Comment by JauntyHatAngle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JauntyHatAngle | Hacker News Reader

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I mean, one of the problems with tolls is that it is another form of taxing that has a bigger impact the lower income you have.

Without getting into an ideological discussion, having surge pricing on tolls would contribute to a minor divide in class.

In Australia this is a current topic, as (in Sydney specifically) there was a recent controversial highway widening which has been funded by tolls and constructed by a private company, which will own the road and tolls for the next 100 years or so. This highway leads to/from the CBD as a work commute for everyone coming from the west part of the city (the poorer part usually..) and so has direct influence on people's pockets in an already high expenses city on people choosing to live further away in a cheaper part of the city.

This perhaps does not directly apply to this specific instance, but I do think it illustrates that this is slightly more of a complex issue and has more implications than the simplification of the issue the article author wrote - if you introduce a toll but allow people to use it, that does have an impact on overall equality in society, even if you can debate the merits & size of the impact.

Ive seen multiple sources say that widening roads only makes the problem worse yet in this article and in your comment it seems like the "solution" people are going for. That leaves me wondering; Are these sources not sound or are the people in charge of transport morons?

Define "makes the problem worse".

More lanes, in networking terms, improves throughput but doesn't improve latency.

More lanes moves more cars. That's fairly straightforward.

More lanes doesn't improve the time of an individual commute on the road or cut down on congestion of the road.

People have a fixed annoyance level, and congestion will increase until that annoyance level equilibrium is reached again.

The only time more lanes genuinely improves things is when the extra lanes suddenly means that the road now has more capacity than required to carry the traffic level it sees.

Normally, the cost required to add that many lanes is sufficiently prohibitive that such a situation almost never occurs.

More lanes also induce more demand. Plus there is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braess%27s_paradox

There are a few cases where widening roads actually does make traffic jams worse (Braess' paradox), but in the majority of cases, wider roads make traffic flow better, but more traffic flows, which makes the benefit smaller than what you'd expect if the same number of cars were on the road. It's debatable whether the increased traffic flow is an undesirable side effect or represents an increase in public utility.

When people say widening roads makes the problem worse, they usually cite as an example 'before construction, traffic was congested for X minutes; and after it is congested for X + Y minutes' the problem is that often demand has increased in the meantime (because of population growth, or increased economic activity).

There is certainly some amount of induced demand, and in the right scenarios, that could make things significantly worse. In the Bay Area, if 880 was significantly widened but 101 and 280 were not, it might make it attractive to drive from San Francisco to San Jose by crossing the bay and taking 880 south. This could make 880 less effective for east bay users.

This doesn't become a significant issue if there's reasonable regional planning, and routes are kept in rough balance.

There's a limited budget for transportation projects though, and they can be complex and time consuming, so often roads aren't widened until there is a significant amount of peak congestion. During construction, things get worse, and afterwards, there's still a period of peak congestion. People who expect a road widening to create free flow conditions at all hours will be sorely disappointed. I'll add that on and off ramp design makes a big difference in traffic flow as well; a full clover leaf is good for interchanges with low traffic, but all the weaving makes for poor results in congestion; redesigning to avoid weaving helps flow tremendously without widening, although more/different space can be needed depending on the specific road alignment.

There is potential to argue about what is the best use of transportation money; I'm not familiar with transportation in the DC area though, so I won't weigh in on that.

If all you have is a hammer... Australia cities are dominated by cars, people can't imagine a world with them, even the cities are cars first. It is a joke.

China has this big time. Almost all of the infrastructure built out in the current book was privately financed and is heavily tolled (definitely by western standards, it is much worse by Chinese standards). This is part of the reasons chinese logistic prices are so high, but also why there are 8 day traffic jams (because the non-toll option went under construction) and why much of the infrastructure isn’t usable by local farmers.

Yeah, I just spent a week driving to a few different cities throughout China, and the tolls are unbelievable! Just one leg of my trip cost a $50 toll for a half day of driving (not sure about the exact distance). And that’s US$50, which is a lot of money by Chinese standards. You can stay at a decent hotel for two nights for US$50, or buy several nice meals at least.

Actually this is a form of progressive taxation that has less impact the poorer you are. Because the poor are less likely to pay for the roads, they on the average pay less taxes. And given that the road was previously completely banned, they also have access to plenty of alternatives, be it taking other roads or carpooling. On the other hand, the ‘dumb rich’ will pay out of their nose to not have to share their car with someone else.

>Because the poor are less likely to pay for the roads, they on the average pay less taxes

That is assuming that this isn't a critical road that poor people would want to use.

Anyway, I'm not talking about this specific case, I mean more generally that this isn't as simple as was made out, e.g. what if this road is good overall for balancing out wealth (if you view that as a good thing...), but then another case happens where it is a critical road that causes poorer people to have to extend their travel by 20 minutes to avoid the toll? (Ala sydney).

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