16 ms·

Why is congestion pricing never brought up in any of these conversations about traffic? Simply charge people 10 or 20 dollars to drive at heavily impacted time

Why is congestion pricing never brought up in any of these conversations about traffic? Simply charge people 10 or 20 dollars to drive at heavily impacted times of the day. Take every last cent of that toll to subsidize buses and eventually mass transit on the same route. People in a hurry win because their time is valuable and they get to buy it back relatively cheaply. People not in a hurry win because they get subsidized mass transit. Everyone wins because traffic and pollution go down. In a country where we allow people to live in misery just to uphold the "Free Market", why do we allow our streets and freeways to become unusable twice a day just so freeways remain "free"?

nosuchthing 11y ago
..That would just route out of town traffic happening to pass through the freeway onto city streets which would be much worse for local residents.
- randomaxes 11y ago
  That's a very good point. I personally believe that all traffic (including surface streets) should pay congestion tolls when there would otherwise be a traffic jam. Again, spend all that money to subsidize mass transit which would benefit local residents without raising local taxes.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    The result of congestion tolls: You still have a traffic jam, but the government just has more money to waste. People have to get to work. They have to drive to get there. Unless you're proposing a 24-hour train that goes to every business and every home in the area, you can't escape cars.
    - njs12345 11y ago
      London, New York, Paris and Tokyo can't be replicated anywhere else then?
      - ChrisLTD 11y ago
        Those are very densely populated places. Los Angeles is something like 1/6th as dense as NYC. And if LA is anything like the rest of the United States, there are laws on the books preventing it from becoming dense enough to support mass transit like the cities you mention.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        > And if LA is anything like the rest of the United States, there are laws on the books preventing it from becoming dense enough to support mass transit like the cities you mention. Laws can be changed. (Otherwise, congestion tolls wouldn't be an issue, since they could never be imposed.)
    - Frozenlock 11y ago
      I always wondered about this. There must exist a price after which people will take their daily commune into account when negotiating for a job. This could have multiple outcomes: - Change the schedule so that not everyone is on the road the same time; - More remote work; - Higher salaries when you have to drive in peak hours. You don't have less vehicules; just less at the same time.
      - skybrian 11y ago
        It also makes carpooling more attractive since you can split the cost (or it might be waived).
      - paganel 11y ago
        > - Change the schedule so that not everyone is on the road the same time This was actually what the former Communist authorities from my Eastern European country did back in the late '70s- the'80s, when public transport in the capital city was like this: http://www.ap-arte.ro/fckupload/82_1632%20april%20Tram_super%20plin%20wmark.jpg http://www.ap-arte.ro/fckupload/82_1632%20april%20Tram_super... and http://jurnalul.ro/thumbs/big/2009/06/05/trasee-interminabile-cu-usile-deschise-18370124.jpg http://jurnalul.ro/thumbs/big/2009/06/05/trasee-interminabil... .
      - lutorm 11y ago
        Really, congestion pricing would be a vanishingly small increase to the cost of commuting, given the already-existing costs in terms of money and lost time that goes along with doing it (by car, at least.) Edit: good read: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...
      - jchrisa 11y ago
        The price is called your sanity.
    - twblalock 11y ago
      Just raise the tolls until the traffic jam goes away. If the revenue is used to build better public transit, most people won't need a car to get to work. A "24-hour train that goes to every business and every home in the area" is not necessary to achieve this. It is very easy to live without a car in many of the cities which implement congestion tolls, and they don't have 24-hour train service straight to everyone's front door. Trains or buses within walking distance of most people's homes and workplaces, which operate from say 5AM to midnight, would be sufficient, and that is exactly what most great cities in the world have.
      - ryandrake 11y ago
        If you put high congestion tolls on the freeways, people will just move their commutes to the smaller arterial roads that go between cities and jam them up. If you put congestion tolls on those, people will commute through residential areas. If you put congestion tolls on every street in the 500 square mile surface area of Los Angeles, you'll be voted out of office. If you widen the roads or add lanes, making commutes less miserable, people will move farther from work where it's cheaper and maintain their previous misery level. In other words, traffic volume (demand) will always rise to meet the available amount of road (supply).
        twblalock 11y ago
        That's only true if driving is the only way to get to work. If people can get to work on public transit, and it costs less than paying the congestion charge, they will use public transit. In other words, the congestion charge is a constraint on traffic volume, just as road supply is, because it changes the equilibrium of supply and demand. It isn't like this is a hypothetical experiment that hasn't been tried. It is a fact that people take public transit when it is easier or cheaper than driving. It has happened in cities around the world.
        tomohawk 11y ago
        Choice where I live: (1) Live in inner city with high taxes, high crime, poor schools, and nonfunctional govt, but have access to mass transit that doesn't go anywhere useful and takes an hour to get there. (2) Live in the burbs with lower taxes, good schools, low crime, and (sorta) functional govt but no mass transit. At least with choice #2 I can easily get wherever I typically need to within 30 minutes in my car. Expanding mass transit isn't going to fix the reasons why people aren't interested in living in the cities hereabouts. It will just add to the subsidies already flowing in to prop them up.
