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Comment by kafkaesque | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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...

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

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