timeline.
What if downtown cordon was having a congestion pricing, a fee of 3$ during specific timelaps in the pm time ? One amongst the other scenarios that the SFCTA identified, where a 3$ fee seems to be the key value to balance people decisions in terms of mobility choices. "Should I rather take the car or an improved public transit system to go there" ? Congestion pricing do appear to be one option amongst other in people votes, calling for a set of solutions (dynamic lighting to speed bus and bike lane,...) But the SFCTA scenario to invest a significant part of the outcomes of such a congestion pricing into transportation improvement obtained the majority of the votes.
How did the people reacted ? Both in the two workshops we followed, a 50 / 50 % reaction on the idea.
Though it is rather hard for non specialists to get a clear view on transit system scaling issues planned on a +20/ + 30 years of growth planning and obscures modeles and theory, people did agree that the situation was already worse of paying attention.
The project challenge citizen concerns AND the very organisation of the county transportation authority. An organisational change is needed in the County / regional / state / governance in order to allow county authority to toll. If transportation authorities tends to consolidate at a regional level, the organisational change needed at the county level involve at least a new toll authority or a shared governance, the question is open...
Payment solutions. Amongst multiple possibilities that were studies, camera controls seems to be the option favorited by the SFCTA ...
Stay tuned...