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    Most people do not have a choice as to when they work. They don't have flexible hours. So now you're just slapping an extra tax on them for no reason.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  Vancouver doesn't have a freeway so all traffic goes through regular city streets. What actually happens is that the level of traffic basically stays static, and people travel using other means. The level of automobile traffic moving through the downtown core is unchanged since the 1960s even though the population and amount of people working there has massively increased.
  - kafkaesque 11y ago
    Yeah. That's a good point. I was back in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. I took a taxi from the airport and at one point we were "delayed" for maybe 5 minutes and the driver said, "Ugh. Why is there traffic?" That was funny considering I'm now living in LA. I was thinking, "You don't know traffic, buddy". I do admit that the downtown core gets bottlenecked at certain times of the day. But it's better than traffic all the time at most hours of the day, like in LA.
  - zzalpha 11y ago
    Thank you Downs-Thomson paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox Seoul actually removed an urban freeway. Result? Less traffic congestion: http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears-down-an-urban-highway-life-goes-on/ http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears... Go figure.
  - WalterBright 11y ago
    A few years ago, I5 running through Seattle was shut down for major repairs. All the pundits predicted carmageddon. But when the time came, nothing happened. People adapted.
  - nosuchthing 11y ago
    Vancouver is a much smaller region and has more of a cohesive topology versus the spare conglomeration of Los Angeles, which could be better described as the "downtown" of Southern California. The majority of people living in Southern California commute via freeway, and generally many people commute 70 mile roundtrips across town or from the valley into LA, and than for nightlife or a trip to a favorite bookstore etc, another ~70 mile round trip across town is totally normal. Until there's more jobs available near affordable housing, millions of people in LA will continue relying on the freeways. The train is being slightly expanded into downtown Santa Monica, but that's not really a big improvement for LA - what would help the most is better transit lines between the San Fernando Valley and LA.
flakmonkey 11y ago
What happens if you are poor and in a hurry?
- jdminhbg 11y ago
  The same thing that happens now.
  - arenaninja 11y ago
    This answer gets more awesome the more I think about it. Initially, I was going to reply that it was crass. Then, I thought about it and grinned. But I think that flakmonkey's point is that yes, if you're poor, you'll be stuck in traffic at least just as long. More likely though, you'll be stuck in traffic far more than currently, because people who can afford to pay for it will. Being that freeways use public funds, that probably shouldn't be the case.
  - nawitus 11y ago
    No, it depends. The mass transit option might be e.g. 20% slower compared to the travel time the poor have now.
- mieses 11y ago
  Time redistribution. People with more time will be required to pull over to the side of the road and wait for some time interval to redistribute their share of excess time to people in a hurry. It's part of the self driving car program and will be administered by the Federal Dept of Transportation. It's only fair.
kafkaesque 11y ago
Isn't this basically FasTrak? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak It seems to represent everything else in the state of California: you get what you pay for. It creates a classist, elitist society.
- will_work4tears 11y ago
  Wow, are those transponders still that big or is that an older model? We have Good2Go here in the Seattle area, and the little RFID cards are about as big as a credit card (though a bit thinner I think).
  - kafkaesque 11y ago
    I've lived in Los Angeles/the US for 4 years now. They just started implementing them on some freeways, like I-10 (maybe 2 years ago?). They eliminated the (free) carpool lane and put this in place. I know city workers who brag about getting their transponders subsidised and get to ride in the cool fast lane. EDIT: The FasTrak lanes/"ExpressLanes" are actually combined with the free carpool lanes. Sorry for the confusion. EDIT 2: This is how it works: https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money. Further info: http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/ExpressLanes_FAQ.pdf http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...
    - ParadigmBlender 11y ago
      I have lived here for about same number of years. I just happened to finally sign up and try it. It was an interesting value proposition. Pay 5+ dollars but remove the stress of possibly being late. The $5 is high enough to make this not worth it as every day default but I am glad to have it as an option in a pinch. Seems to be working well.
  - calbear81 11y ago
    They're pretty big, like the size of two credit cards side by side and 1/2" thick. It does make a beeping noise when it registers so that's probably why it's not just a card.
JTon 11y ago
Any ideas how to effectively police that type of permit? My gut says the infrastructure and manpower needed would be incredibly expensive. Possibly enough to negate a significant chunk of the revenue
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Systems like this are already in place. Generally via RFID and license plate camera readers.
s73v3r 11y ago
"Why is congestion pricing never brought up in any of these conversations about traffic?" Because it would be incredibly regressive. The people who can least afford the fee are those that are not at all in the position to change their driving time habits.
- randomaxes 11y ago
  I agree that a congestion tax on its own would be regressive. It's essential that subsidized, high-capacity bus lines replace most of the cars. This situation would result in a far superior outcome for currently poor people, even if it still has some inequality.
- eru 11y ago
  Who care if a few taxes are regressive. The sum of all taxes is more important than each individual one.
dredmorbius 11y ago
Index the charge to income.
skizm 11y ago
what about poor people in a rush :( (don't live in LA is probably the answer, ha!)

