Congestion Pricing Is Coming

Fred Hiatt is right ["The Bumpy Road to Congestion Relief," op-ed, April 14]. Congestion pricing may be controversial to some people, but it's inevitable. Using tolls simply to build more roads is a costly way to end up with even more traffic and pollution.

Area officials rightly criticized a traffic study released last month by the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments' Transportation Planning Board that failed to research the most effective options for congestion pricing to improve public transportation and significantly reduce congestion across the region.

Done right, congestion pricing can boost the efficiency of our existing roads, raise revenue to invest in transit, and reduce pollution that causes asthma, cancer, heart disease, impaired lung development and global warming. In London, congestion pricing has created a huge pool of revenue for transit and reduced pollution by 20 percent and traffic by 30 percent, while increasing traffic speeds by 37 percent.

In the long run, congestion pricing is the only effective and economically and politically viable solution to the chronic and growing gridlock in our nation's largest cities.

MICHAEL A. REPLOGLE

Transportation Director

Environmental Defense Fund

Washington

The writer was transportation coordinator for the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission from 1983 to 1992.