New York City officials made headlines at the beginning of this year by implementing a hotly debated and long-awaited pricing plan to decrease traffic in Manhattan. Congestion pricing, a tactic used by urban planners for several decades in different corners of the world, has had a two-pronged approach. Its dynamic pricing for certain vehicles and at certain peak hours is meant to decrease volume on busy routes and increase ridership on buses and trains. And the money raised from this traffic tax is supposed to go to NYC’s Metropolitan Transit Authority.
Could congestion pricing help tame Atlanta’s traffic? I posed that question in this column a few months ago. Besides just utter opposition to fees, I figured that the biggest obstacle to congestion pricing in Atlanta would be where the zones and lines are drawn. Unlike Manhattan, Atlanta has many ways in and out. And business and traffic are strewn all over this wide metro area.
I spoke recently with Bryan Mistele, the co-founder and CEO of traffic data firm INRIX. Mistele said that several factors make congestion pricing more sensible in the Big Apple.
“New York is a little unique, obviously, as it only has a few bridges in and out, right? A couple of tunnels and a few bridges. So very limited access to Manhattan. Very, very dense in terms of the overall urban core,” Mistele explained.
And then he referenced the backlash, which included problems with equity. The argument is that people with less money will be forced to change modes of transportation, while people with more money will cough up the cash and now drive on less congested routes.
Given how controversial, city-specific and complicated congestion pricing can be, Mistele and INRIX have strategized other ways that cities can combat gridlock. He said that a governor of a state once asked him what was the biggest thing they could do to combat congestion. “My answer shocked her. I said stagger the school schedules. The problem is every school in the city starts within a half-hour window and all the parents are all trying to get their kids to school at the exact same time.”
Credit: hshin@ajc.com
Credit: hshin@ajc.com
And Mistele shared how small fluctuations can make a big difference. “You don’t need to get, you know, 50%,” he explained. “You just need to get 10% or 15% of people off the road at peak times.” And Mistele said staggering school and even work schedules can do that with little to no cost to the commuters or the infrastructure.
Another tool Mistele discussed is timing traffic signals, something that sticks in the craw of people who get stuck waiting at consecutive lights. Mistele shared how, for example, a Taylor Swift concert attended by tens of thousands can shut down a city. Instead of engineers only retiming traffic lights once every year or five, the cycles should be dynamic to peak travel times and events.
“For instance, Austin, Texas,” Mistele said, “had a 7% reduction in overall congestion across the entire city by doing nothing other than optimizing their traffic signals. We’ve seen in cities like San Francisco and Seattle, 25%-30% reduction of wait times at the traffic lights by optimizing the traffic signals.”
And Mistele shared another staggering traffic stat. “About 25%-30% of traffic in an urban environment are people driving around looking for parking.” He suggested that more parking vendors use sensors to alert people to the capacity of their lots and also share that data with Google and other apps, so people can directly navigate to available spaces and not waste time looking.
Mistele also recommends cities dedicate certain spots that had been reserved for street parking to be designated drop-off points for rideshare or deliveries.
And Mistele said the beauty of all of these suggestions is that they do not require major, expensive infrastructure projects. They are all fairly simple ways to inform, shift, cycle and assign traffic to make it move more efficiently.
Mistele and the INRIX team have the numbers to back that up.
Doug Turnbull has covered Atlanta traffic for over 20 years and written “Gridlock Guy” since 2017. Doug also co-hosts the “Five to Go Podcast,” a weekly deep dive on stories in motor sports. Contact him at fireballturnbull@gmail.com.
About the Author
Keep Reading
The Latest
Featured
