Road Pricing - Fairness for the Disabled

Dear Mr Grush,

How do you and your concept/company propose to deal fairly with those whom public transit does not serve effectively?

The disabled are still not and may well never be adequately, never mind equally, served by any public transit system.  There are and probably always be far too many compromises imposed on the disabled who always have fewer options available to them in virtually all areas and especially in terms of mobility.  Are you aware how your systems would further disadvantage the families and friends of the disabled?  How would you suggest the family of a child with Osteogenesis Imperfecta cope?  Have you considered how would a family with one or more disabled child (cerebral palsy, spina bifida, muscular dystrophy autism spectrum disorder, hearing impairment, blindness or any of hundreds, even thousands of syndromes or conditions) be affected by the additional costs of negotiating life?

Have you considered how the elderly, especially the frail elderly, would be negatively affected by your systems?  How would their care and ability to maintain their own homes and any independence or any social life be accomplished without entailing enormous additional costs and logistical difficulties?

As well, as long as many medical services are made available mainly in a few major urban centres there will be many patients residing in other regions who will continue to be forced to travel by private vehicle to these designated facilities in order to receive essential treatment.  Besides spending time, money and energy simply to have access to medical care your system would impose additional burdens, adding to costs and logistical barriers.  How would propose minimizing or, preferably avoiding completely, these further undeserved difficulties for an already disadvantaged population?   

I look forward to receiving your well-reasoned reply to my questions.

Sincerely, 

Margaret Trethewey

Dear Margaret,

Thank you for your questions. I think your concerns are very important. However, these are matters of policy.  While such policies are easy to describe, I am not a legislator so I cannot set them, rather I am cybernetics engineer that likes to address complex social problems (congestion is a social problem, but is not often recognized as such, which is why it remains unsolved)).  More importantly, with reasonably simple policies not only can those people who must use private motorized transportation (and there are many - indeed I doubt that there are very few who never need it), have that access at a free or reduced cost (similar to not having to pay a fuel tax), they would also have that transportation at a reduced level of congestion.  Consider all the people that use the TTC's WheelTrans service [a door-to-door service for disabled passengers in Toronto], but get stuck in heavy traffic.  These people will also see a benefit.

As a matter of considerable bearing on the answer to your questions, one of my patent applications provide for a way for government to grant travel credits to individuals (for whatever reason deemed necessary – and you provide the start of such a list).  Such credits can be provided in a number of ways.  My personal preference is to provide travel credits as a form of fungible units that can be sold (for example if a person does not need all the credit available, she may be able to give or sell them to another. This allows people more choices.

An alternative, mentioned by Andrew Coyne in this week’s Macleans is to collect all the money from all the road fees and return it to all citizens in equal measure.  That would mean than some physically disadvantaged people would receive a surplus.

There is no reason that anyone with a disability need experience any additional hardships as you fear may befall them, but I would never suggest you should not remain vigilant.

I would like to examine further re a criticism buried in your question about the elderly. You describe a road-pricing system as “entailing enormous additional costs and logistical difficulties”. Although it is possible to do it this way (London did!), there is no reason for either outcome.  A properly designed system (EVEN WITHOUT TRAVEL CREDITS) would be cost neutral – even cost saving (!) – for people who travel off-peak.  So any ‘elderly’ drivers (I assume you to mean people who are retired or whose caregivers may be driving them) can avoid high costs by traveling off-peak. There is also no need for “logistical difficulties”, as a properly designed system is as easy to use as a cell phone that an elderly person carries, but never uses – it is mounted on the windshield of their car and a bill (amounting to $10 or $20 a month in today’s dollars, depending on whether they still pay fuel tax) arrives in the mail – or in their children’s email, which is how I would handle it. I wrote more about low per-driver charges in North America, here.

Bern Grush