Soru

Passage A

Congestion pricing—charging drivers a fee to enter busy city centers during peak hours—is the most elegant market-based solution to urban traffic gridlock. By placing a direct price on the scarce resource of road space, it encourages commuters to carpool, travel during off-peak times, or use public transportation. The success of Stockholm's congestion zone shows that when drivers face the real societal cost of their travel choices, gridlock decreases by over twenty percent, and carbon emissions drop. Crucially, the revenue generated can be reinvested into expanding public bus and rail networks. The primary obstacle to implementing this policy is not its efficacy, but rather the initial public reluctance to pay for what was previously perceived as free.

Passage B

While proponents of congestion pricing tout its environmental benefits, they overlook the stark socioeconomic inequities the policy reinforces. Decades of gentrification have pushed low-income service workers out of urban cores and into outer suburbs, where public transit infrastructure is sparse or non-existent. For these commuters, driving is not a luxury, but a necessity to reach their workplaces. A flat toll on entering the city center acts as a regressive tax, consuming a much larger share of a low-income driver's earnings than a wealthy commuter's. Imposing these fees before affordable, reliable transit alternatives are established in peripheral neighborhoods unfairly penalizes vulnerable populations under the guise of ecological progress.

Based on the passages, the authors of the two passages disagree most strongly on which of the following issues regarding congestion pricing?