Traffic Jams, Solved

Jonas Eliasson, a co-designer of Stockholm's famous congestion pricing system, recently gave a TEDx talk called "How to Solve Traffic Jams" (via The Transportationist). It's one of the clearest and most persuasive discussions of road pricing I've ever heard, and with the video nearing 300,000 viewers, I doubt I'm alone. I've summarized the talk here, but if you've got ten minutes to spare I highly recommend the whole thing.

Too often traffic planners try to determine what people should do instead of driving during rush hour, says Eliasson. He would prefer that cities provide the right incentives and let people take it from there. "You don't plan the details—people will figure out what to do, how to adapt to this new framework," he says.