Just pricing: comparing the effects of congestion pricing and transportation sales taxes on low-income households (original) (raw)

Those who oppose congestion pricing on roads frequently argue that low-income, urban residents will suffer disproportionately if tolled to use congested freeways, either through higher out-of-pocket costs for travel and/or by diverting, delaying, or discontinuing trips. Too often, however, this assertion is made in the abstract, without considering 1) how much impoverished residents currently pay for transportation through fuel and sales taxes or 2) how much impoverished residents would pay for highway infrastructure under an alternative revenuegenerating schema, such as an increased sales tax. And while increased local sales taxes are among the faster growing forms of transportation revenues in the U.S., they are rarely criticized on social equity grounds. In this paper, we compare the cost burden of an existing congestionpriced high-occupancy/toll facility on State Route 91 (SR91) in Orange County, California, with the cost burden of Orange County's local option transportation sales tax. We use Consumer

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