I was at a congestion-pricing conference staring at graphs and slides on how variable pricing would speed highway flow and raise hourly throughput. Great idea; terrible marketing. I got this idea: Offer a $1,000 prize for a better way to express the flow and throughput idea. We needed a bit of inspired thinking on this issue if we were going to convince the public that a politically unpopular solution could make their lives better.
I put up my own money through a contribution to the Transportation Research Board. About 90 people sent in ideas. The winner--Paul Haase, a science writer--proposed something that everyone can understand. If you pour rice into a funnel all at once, it will jam--just like your worst traffic nightmare. If you pace your pouring, the rice will flow right through. That's what congestion pricing can do. Price can be a signal for people to decide whether to use the highway at a certain time or not, and we can set the price to keep the traffic moving. Old- fashioned laws of supply and demand create efficiency.
Haase's analogy will let us pose the question to the public: Would you be interested in paying not to get stuck in highway traffic every morning, like the rice in the funnel?
One of the really interesting things about the contest was that a whole bunch of people who normally get paid for time as consultants jumped in and contributed ideas for the fun of winning a prize. We should probably try that again. This time with somebody else's money.
Douglas B. MacDonald is Washington State Secretary of Transportation
