Reducing Seattle Congestion with Parking Fees

(I'm back after a 7-day Alaska cruise)

Last year, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan directed the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) to study congestion pricing—most simply, targeted tolls to reduce car traffic on city streets.  The SDOT released its initial findings, giving a little bit of a better view of how it could work in Seattle. The big takeaways, according to SDOT: It would likely reduce the city’s carbon emissions, and it would have to come with heavy investment in transit.

Rideshare company Uber recently sponsored a report on tolling downtown Seattle streets claiming it would increase transit use and bring in millions of dollars in revenue. The report proposed a morning and evening toll of $1.50 to $3.80 on all the downtown area.  Pushing more people to transit and save commuters an average of 6 minutes and generate $130 million in gross revenue a year.

 Mayor Durkin’s office responded with

“We are committed to additional community engagement and conversations with stakeholders as the City works to balance equity concerns with the immediate challenge of reducing carbon emissions and improving transit. The Mayor is committed to moving forward with congestion pricing in a fair and equitable way that includes community input.” 

However, a far easier way of implement congestion pricing to reduce congestion and the city’s carbon emissions is to do so not on the drive into Seattle but on the parking at their destination.  Parking fees could be implemented for a fraction of the cost of road tolls.  Fees at different locations could be raised to discourage traffic to the most heavily congested areas. 

Commuters or their employers could be forced to pay a fee for each parking stall used during the morning commutes.  Employers would be encouraged to subsidize transit for workers as an alternative to paying for parking (or paying road tolls).  However providing that alternative requires a “heavy investment in transit”.

Unfortunately, Sound Transit has spent a decade of refusing to provide the needed transit capacity.  They’ve refused to add parking despite the fact all of the existing parking has been “fully in use” for years.  They’ve also refused to increase bus revenue miles.  (CEO Rogoff’s 2019 budget for 2017 to 2041 projects no increase in bus transit ridership).

Thus, barring any dramatic Sound Transit changes, the only way to reduce Seattle congestion is for employers to provide shuttle service from near where workers live to near where they work.  Microsoft’s Connector does so for some of their workers and Silicon Valley shuttles accommodate 35,000 daily.

Without an alternative commute, neither congestion road tolls nor congestion parking fees will reduce congestion.  However congestion parking fees can be implemented far sooner and far cheaper.