Columbia Professor of Economics William Vickrey (1914-1996) is widely considered the Father of Congestion Pricing. And deservedly so. Vickrey studied traffic bottlenecks, gridlock and public transportation to find system efficiencies. With a version on congestion pricing about to go into effect in New York City starting January 5, 2025, we look back at a version of Vickrey’s plan for “scaled roadway pricing” from 1973 to see how closely the City is getting to implementing his original vision.

In our Historical Biographical Files (box 318, folder 2), you will find in the William Vickrey folder a Columbia press release from February 21, 1973. The release summarizes Vickrey’s “sophisticated roadway pricing,” which is “essential to control traffic congestion and pollution.” The plan calls for “a system of scaled charges” based on the time of day (rush hour) and on the route or zone traveled (Midtown). The description of how the fees would be charged call for a technology that may sound familiar. Vickrey suggests the use of “electronic identifier units carried in each vehicle which would activate recording devices in or on the road. Computers would sort the information and determine charges; motorists would be billed monthly.” EZ Pass in 1973! And the “scaled roadway charges” would “provid[e] funds that could be used to lower mass transit fares and to develop more extensive and efficient mass transit routes.” 2025 might just see a version of Vickery’s vision take effect.

Vickrey argued for the scaled pricing systems and models of efficiency not just for roadways, but also for subway fares, electricity, telephone service and airline travel. And for each implementation, he looked for the right technologies to facilitate the change. Afterall, he was an undergraduate engineering student. In 1948, the same year that Vickrey completed his PhD at Columbia, the subway fare went up for the very first time from a nickel to a dime. A few years later, in 1951, Vickrey served on Mayor William O’Dwyer’s Committee on Management Survey in New York. He made a number of proposals that addressed the public transportation expenses, including that the subway should no longer be a single-fare system. Instead, he proposed different fares based on distance (higher fares for longer rides) and based on the time of day (higher fares during peak or rush hours). In 1974, along with the short/long rides and peak/off peak fares, Vickrey argued for the use of a magnetic card system to charge the varying fares.While the single-fare system remains in place, the subway tokens were finally replaced by a card system in 2003.

In 1996, Vickrey (by then an emeritus professor) and James Mirrlees of Cambridge University won the Nobel Prize for Economics for their studies on asymmetric information. Three days after the prize was announced, while driving to a professional meeting on land rents and government revenue, Vickrey died of a heart attack. The William S. Vickrey papers are available in the RBML. Among many other subjects, they include his work on the transportation issues of New York City, Caracas, Buenos Aires, Washington, DC, Tehran, Korea, and the Netherlands.