Scientists present concept for the elimination of traffic jams

This is not a new idea, it's called congestion pricing, and it's already in use in London.

No matter what we do, a road is a limited resource. Only so many vehicles can use it per hour. We allocate that resource to those most willing to pay for it, but right now that payment doesn't take the form of money, it takes the form of time, frustration, of the amount of pain drivers are willing to endure to use the road. The trouble with this sort of payment is that it's not a transfer, it's just a loss. The time and energy these drivers use to get through the traffic jam is simply destroyed. In short: a traffic jam is a bread line. By measuring willingness to pay in dollars rather than in hours, we avoid that loss. The money collected can be used. It can be used to maintain the roads, to build transit, or simply redistributed to users in the form of tax cuts.

The important thing about congestion pricing is that it makes mass transit competitive. There are buses you can take out of San Francisco into Oakland/Berkeley/El Cerrito right now, but they have to wait in the same traffic as everyone else, they suffer huge delays, and they're a miserable experience. With congestion pricing, those buses can move faster. With congestion pricing, you don't have buses with 50 people on them waiting behind a line of cars and SUVs each carrying a single driver.

Toll roads increase the value of land closer to where jobs are at the expense of land further out. Guess where the rich and powerful live (and own land) and guess where the poor and marginalised live.

The scheme creates the perverse incentive of traffic jams as a source of government revenue -- incentives similar to speed traps. Even better it's able to scale to hundreds or thousands of imposed charges per hour, doesn't require staff, and individual drivers can't challenge it in court as would be the case with a traffic ticket. As a public policy proposal, it's a regressive tax designed to keep those without financial means out of the way of those for whom congestion pricing is but a trifle. Starting the sentence with "scientists" doesn't make it science. It is there to create an undeserved aura of inevitability to ordinary horseshit.

>dynamic, fair toll for road use could reduce congestion.

In addition to the explicit imprecision, in a significant range, demand will be inelastic and simply result in higher tolls without commensurate reduction in traffic and will end up hurting those of lesser means.

We have this in northern Virginia on 66 going into the city. We’ve had tolls as high as $50 on some days, but usually it tops out below $20. It does seem to have helped congestion.

For people who can’t afford the toll, it’s free if you have a second rider in the car.

What is this new transportation concept developed by our leading scientists? Toll roads! Welcome to the 21st century's version of innovation!

A better idea is giving businesses tax incentives for each remote employee living within X miles. That way you can support more rural communities too.

Their solution just trades time stuck in traffic for time stuck on public transit and that's if where you live has adequate public transit. The people who need to drive will still drive and these tolls will displace the traffic elsewhere. It's silly.

There is a more accurate and cheaper way to do this, just double the price of gas with extra taxes. It will have the same dumb effect, make commuting harder for poorer people.

> The scientists do not believe that the toll would disadvantage people who cannot afford the tolls.

With thinking like that, the whole plan is dubious. What exactly is a fair toll when you make $7.25 an hour as such a huge percentage of the population makes in the US? In Seattle, where they have a bit of such a system, you can easily spend that on the way to work. Double when you return. So now instead of getting paid for 8 hours, one gets paid for 6 at minimum wage. Yeah, that's fucking fair.

On topic, "users pays" for critical roads was a dismal failure in South Africa [0].

Off topic, but does anybody know the name of that interchange? GIS isn't turning up anything and it's not properly attributed.

[0] https://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/transport-minister-d...

I have an even better idea. Make all cars run on "soft" (embed sensors or emitters on roads to guide self-driving cars) tracks or completely self driving, and have them all run at max speed, zipping through intersections without colliding because each car is aware of the whole system state at the intersection and can avoid each other without slowing down. We have the tech, just not the will to do this.

I think a system of points per registered car would be fairer. You get a set of points per annum and info how many of them you need to spend to enter the zone for a given day. You could buy additional points, but that would be expensive.

Drivers of cars not in the database (e.g. tourists) pay a fee.

As with many topics discussed on HN, a recent EconTalk episode provides a useful perspective!

http://www.econtalk.org/michael-munger-on-traffic/

Tolls are a way of allowing wealthier people to drive with less traffic. You may be ok with the regressive nature of that, but in a place without good public transit it feels wrong.

Want to reduce rush hour traffic? Allow people to work remotely.

No

I think mandatory self driving mode in highly congested areas is the more sure fire way to defeat traffic jams. The reason why traffic jams exist in the first place is because of issues that arise from the limitations a human driver poses.

For example, imagine a scenario where somebody from Southern California who has never been to San Francisco is driving up 101 to visit a cousin who just moved to the city. Neither have GPS or phones and are having to get to their destination using a printed out Google Maps sheet.

Now imagine that this driver is on the highway and is in a hurry because they are running late. They don't know where they are really going and all of a sudden they spot that the exit they need to take is in 1/2 mile. And let's assume they made the bigger mistake of thinking it was a good idea to try and get into the city at 5 AM.

So they are now in heavy congestion, but most people are used to this traffic and have no issue maintaining the speed limit. However, the tourist driver needs to catch their exit. So what does she do? Start merging right, right, right, right. And guess what they are in a hurry, so while she is merging right she is having to cut other people off. Otherwise they will miss their exit and be even more screwed.

And therefore she is a contributing force when it comes to the underlying conditions that result in stand still traffic.

There is nothing you can really do about this dilemma. Everybody on the road heading to San Francisco during it's most congested hours are doing so because they have jobs.

It's not like a Carbon Tax is all of a sudden going to cut down on traffic when people need to drive to work in order to make a living. Most people who are on the road, aren't driving without some sort of living necessity in mind at the other end of their destination.

Taxation doesn't promote better behavior. Rather it further penalizes those who can barely afford to drive as it is. And it just further taxes the wealthy which if you add up every last cent the top 50% (because all of that 1% of 1% babble is just a scapegoat to distract who we are really talking about when discussing taxation) already is obligated to pay, it becomes something around 35-50% of all non capital gains earned income. And let's not forget that if you are religious there is often a tithe obligation to tack on to that.

I just don't understand why taxation is always deemed the magical solution to try and curb these kind of issues. The only reason why we should ever have to spend a cent over a universal 15% flat tax, is so the government can use that revenue to start buying back our debt before we are faced with the dilemma that we need to borrow more than we could ever hope to pay the interest on.

Yet another regressive tax.