The Roller-Skating Economist You Can Thank for Congestion Pricing

William Vickrey, an undergraduate studying mathematics and electrical engineering at Yale in the 1930s, was on a train from New Haven to visit his parents in Westchester County when he had an observation that seemed to clarify his life’s purpose. There were empty seats all around him. Instead of simply enjoying the quiet, he perceived a troubling inefficiency. Surely many of his friends, college students with…