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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"?

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Isn't this basically 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.

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).

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

The transponder and opening an accuont (both required) still costs money.

Further info: http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/expresslanes/images/...

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.

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.

The new switchable pass they're making for the 405 HOT lanes is bigger and thicker. Still smaller than the one in that article, but no longer just a sticker. http://wsdotblog.blogspot.com/2015/04/everything-you-ever-wa...

Who is made worse off by the FasTrak HOV lane arrangement? People who can't afford the HOV lanes will remain stuck in traffic like they always were, although there will be less traffic than there used to be, because the people who can afford to use the new HOV lanes are no longer in the normal lanes.

Some people are made better off, and nobody is made worse off.

Almost everyone in the world is better off than they were 100 years ago. That does not make it easier for those at the bottom.

It kinda does by definition, actually.

I suppose this misunderstanding boils down to semantics. By definition they are objectively better off. However, past a baseline threshold for human survival it's argued that a person's subjective perception of well-being is relative to that of others around him. Objectively, we are many times better off than we were pre-industrialization in almost every way imaginable, but does that make us many times happier or more satisfied than people who are unaware of such a standard of living? The argument is that they would perceive their well-being as much worse if they were aware, even if nothing has objectively changed.

Where does it end? Everyone's a king living in their own castle, and still everyone's unhappy because the rich have planets of their own?

Where things are objectively seems like a fine way to compare.

Rather than comparing the availability of modern conveniences, it's more informative to compare stability. Are modern lives more stable in the face of unexpected events than historic lives? Is getting sick for a few days and then getting better worse now, or worse historically?

I would argue that the levels of instability make modern stresses higher. Even though there are many luxuries to help deal with these stresses, they are maintained only tenuously. The slightest disruption to a break-even lifestyle can result in disaster, and even if everything goes perfectly there may not be any spare cash to save for an eventual escape.

> The slightest disruption to a break-even lifestyle can result in disaster, and even if everything goes perfectly there may not be any spare cash to save for an eventual escape.

Have you tried living in a county with a social safety system?

Actually, Gregory Clark in A Farewell to Alms points out that bother the richest and poorest people who've ever lived are alive now.

In earlier times levels of poverty now experienced would have been fatal and populations would have fallen. Today we allow them to live. But in crushing abject liberty. Transmitted to their children.

Which is preferable?

Actually as someone who drives the 110N home everyday the HOV makes everyone worse off in my opinion. Every entrance to the HOV during rush hour makes cross-lane patterns that end up bringing traffic to halt around them, but in between entrances it flows properly. Entering a freeway and immediately crossing 5 lanes of traffic to enter the HOV is extremely disruptive to the flow.

I totally agree. I was just in LA for the summer and coming from Ft. Lauderdale where the HOV lane is free to enter and exit, the entrance and exit system in LA made no sense to me. I also had to quickly get out of the HOV lane when it suddenly switched to the FasTrak and I didn't know what that was.

In Ft. Lauderdale we have an HOV lane that you can enter whenever you want and exit whenever you want. Granted, we don't have near as much traffic as LA has, but at least in this system traffic keeps moving forward as people move in and out of the HOV lane. We also have an express lane that you pay for and exit at the end of 595, the equivalent of the 110 to our suburbs. The express lane there has really reduced traffic. When I'm running late, I pay $.50 and fly across, and otherwise I can still go faster than before.

That's the result of a bad design in this particular case, and it isn't inherent to the concept of an HOV lane.

Right because most HOVs have dedicated exits (I'm picturing 495 in D.C.) that avoid the cross traffic. Unfortunately we don't have that luxury on any of our HOV/Fastrak lanes that I drive.

Very much agree. For example, the I395 in Northern VA uses up 6 lanes of space but only provides 2 lanes for HOV, and these lanes change direction. So, instead of having 3 additional lanes in each direction, we get 2 lanes that change direction depending on the rush. The extra dedicated flyovers and exits are hugely expensive and negatively impact the interconnection of roads to the interstate. What a waste.

The FastTrak toll system doesn't cover the LA Freeway or any other major thoroughfares in California. It does cover a handful of isolated toll roads and bridges, but mostly it just lets you drive in the carpool lane without having to actually carpool. This doesn't dissuade people from driving, it just lets people who can afford it get places slightly faster. A real congestion charge avoids creating this two-tiered system by leaving no reasonable alternative route. You either pay the toll, drive 30 minutes out of your way, or take mass transit. Hopefully the latter.

Maybe not central LA, but FastTrak does cover major freeways all over southern California.

It's definitely on the 110 within sight of downtown.

It's very disconnected though. The I-10 route ends at union station and there is no direct connection. Also it would be nice to extend it on I-105 west all the way to LAX. The current situation is pretty popular and the fares can be as high as $11 (or more?) to go into downtown so if the were to really improve the connections it would only make the routes more popular, and thus more expensive at peak times.

That still (or more so?) has the classism problem. Less wealthy people are more likely to be more severely punished if they are unable to get to work on time, and also more likely to live far away from their jobs. Both of those problems are exacerbated by being forced to take public transport. Owning a car is often a major bonus when applying for certain kinds of jobs, because it is viewed as increasing the chances that you will it to work on time.

I'm all for thinking about ideas to make transport work better, but this sort of stuff makes it quite hard to come up with good ones.

Capitalism is entirely about you get what you can pay for. It seems entirely appropriate to the USA.

Capitalism is about the means of production being privately owned. It's quite possible to have a socialist society in which you get what you can pay for.

  > It's quite possible to have a socialist
  > society in which you get what you can pay for.

Of course it is, but that's not relevant to the point being made.

  > Capitalism is about the means of
  > production being privately owned.

... with the subsequent implication that things need to be operated for profit. As a result people have to pay for their services, so people can only get what they can pay for, which is the point.

Going back to the original comment[0]:

  > ... you get what you pay for. It creates
  > a classist, elitist society.

My point is that this is unavoidable under capitalism.

  Capitalism => private ownership of production
             => operation for profit
             => charging for services
             => only get what you pay for
             => classist, elitist society
                  (according to kafkaesque[1])

This may not be limited to capitalism, but it is an unavoidable consequence of it.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10100170

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=kafkaesque

What happens if you are poor and in a hurry?

The same thing that happens now.

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.

No, it depends. The mass transit option might be e.g. 20% slower compared to the travel time the poor have now.

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.

..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.

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.

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.

London, New York, Paris and Tokyo can't be replicated anywhere else then?

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.

> 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.)

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.

It also makes carpooling more attractive since you can split the cost (or it might be waived).

> - 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... and http://jurnalul.ro/thumbs/big/2009/06/05/trasee-interminabil... .

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-c...

The price is called your sanity.

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.

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).

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.

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.

This isn't a convincing argument because not every city is like yours.

High tolls just turn roads into empty streches of wasted infrastructure.

So don't raise the tolls that high. Just raise them high enough that they're moderately congested, but not excessively.

Then the wasted infrastructure can turned into something useful

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.

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.

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.

Thank you Downs-Thomson 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...

Go figure.

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.

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.

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

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

Index the charge to income.

what about poor people in a rush :(

(don't live in LA is probably the answer, ha!)

"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.

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.

Who care if a few taxes are regressive. The sum of all taxes is more important than each individual one.

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