A Look At Congestion Pricing in Seattle

Seattle is the fastest growing big city in the U.S., with a population booming 18.7 percent since 2010. According to the most recent National Household Travel Survey, there were roughly 2.2 billion personal vehicle trips per year in the Seattle area, or more than 6.2 million car trips per day. Even with recent significant investment and growth in mass transit, pressure to address congestion and improve urban mobility has continued to increase.

As part of our ongoing commitment to partnering with cities, Uber has worked with public, private and nonprofit organizations to support meaningful measures to address urban traffic, including investments in public transit and the implementation of congestion pricing.

In Seattle, we were quick to support Mayor Durkan’s announcement last year about developing a broad-based congestion pricing system to address traffic in the Emerald City. To bolster that support, earlier this year Uber commissioned economics firm ECONorthwest to use Uber Movement data to determine what a broad-based congestion pricing plan might look like for Seattle, and how it could be structured to best meet the city’s goals and values.

ECONorthwest’s report, Fair and Efficient Congestion Pricing for Downtown Seattle, outlines a path forward that would not only meaningfully address urban congestion in Seattle, but would also put equity issues front and center, encourage more efficient and environmentally sound transportation choices, and leverage new technology to reduce implementation burdens and costs.

In an effort to build upon the city’s work to date on this issue, we are publicly releasing the entire 50-page report to facilitate a robust civic discussion about this important new policy idea.

What would a congestion pricing solution look like in a growing city like Seattle?

Congestion pricing has been implemented successfully in international cities like Singapore, Stockholm and London, places that each have well-established and far-reaching public transportation networks that support areas within and outside of the city cores. New York City will soon become the first U.S. city to implement congestion pricing after receiving authorization by the state earlier this year.

While the work done in other cities is instructive in many ways, a new road pricing system in any city must align with that community’s values and goals, particularly given the political challenges around this concept. The City of Seattle’s initial work appropriately identified four core screening criteria for a congestion pricing plan. As laid out in the Seattle Department of Transportation’s (SDOT) recently-released Congestion Pricing Study, those four criteria are:

• Be equitable
• Have positive climate and health outcomes
• Reduce congestion
• Be feasible to implement

ECONorthwest’s report outlines an exciting opportunity for Seattle to develop a congestion pricing plan that aligns with Seattle’s priorities. The report puts forth policy ideas that would grant residents and visitors at all income levels significant benefits.

For the report, ECONorthwest analyzed data collected using Uber Movement Speeds, as well as public datasets from the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC). Uber Movement provides free anonymized and aggregated Uber trip data to help planners and city officials do the following: evaluate the impact of infrastructure investments; understand where congestion is occurring; and analyze the street network. Seattle is one of a handful of cities for which we’ve shared Movement Speeds data. See actual Seattle Speeds data here. Datasets from the PSRC contain anonymized trip information for all the households in the central Puget Sound region.

ECONorthwest’s report determines that a fee paid by all vehicles ending their trip in a designated downtown Seattle toll zone could:

1. reduce peak time congestion by 30 percent; and
2. raise $130 million in annual revenue.

Additionally, the report forecasts transit trips into downtown would increase by an estimated 4 percent, with the majority of trips originating in the neighborhoods closest to downtown. And while this finding may be surprising, it is directly in line with the mode shift that occurred in Stockholm after congestion pricing was implemented there, as indicated in the SDOT Congestion Pricing Study.

Proposed Downtown Seattle Toll Zone:

Source: ECONorthwest

The variable fee structure proposed in the report ranges from $0.00 to $3.80 per vehicle per day, depending on the time of travel. The fee would be highest during peak travel times, and it would be charged just once per day for the most expensive hour that a vehicle traveled into downtown. According to the report, the maximum charge any one vehicle would pay in a single day is $3.80.

Proposed Toll Rates by Hour of Day

Source: ECONorthwest

The best data available for regional household trip-making show it is predominantly higher-income earners who are driving into downtown during peak commute times. The below graph shows what percentage of commuters would pay a congestion fee by income decile.

Share of Toll Revenue by Regional Household Income Decile

Source: ECONorthwest

The report’s plan does, however, directly address the equity concerns often associated with congestion pricing, and suggests ways to provide protections for low- and middle-income households. ECONorthwest proposes using $50 million of the revenues each year to provide rebates to low- and moderate-income households that visit downtown. Furthermore, revenues could potentially be invested in public transportation to reinforce Seattle’s already strong ridership growth.

The ECONorthwest report on what a congestion pricing approach might look like in Seattle is thought-provoking and promising. It shows that improving traffic conditions downtown in a way that generates significant revenue that can be reinvested in public transportation and mitigates against disproportionately impacting low-income residents is well within the realm of possibility. We think it’s an approach that a majority of Seattleites could support, and one that would set an example for other cities. To read the full report, click here.