nosuchthing 11y ago

..That would just route out of town traffic happening to pass through the freeway onto city streets which would be much worse for local residents.

randomaxes 11y ago
That's a very good point. I personally believe that all traffic (including surface streets) should pay congestion tolls when there would otherwise be a traffic jam. Again, spend all that money to subsidize mass transit which would benefit local residents without raising local taxes.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  The result of congestion tolls: You still have a traffic jam, but the government just has more money to waste. People have to get to work. They have to drive to get there. Unless you're proposing a 24-hour train that goes to every business and every home in the area, you can't escape cars.
  - njs12345 11y ago
    London, New York, Paris and Tokyo can't be replicated anywhere else then?
    - ChrisLTD 11y ago
      Those are very densely populated places. Los Angeles is something like 1/6th as dense as NYC. And if LA is anything like the rest of the United States, there are laws on the books preventing it from becoming dense enough to support mass transit like the cities you mention.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        > And if LA is anything like the rest of the United States, there are laws on the books preventing it from becoming dense enough to support mass transit like the cities you mention. Laws can be changed. (Otherwise, congestion tolls wouldn't be an issue, since they could never be imposed.)
  - Frozenlock 11y ago
    I always wondered about this. There must exist a price after which people will take their daily commune into account when negotiating for a job. This could have multiple outcomes: - Change the schedule so that not everyone is on the road the same time; - More remote work; - Higher salaries when you have to drive in peak hours. You don't have less vehicules; just less at the same time.
    - skybrian 11y ago
      It also makes carpooling more attractive since you can split the cost (or it might be waived).
    - paganel 11y ago
      > - Change the schedule so that not everyone is on the road the same time This was actually what the former Communist authorities from my Eastern European country did back in the late '70s- the'80s, when public transport in the capital city was like this: http://www.ap-arte.ro/fckupload/82_1632%20april%20Tram_super%20plin%20wmark.jpg http://www.ap-arte.ro/fckupload/82_1632%20april%20Tram_super... and http://jurnalul.ro/thumbs/big/2009/06/05/trasee-interminabile-cu-usile-deschise-18370124.jpg http://jurnalul.ro/thumbs/big/2009/06/05/trasee-interminabil... .
    - lutorm 11y ago
      Really, congestion pricing would be a vanishingly small increase to the cost of commuting, given the already-existing costs in terms of money and lost time that goes along with doing it (by car, at least.) Edit: good read: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-commuting/ http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-c...
    - jchrisa 11y ago
      The price is called your sanity.
  - twblalock 11y ago
    Just raise the tolls until the traffic jam goes away. If the revenue is used to build better public transit, most people won't need a car to get to work. A "24-hour train that goes to every business and every home in the area" is not necessary to achieve this. It is very easy to live without a car in many of the cities which implement congestion tolls, and they don't have 24-hour train service straight to everyone's front door. Trains or buses within walking distance of most people's homes and workplaces, which operate from say 5AM to midnight, would be sufficient, and that is exactly what most great cities in the world have.
    - ryandrake 11y ago
