Relieve Congestion by Paying People NOT to Commute by Car at Rush Hour

They Pay Farmers Not to Grow Crops, Don’t They?(Richard Mudge, Eno Center for Transportation, Sep. 2013)

Today we review an innovative way of reducing congestion by offering financial rewards of 1 to 8 (US) dollars per trip to drivers who stop driving their car during peak periods. This seems to have worked in Rotterdam, Holland and in Washington DC by reducing peak hour travel by 7% –  a cost that is much less than the price of accepting the economic impact of congestion and likely more acceptable by the public and their political leaders than applying a number of other tools such as charging more to commute at rush hour, HOT lanes etc.

Traffic slows to a crawl on the Monash Freeway in Melbourne, Australia through peak hour traffic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

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