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IF IT'S BROKE ... FIX IT
What, we wondered, would a disparate group of planners and planning commentators say if we asked them to cite the single thing that would most improve our communities in the 21st century... Reproduced with permission from Planning magazine v. 61, no. 12 (December 1995), p. 8. Photograph not included. Copyright © December 1995 by the American Planning Association, Suite 1600, 122 South Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60603-6107.
Get real. For 50 years, planners in this country have been saying that when people "come to their senses," they'll realize that sprawl is bad and start using transit instead of the private automobile. But people have already decided that the suburbs are where they want to live, and the car is how they want to get there. If we keep waiting for them to come to their senses, we will get even more sprawl. What we could do is universal road pricing. We could equip every vehicle in the U.S. with an electronic transponder. Drivers would pay a monthly charge based on the distances they travel, with additional charges for peak hours. You'd pay for your car the same way you pay for your phone or electricity. The charges would substitute for the Rube Goldberg-type of funding apparatus that's now in place--all the gas taxes, and vehicle stickers, and the hidden subsidy that comes out of the property tax. The idea is not as Buck Rogers-ish as it sounds. We're close to possessing the technology to do it now. Within 20 years it should be ready. It's a simple, free-market, customer-oriented response to the problem. It gets people to confront the actual costs of their travel decisions. People don't do that now. I think we would see a substantial change in travel behavior with a system like this in place. It won't be easy to implement. The public will see it as a new tax and will object to the Big Brother aspects, but I really don't see any other mechanism on the horizon that's better suited to cut down on auto use--and indirectly curtail leapfrog development.
David Schulz, director of the Infrastructure Technology Institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, former Milwaukee public works director, and former budget director in Chicago.
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