Congestion pricing could shrink car size

They then modelled what congestion pricing might do to change car purchase decisions, finding it would reduce the market share of mid- to full-size SUVs by 8%. "We found that congestion pricing can reduce congestion on one side and reduce vehicle size on the other," said Jia Yan, WSU economics professor and corresponding author on the study published in the Journal of Econometrics. Drivers are also drawn to the comfort of larger vehicles when they spend more time traveling on a highway, Yan added. When congestion decreases, the two motivations of safety and comfort also decrease, the authors found, and it's less likely that commuters will choose to purchase larger vehicles. "When people purchase a large vehicle, they don't always take in these externalities -- these negative impacts -- into consideration.