      If you put high congestion tolls on the freeways, people will just move their commutes to the smaller arterial roads that go between cities and jam them up. If you put congestion tolls on those, people will commute through residential areas. If you put congestion tolls on every street in the 500 square mile surface area of Los Angeles, you'll be voted out of office. If you widen the roads or add lanes, making commutes less miserable, people will move farther from work where it's cheaper and maintain their previous misery level. In other words, traffic volume (demand) will always rise to meet the available amount of road (supply).
      - twblalock 11y ago
        That's only true if driving is the only way to get to work. If people can get to work on public transit, and it costs less than paying the congestion charge, they will use public transit. In other words, the congestion charge is a constraint on traffic volume, just as road supply is, because it changes the equilibrium of supply and demand. It isn't like this is a hypothetical experiment that hasn't been tried. It is a fact that people take public transit when it is easier or cheaper than driving. It has happened in cities around the world.
        tomohawk 11y ago
        Choice where I live: (1) Live in inner city with high taxes, high crime, poor schools, and nonfunctional govt, but have access to mass transit that doesn't go anywhere useful and takes an hour to get there. (2) Live in the burbs with lower taxes, good schools, low crime, and (sorta) functional govt but no mass transit. At least with choice #2 I can easily get wherever I typically need to within 30 minutes in my car. Expanding mass transit isn't going to fix the reasons why people aren't interested in living in the cities hereabouts. It will just add to the subsidies already flowing in to prop them up.
- s73v3r 11y ago
  Most people do not have a choice as to when they work. They don't have flexible hours. So now you're just slapping an extra tax on them for no reason.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
Vancouver doesn't have a freeway so all traffic goes through regular city streets. What actually happens is that the level of traffic basically stays static, and people travel using other means. The level of automobile traffic moving through the downtown core is unchanged since the 1960s even though the population and amount of people working there has massively increased.
- kafkaesque 11y ago
  Yeah. That's a good point. I was back in Vancouver a couple of weeks ago. I took a taxi from the airport and at one point we were "delayed" for maybe 5 minutes and the driver said, "Ugh. Why is there traffic?" That was funny considering I'm now living in LA. I was thinking, "You don't know traffic, buddy". I do admit that the downtown core gets bottlenecked at certain times of the day. But it's better than traffic all the time at most hours of the day, like in LA.
- zzalpha 11y ago
  Thank you Downs-Thomson paradox: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downs%E2%80%93Thomson_paradox Seoul actually removed an urban freeway. Result? Less traffic congestion: http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears-down-an-urban-highway-life-goes-on/ http://grist.org/infrastructure/2011-04-04-seoul-korea-tears... Go figure.
- WalterBright 11y ago
  A few years ago, I5 running through Seattle was shut down for major repairs. All the pundits predicted carmageddon. But when the time came, nothing happened. People adapted.
- nosuchthing 11y ago
  Vancouver is a much smaller region and has more of a cohesive topology versus the spare conglomeration of Los Angeles, which could be better described as the "downtown" of Southern California. The majority of people living in Southern California commute via freeway, and generally many people commute 70 mile roundtrips across town or from the valley into LA, and than for nightlife or a trip to a favorite bookstore etc, another ~70 mile round trip across town is totally normal. Until there's more jobs available near affordable housing, millions of people in LA will continue relying on the freeways. The train is being slightly expanded into downtown Santa Monica, but that's not really a big improvement for LA - what would help the most is better transit lines between the San Fernando Valley and LA.

