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Comment by jakevoytko | Hacker News Reader

The best ideas in this framework would use sliding rewards. But they will never happen.

Take the HOV lane idea. Giving the top 1% access to HOV lanes is political suicide. But awarding hours for a special fast lane, linked to the infrastructure-based taxes you pay, sounds fairer. The family of 4 making $60K a year gets a few hours they can use when they need them, tax-exempt employees get nothing, and a CEO gets more hours than she can realistically use in a year.

But opponents would say you're giving advantages to those who are "ahead." Talented-yet-poor people have less time to strike it rich. It's a Catch 22 - you need time to make money, and money to get more time, and you have neither when you start anew.

This cuts to the heart of optimizing nations for the individual, versus optimizing for the nation as a whole. I'm not sure the answer is straightforward, or if the two answers are mutually exclusive.

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The HOV-lane idea starts out in the wrong place. If you want to raise money from apportioning a scarce resource (in this case space on the road), you use prices, not taxes.

Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London—it's too bad Bloomberg's attempt to install them in New York failed.

> Congestion charges have become very popular and successful in London

Popular and successful with who, exactly? I don't know a single person that likes it. Traffic was reduced for a few years but now it's just as bad as ever. And the cost of public transport continually rises above inflation. At least they recently shrank the chargable area.

So what has it done, exactly, except raise income for the city and raise prices for businesses on the border and those who need vehicles to function?

Well, it has winners and losers.

The winners are the poor (who don't get around by car anyway) and the very rich (who think that five pounds a day is a small price to pay in order to have somewhat less traffic). The losers are everyone else.

The biggest winner is always the politicians, who get chauffered around in cars which are exempt from the charge, and find that they no longer have to wait in traffic. This is why such schemes are disturbingly popular among politicians.

> Traffic was reduced for a few years but now it's just as bad as ever.

Has the population changed?

It's probably more accurate to say that the infrastructure has gradually become... less amenable to cars, intentionally and otherwise. Bus lanes, pedestrianised roads, roadworks, that kind of thing.

Wasn't that part of the goal?

I like it, lots of my friends like it as well.

If they did not enact it, things on the road would be worse. They just need to make it more.

The cost of public transport is ridiculous, London has to be the most expensive city to travel around.

Not if you buy a bike, which is also the fastest way to get around London. In my experience it's about twice as fast as cars (average speed is less than 10mph anywhere near the centre) and still faster than trains, unless you happen to work right by one of the major terminals and live by a train station.

It costs around 12p per mile to run a bicycle including capital cost, maintenance, additional food etc (though until you hit around 10k miles the costs may be hidden from you). I commute around 1k miles a month and so it costs me around £6 per day to commute by bike, and it is £16 for a slower equivalent train journey. Cars really aren't an alternative as they're too slow.

Really?

You think £1.30 to get a bus as far as you like is expensive? and £4 to get as many buses as you like in a day is expensive?

Maybe not for you. I did a little calculation at http://listentotaxman.com/ and put in the minimum wage for a 37.5 hour week. If you need to take a few buses to get to work, over 10% of your £190 weekly pay packet gets eaten up on travel.

It's definitely cheaper (though less flexible) than running a car on your own, but some of the costs of a car can be spread between more than one person, which isn't the case with public transport.

However, I was pleasantly surprised to see that teenagers now get free bus travel and discounted Tube fares. I could've done with that a few years ago!

London doesn't allow you to tranfer to another bus with a single ticket? Here in Ottawa busses are $3.25 and about to go up, and I think that's more than fair.

(I suppose pun intended)

Yeah, London doesn't have transfer tickets. It's annoying.

At any rate, if you take more than 2 buses per day then getting a monthly bus pass/travelcard is cheaper.

How is the London "congestion charge" not a tax?

It's a usage fee for public infrastructure. It's no more a tax than your sewer, water, and power bills.

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