Most outwardly successful solutions are too good to be true, and that is the case with Metro as well. Metro has few powers beyond its management of the UGB, and so it serves as a planning and advisory body for the other critical issues, like transportation, that impact our quality of life. This article provides a snapshot of the unmanageable position Metro faces in trying to influence the transportation priorities of the region. Not only are the priorities too numerous for the available dollars, but there are different priorities within each of the three counties served by Metro. Because the two suburban counties are concerned about attracting residents and business activity, alleviating congestion through more road construction is at the top of the agenda. The third county is more mature and urban, and, being somewhat insulated from the traffic chaos in the suburbs, favors less emphasis on cars and more public transit solutions. We all have opinions about how to spend the money, but the unenviable job of sorting through these disparate views falls to Metro, which is governed by a board of elected officials.

Metro has also been under attack in recent years by property rights advocates and construction and real estate groups. To this crowd, Metro stands in the way of thousands of new houses being built on half acre lots. Preventing this exact scenario is, of course, Metro’s raison d’etre and why voters approved the agency’s creation in the first place. But ballot initiatives and candidate platforms have a way of turning this mission on its head and portraying Metro as the enemy of individual rights and the free market. Metro has fended off most threats to its charter, but the statewide passage of Measure 37 two years ago will force Metro to free up some land outside the UGB for development.

Maybe Metro should recommend some form of road pricing to tackle suburban congestion. Tolls and other forms of road pricing are an increasingly accepted form of reducing congestion. Tolls have two primary benefits: 1) the money collected can be used to pay for the construction of the roads, and 2) variable pricing schemes can impact the behavior of drivers and reduce congestion at peak hours. The Seattle area just concluded a road pricing experiment with 275 drivers. The study gave each participant a pot of money to be “spent” on driving and tracked motorists’ driving for eight months using GPS technology. The pricing scheme gave drivers an incentive to drive less and at non-peak hours. Drivers could keep any money left in the account at the end of the study. Not surprisingly, 80 percent of the participants changed their driving behavior and the average payout was $700. The Harvard economist Greg Mankiw mentioned this study on his website on Friday and generated a lively yet oddly abstract conversation. The conversation is amusing because, apparently, there are still seemingly intelligent people out there who neither understand the harmful side effects of traffic nor believe that driving a car is a heavily subsidized activity.

The problems faced by Seattle and Portland pale in comparison to the congestion in Southern California. Orange County already has a 51 mile network of toll roads and is planning to add another. The battle described in this article is a classic debate over the merits of new highway construction. Since highway construction never results in any long term reduction in congestion, the toll road advocates are hard to take seriously. Lost in the debate is the idea that some form of road pricing might work on I-5. Since the stated goal of the toll road is to alleviate congestion on one of Southern California’s most important arteries, why not address the problem directly. I realize that tolls would mock the road’s iconic stature as a “freeway,” but I can’t imagine a better place to put to bed the notion that driving should be free.