Traffic Congestion is one of the banes of living in modern urban areas.  This idea could help.  I was looking around for a market solution to the problem of congestion on the freeways after spending an hour in bad traffic in the San Fernando Valley last Thursday.  The restricted zone idea used by Singapore and London would not work because the zone that needs restricting is all of the freeways.  Charging to get on the freeway even during congested times would be extremely unpopular and a political non-starter.  But what if we went a different way and distributed ownership rights to freeway access and allowed these rights to be sold on a secondary market.
Imagine that by 2010 all of the automobiles in Southern California had been equipped with a fast pass type transponder.  During that year freeway access rights (FARs) would be distributed to all vehicle owners, business’s with fleets and residents.  About 600 FARs would be given for each car and perhaps a 120 for each non-car owner.  Beginning in January of 2011 one FAR would be deducted from the account of each vehicle each time it went on the freeway.  FARs would be good for one year and would expire.  People who didn’t use all of there FARs could sell them on the secondary market.  New FARs would be issued to the owners of shares each year.  When Caltrans increased road capacity they could sell new rights.  Rights could be transferred from vehicle to vehicle.  When a person stopped driving on the freeway they could sell their FARs.
There are lots of details that need to be worked out and almost everybody will find something that they don’t like about the plan.  But market forces can be used to allocate this scarce resource much better than any other political solution.

Your objections overcome:
What about visitors?  Day, week and month passes could be sold to out of area cars at convenience stores.
What about commercial vehicles?  FARs will not be needed to get on the freeway between 10pm and 6am.  Commercial fleet operators can purchase extra FARS on the secondary market.
Won’t it stop the purchase of new cars?  Not for replacement cars, but it will marginally increase the cost of having more cars on the road.  But without some restrictions driving will become so onerous that car sales will self restrict.
What about poor people?  In this system people without cars will have 10 FARs each month to sell.  People who never go on the freeway will also be able to sell their rights.

No pictures.  The Flickr link to my blog site doesn’t seem to be working at this time.