Kshama Sawant: Barriers to congestion tolling in Seattle ‘seem insurmountable’
Feb 28, 2020, 9:18 AM | Updated: 10:13 am
Seattle Councilmember Kshama Sawant. (Seattle Channel)
(Seattle Channel)
As Seattle continues to look into whether or not congestion tolling is feasible in its downtown core, one city councilmember remains skeptical it could ever work.
Sawant: Congestion tolling in Seattle would be ‘burdensome and unjust’
In a presentation from the city’s Office of Sustainability and Environment to a council committee on Tuesday, OSE director Jessica Finn Coven noted that an equitable approach is the priority for any congestion pricing model.
Even so, Councilmember Kshama Sawant expressed skepticism about whether that approach was even possible.
“There is no evidence whatsoever that there is any economic model that allows congestion pricing to be done equitably,” she noted. “Generally, I don’t think it’s honest to say that we are doing something to find equitable approaches — by definition tolling is a regressive approach.”
The Seattle Department of Transportation described its own goals in devising a tolling system last spring, focusing on variable pricing and targeted exemptions for low income communities.
On a broader scale, supporters have touted it as a means toward dramatically reducing carbon emissions and traffic. After being implemented in cities like London and Stockholm, travel times were reduced 10 to 33 percent. Those cities also had anywhere from a two-and-a-half to 22 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Still, according to Sawant — and those within OSE — the issue of equability has yet to be effectively addressed in any city currently using congestion tolling.
“Somebody who doesn’t know about this should not walk away with an idea that there is an equitable model for congestion pricing, because there isn’t,” Sawant said. “From an economic and statistical standpoint, it seems almost impossible to have [an equitable system].”
“The statistical barriers seem insurmountable,” she added.
Uber advocating for downtown Seattle tolling
OSE Director Coven didn’t rule it out in Seattle entirely, though, citing the city’s history as a proving ground for many progressive programs.
“There is no model for what a truly equitable system looks like, but that’s where Seattle has always jumped in and created the model nobody else had,” she described. “Maybe we can’t, [but] we’re not asking the question presupposing the answer.”
As it stands right now, plans to create a pilot program in Seattle have been slow to materialize. While OSE is currently working with SDOT on developing a roadmap, the city is also “not even at the point where we know what that pilot would look like.”
“We don’t have any model right now for congestion pricing yet,” Coven admitted.
