This $40 was a charge that allowed willing, solo drivers to use the car pool lanes. No one had to pay the $40; they could continue to drive solo in the non car pool lanes as they had previously. This option was just added.
Should seats to sporting events all cost the same?
Should all of us drive the same model car or should all models just be priced the same?
Should steak be priced the same as hamburger?
I observe that economic discussions here on HN are dominated by two interesting perspectives:
(1) We should have a Star Trek like economy: no one wants for anything.
(2) If smart people like us had our hands on the steering wheel we could regulate the economy into good shape—-Friedrich Hayek described this as “The Fatal Conceit” in his book with that title.
This is not the same as with roads though, since they are a finite resource (whereas, arguably, electricity can be seen as infinite in this case). You can't ask people to pay for roads which they then can't use because they can't afford the tolls for it. It's already bad enough that so much tax money flows into building roads, which can only be utilized by people wealthy enough to own and maintain a car in the first place. (I'm reading the book "Happy City" at the moment, so this topic struck a chord with me)
($200,000/365=$550; $30,000/365=$82)
And, yes, most rules are unfair to poor people. Who do you think makes the rules?
Say the public grid is notoriously unstable. Electricity is on maybe 50% of the day. (This is in fact true in some countries.) Now the government (who pretty much has sole domain over running utility wires) offers a "deluxe" service, with 100% availability, for the low-low price of a week's worth of food for one day of service.
Congratulations. Now you've stabilized a scenario in which everyone with money and power is sated, and the government has little reason to allocate any resources to improving the service to the remainder of the public.
* 1) they can afford the ticket
* 2) the probability of getting a ticket is quite low
So it seems more money might get captured from the privileged now.
The real issue is that the NIMBYs in Arlington won't let them expand the road at all.
One interesting thing, is how this might incentivise people to ignore the toll altogether since the price over even a short period of time are likely to be higher than the fines.
> A comparison of congestion data from 1982 to 2011 by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute clearly demonstrated that additional roadways reduced the rate of congestion increase. When increases in road capacity were matched to the increase demand, growth in congestion was found to be much lower.
> ... one study ... found that "over a six- to eight-year period following freeway expansion, around twenty percent of added capacity is 'preserved,' and around eighty percent gets absorbed or depleted. Half of this absorption is due to external factors, like growing population and income ...
Though it is likely true that expanding metro lines into VA would be more cost-effective here.