I've often been struck by arguments with my East Coast friends on carbon taxes, congestion pricing, and other methods of making driving way more expensive. It's not that I'm against such initiatives -- the death of congestion pricing in New York is a shame -- but I always found the equity issues nearly prohibitive, while they tended to wave them away. Context matters, and the West Coast context is that many people, in particular poor people, need to drive. The East Coast context is more that many rich people like having the option to drive, but folks should, in general, take public transportation. As Ryan Avent says, this sort of thing presents a real problem for policy makers. If you couldn't pass congestion pricing in New York, where folks have alternatives to driving, how do you expect to disincentivize auto transport in California, where there are very, very few public options. The whole thing is compounded by the fact that lots of people suggest we fund new public transport services through things like gas taxes or congestion pricing or tolls. Problem is, that means you create the public transport infrastructure after you make it hard and costly to drive. Politically speaking, that's the sort of thing you need to do before. As a general way of thinking about this, there's nothing more unpleasant than sitting on a Los Angeles freeway. It's one of the reasons, actually, that I left the city. The fact that so many people do it so often is evidence that they really don't see another choice. And it's unlikely they will take kindly to policies they see as punishing them for submitting to the dictates of necessity.
