You know already about the ODOT project for some kind of decongestion pricing on the I-5 and I-205 corridors in the Portland area.
Now, the City of Portland itself is also formally initiating a project to evaluate decongestion pricing on city streets.
About it
the Oregonian says
Portland City Council approved a plan Wednesday to study short-and-long-term strategies to charge people to use city streets, an effort intended to reduce congestion and curb carbon emissions as the region expects as many as 500,000 new residents by 2040.
The city will create a Pricing for Equitable Mobility task force to study and recommend potential road user fees – such as cordons, where drivers are charged to use certain streets in the city center or potentially more robust freeway tolls in the area. The task force will meet later this year and is expected to offer initial recommendations in summer 2020 and final recommendations in the spring of 2021.
This will be something to watch and quite possibly to emulate or adapt. So far our "congestion" action proceeds in denial of our climate problem, and we will need to refocus from solutions that expand road supply or road capacity towards solutions that better manage existing supply and redirect mobility towards less carbon-polluting modes.
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Mostly we are avoiding pricing and demand-side solutions -
and so we shoot ourselves in the foot |
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