Posted April 7, 2005

By Rick Winterson

     Last week, City Councilor Paul Scapicchio proposed charging motorists $5 per day to drive into congested areas in Boston.  His recommended system would involve placing cameras on all roadways, which would record license plate numbers and then assess fees against motorists.  Exactly how this would work was not laid out in detail, but it would require numerous major installations of equipment along the roads into Boston.

     The timing on Scapicchio’s proposal was the first punch line, falling as it did on the eve of April Fools Day.  Secondly, he generated a laundry list of reasons to justify his proposal.  Lurking at the end of this list was, “It will add to the City’s revenues.”  There you have it – the proposal was actually another hidden tax.  No other reasons need apply.

     With merry April Fools abandon, the local media and intelligentsia began piling on.  To their credit, most were strongly against this idea.  But a few compared it to London’s “congestion charge”.

     Now, let’s be straight – London’s congestion charge has actually eased congestion, but there are important differences between there and here.  London is a megalopolis of more than seven million people.  At less than 600,000, Boston is one-twelfth of that size. 

     Furthermore, London currently spends $900 million per year (!) on its rapid transit systems and reserves 175 miles of roadway exclusively for buses.  The people of London use their buses five million times (!) every day.  Boston isn’t even close to those figures.

     Finally, London’s congestion charge is $10 per day, not $5 as Scapicchio tried to float.  And you know something?  Out of every $10, London still spends $8 administering its anti-congestion program.  In other words, Scapicchio’s proposal (as it stands) is a loser – a big loser.

     We have another point to make:  Boston is not a big city any longer.  We’re smaller than either Indianapolis or Columbus, Ohio.  Yet, we persist in trying to act as if we were a very large urban area, even though we are not.  We are a medium-sized city with many world-class features – sports, culture, medicine, education, and especially history, just to name a few.  But we don’t have the population to support ideas that only work in much larger cities.

     We have multiple layers of government in Boston, including a largely atrophied county system.  At the state level, in the Legislature we have one full-time elected official for every 31,000 residents.  We are hip-deep in boards, councils, quangos, consultants, committees, and authorities, but no one is ever accountable.  Just think of the Big Dig, if you need proof of that.  Our cost-of-living is equal to the highest in the continental U.S., but we don’t have very good schools or a reliable infrastructure to show for it.

Scapicchio and many of his colleagues seem to have too much time on their hands.  Perhaps we can get more money to the streets, where it’s needed for potholes and the homeless, if we put some of them (or many of them?) back into the private sector.