BOULDER CO:Pricing project officially declared a failure

Its failure was clear to many locals when the GO Boulder alternative transp agency of the city was unable to gain support for a technology demonstration project in 1997. The report says that road pricing was widely perceived in Boulder as a new kind of tax, rather than as a charge which would produce major net benefits for people. And city staff who were initially supportive of road pricing were alarmed by the prospect of city revenues being more dependent on road revenues, and less on sales taxes.

“Many city staff members were not convinced of the need for new solutions as opposed to traditional roadway expansion,” the report says. It describes an “undertow” generated by a “vocal minority” opposed to pricing and changes in the political makeup of the city council that made it less sympathetic, transforming a “vocal majority of supporters into a silent minority” on the city council.

City vs Rest

The report says there was a gulf between city residents and those outside the city in Boulder county. City people said they already used ‘alternative’ modes to the single occupant vehicle, while county people felt there WAS no alternative to the SOV.

The technology demonstration would have equipped 250 personal cars with transponders and charged the participants a peak and non-peak rate for vehicle-miles traveled and then granted them a fixed sum compensation - so that those who drove more than the average would be out of pocket somewhat, while those who drove less than average would be ahead.

In 1997 when this was being pushed forward the media turned to savage ridicule of the idea, one saying: “even the communists never tried this... You people are out of your minds.” Boulder was called stuff like “nine square miles surrounded by reality.” It probably did not help that Boulder has taken its politically correct ideas to some extraordinary lengths, for example showering prizes and adoring publicity on a woman plumber who arrived at her job by bicycle with an extraordinary contraption with her lengths of pipe and other plumbers paraphernalia trailing behind. Or that the GO Boulder project spoke of the need for people to be provided ‘personal trainers’ in planning their in-town travel. And then there was the naming of Boulder’s three small bus transit routes Hop, Skip and Jump – a kind of kindergartenish trendiness that seemed to set the place up for dismissive derision.

The final report says that the City of Boulder actually prevented dissemination of the results of some of the project’s technical analyses because it grew tired of the negative publicity surrounding the project. The project research and modeling for example showed that pricing would have few adverse effects on the poor yet this was not disseminated and opponents constantly attacked pricing as inequitable, and favoring the wealthy.

Bankruptcy of trendy anticarism

Boulder city in the past has consistently adopted transport master plans calling for deep reductions in automobile travel and then done little more than spend extra money on subsidized transit and exhortations to bicycle and suchlike, with the predictable result that transit use increased slightly its mode share. But transit usage and cycling is so small anyway this had no impact on the roads. Promised benefits failed to appear.

75% Alternative Transp planned

In 1996 a “Master Plan Update” was adopted calling for a 43% absolute reduction in SOV travel by 2020. ‘Alternative transport’ was to grow to 75% mode share, autos to go down to 25%! Such absurd gesturings against the automobile apparently made the city councilors of the time feel environmentally righteous. But the voters reacted, and voted most of them out of office in the next elections. By the end of the study, the report says, only two of the original nine councillors who initiated the GO Boulder project remained in office.

The report’s authors use words carelessly suggesting a certain woolymindedness may have hampered the pricing project. They seem unable to make a distinction, for example, between traffic and congestion, often treating the two as synonymous. Traffic, surely, is just people making vehicular journeys on the roads. Traffic, depending on its relation to available road capacity, may be either free-flowing or congested. You relieve congestion (not traffic) either by dissuading people from making some trips (reducing traffic), or by enlarging roadway capacity to carry the traffic.

Support for roads now

The final report says that there is now a sentiment in Boulder for expanding roadway capacity, an idea that was an unspeakable heresy in 1995, when the project was launched. Demand suppression was the only legitimate road policy back then. If the pricing project has done nothing else it has apparently persuaded most in Boulder of the folly of eschewing all capacity enhancement. The congestion relief report suggests that this new road capacity should be priced, but laments that the effects “on traffic” will be minimal. It means: effects “on congestion.” Another key element to a future pricing program, the report says, is a “consensus agreement that traffic and mobility are severe.”

“Severe mobility”

Maybe people in Boulder are wondering what ‘severe mobility’ might be? The kind of phrase used by rather confused people? People you wouldn’t trust with the power to price your roads apparently. (Contact go.boulder.co.us)