Congestion Charging is the new topic at the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

They are polishing up their best double speak phrases like "market demand" and improving the flow of the HOV lane.

The problem is, they are going to kick out all of the carpoolers to do it.

Hmmm, smells like a tax to me....

This was one of the more dramatic turning points for the Government death of Carpooling.
Not Carpool Lanes mind you.... The Los Angeles MTA gets a good chunk of cash from "managing" the construciton of Carpool Lanes. They just don't want us to carpool. Which is why you hear so much about HOT lanes or ... converting carpool lanes to toll lanes.

From the MOU on carpooling "Authorize the Chief Executive Officer to execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Riverside County Transportation Commission (RCTC) for rideshare development and support services for Los Angeles County during the second half of FY03 and FY04 in an amount not to exceed a total of $625,000. "

Gee $312,500 on carpooling each year? With the MTA having over $4Billion annual budget?

Our Government obviously gets too much revenue from cars.

read on....

Traffic Bulldog has a challenge to the people of Los Angeles.

Would you like to eliminate traffic congestion?

Would you like to really do something about Global Warming?

For $1 million dollars and two years time, Traffic Bulldog will
execute a plan to eliminate traffic congestion in Los Angeles.
And when this is done, we will have created the worlds single
largest Global Warming Solution.

Yes, only $1 million.

The following is a traffic congestion story from BBC regarding the increase in traffic congestion at the outside perimeter of congestion zones. Included is feedback from the public.

While many say that the congestion pricing is a huge success in London, you need to ask
- Who is measuring the success?
- How are they measuring it?
- What data was available before the new pricing to compare against?
- What are we NOT measuring in the current evaluation of success?

Governments have an interesting tunnel vision when it comes to assessing success. Here is feedback from the citizen's of London that say that maybe congestion pricing is just what it appears to be.... a new tax.

It looks like the Traffic Congestion Pricing is starting to have trouble.

Our policitans tell us that we need congestion pricing to solve traffic.

Maybe they could open up the conversation about carpooling?

Maybe they could work harder at eliminating waste in government so they don't need to keep coming up with new and fantastic taxes on our use of automobiles. That government revenue gift that keeps on giving.