Soeren Oestroem, a 40-year-old advertising executive in Stockholm, spent the first half of this year working later than usual, beginning his drive home after 6:30 p.m. each night. But it wasn’t his boss keeping him chained to his desk. He was avoiding the extra tolls charged to drivers using city streets in peak hours.
From January through July, Stockholm tested one of the world’s most sophisticated traffic-management systems as part of a plan to reduce gridlock, lower smog levels and improve quality of life in the city. Unlike most other traffic-control plans in place in cities such as London and Rome, Stockholm used a dynamic-pricing system in which drivers were charged different amounts depending on the time of day. If Oestroem, for example, left the city center at the busiest time of the afternoon rush, from 4 to 5:30, he would have paid the equivalent of $2.75. But by waiting until 6:30 p.m., he traveled toll-free. “People changed their habits,” he said.
The project is essentially a giant behavior-control experiment designed to distribute traffic more efficiently and to spur more people to take public transportation. The approach, known as “congestion pricing,” first gained attention in the 1950s through work by Nobel-prize winning economist William Vickery. He theorized that billing drivers at peak hours would give them an incentive to modify their routines. Because even small declines in the volume of cars on the road can have a huge effect on traffic flow, some economists believe pricing could eliminate the worst snarls.
The Stockholm system used small transponder boxes, laser detectors and a network of cameras to track the path of every car in the city.
Each time a car passed through one of 23 tolling points, the system identified the car from its transponder or license plate. It then checked it against vehicle-registration information and calculated the fee depending on the time of day and location. Drivers using windshield-mounted transponder, similar to the I-Pass in Illinois had the tolls deducted automatically.
The Stockholm plan is an experiment in democracy as well as technology. One of its key elements, say urban planners, is how the city government is getting drivers to back the program. Now that the trial period has ended, the city has scheduled a referendum next month to let residents decide whether to continue it. If the referendum fails, city officials promise to scrap the $525 million project. But they hope it will pass and will reduce congestion and smog. A poll done in June found that 52 percent of voters favor the plan.
Urban planners and city officials from as far away as Bangkok and New York traveled to Stockholm to review how it might be adapted to their own cities. Dublin and San Francisco are planning similar projects, and Prague and Copenhagen have the plan under consideration.
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