Uber OBoard With Congestion Driving Tax

Nobody likes sitting in traffic.

Whether it’s rush hour, morning commuting or traveling on a holiday weekend, bumper-to-bumper cars moving at a snail’s pace can be grueling and sometimes downright aggravating. In cities like London, Stockholm and Milan, there’s already an in-place solution to help alleviate the traffic issue: a congestion charge.

What this means is that the places within a city that have the most traffic have a charge that’s automatically billed to the driver deciding to go through and exacerbate the problem. While the notion of a congestion tax is nascent around the world, it has yet to make its way onto streets in the United States.

One company that’s getting on board with the idea of implementing this traffic fee in the states is Uber. Ironically, various sources are pointing the finger at companies like Uber and Lyft as part of the problem.

Uber’s head of transportation policy and research, Andrew Salzberg, recently shared the company’s endorsement for charging drivers fees during peak times of the day. He said, “The cost of driving ultimately needs to reflect its cost to our cities.”

For years, highways have either been widened or added to try to help make traffic flow more smoothly. Unfortunately, urban planners have found this to add to the problem rather than solving it. For a congestion tax to make its way into the United States, it’s likely that there will need to be continued efforts toward more climate-friendly policies at the top government level.