flakmonkey 11y ago

What happens if you are poor and in a hurry?

jdminhbg 11y ago
The same thing that happens now.
- arenaninja 11y ago
  This answer gets more awesome the more I think about it. Initially, I was going to reply that it was crass. Then, I thought about it and grinned. But I think that flakmonkey's point is that yes, if you're poor, you'll be stuck in traffic at least just as long. More likely though, you'll be stuck in traffic far more than currently, because people who can afford to pay for it will. Being that freeways use public funds, that probably shouldn't be the case.
- nawitus 11y ago
  No, it depends. The mass transit option might be e.g. 20% slower compared to the travel time the poor have now.
mieses 11y ago
Time redistribution. People with more time will be required to pull over to the side of the road and wait for some time interval to redistribute their share of excess time to people in a hurry. It's part of the self driving car program and will be administered by the Federal Dept of Transportation. It's only fair.

kafkaesque 11y ago

Isn't this basically FasTrak? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FasTrak It seems to represent everything else in the state of California: you get what you pay for. It creates a classist, elitist society.

will_work4tears 11y ago
Wow, are those transponders still that big or is that an older model? We have Good2Go here in the Seattle area, and the little RFID cards are about as big as a credit card (though a bit thinner I think).
- kafkaesque 11y ago
  I've lived in Los Angeles/the US for 4 years now. They just started implementing them on some freeways, like I-10 (maybe 2 years ago?). They eliminated the (free) carpool lane and put this in place. I know city workers who brag about getting their transponders subsidised and get to ride in the cool fast lane. EDIT: The FasTrak lanes/"ExpressLanes" are actually combined with the free carpool lanes. Sorry for the confusion. EDIT 2: This is how it works: https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml https://www.metroexpresslanes.net/en/about/howit.shtml The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money. Further info: http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/ExpressLanes_FAQ.pdf http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...
  - ParadigmBlender 11y ago
    I have lived here for about same number of years. I just happened to finally sign up and try it. It was an interesting value proposition. Pay 5+ dollars but remove the stress of possibly being late. The $5 is high enough to make this not worth it as every day default but I am glad to have it as an option in a pinch. Seems to be working well.
- calbear81 11y ago
  They're pretty big, like the size of two credit cards side by side and 1/2" thick. It does make a beeping noise when it registers so that's probably why it's not just a card.

JTon 11y ago

Any ideas how to effectively police that type of permit? My gut says the infrastructure and manpower needed would be incredibly expensive. Possibly enough to negate a significant chunk of the revenue

nosuchthing 11y ago
Systems like this are already in place. Generally via RFID and license plate camera readers.

s73v3r 11y ago

"Why is congestion pricing never brought up in any of these conversations about traffic?" Because it would be incredibly regressive. The people who can least afford the fee are those that are not at all in the position to change their driving time habits.

randomaxes 11y ago
I agree that a congestion tax on its own would be regressive. It's essential that subsidized, high-capacity bus lines replace most of the cars. This situation would result in a far superior outcome for currently poor people, even if it still has some inequality.
eru 11y ago
Who care if a few taxes are regressive. The sum of all taxes is more important than each individual one.

dredmorbius 11y ago

Index the charge to income.

skizm 11y ago

what about poor people in a rush :( (don't live in LA is probably the answer, ha!)