Incentives for Drivers Who Avoid Traffic Jams
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
People love to win things. Even against all odds. Hell we are terrible at estimating odds. I think a system based on small incentives will be a huge win, especially in places like India.
This guy clearly wasn't paying attention to the fact that people stood in line for hours at Denny's...in the snow!...to get a free breakfast one day: http://money.cnn.com/2009/02/03/news/companies/dennys_breakf...
People do strange things when "free" is involved. I think this system has a good shot at being successful.
In other words, let's say someone doesn't do the traditional 9-5, but works nights, or from home, or doesn't work at all, or lives 3 states away, or whatever. Do they get the incentive? If you bring them into the pool, then all of a sudden the budget would need to be a lot bigger.
There are some roundabout ways to try to measure this, but it seems much easier to just charge people for driving at peak hours. But that creates other problems, like installing tracking devices in peoples' cars.
Think about it, you request a route to some place, and the GPS prompts you with several route options. Some routes could very easily be incentivized. Thinking about how Apple plans to update transit times and traffic estimates makes this almost seem to come as a natural extension.
But by the same token, it enables the scary thought of your GPS charging you extra for taking some routes!
Agreed: there's no reason why they shouldn't say that e.g. key bridges, interchanges, etc. are EZ-Pass only with a toll during rush hour. These days, we should have the infrastructure to simply have a camera record license plates and mail a monthly bill to you.
Around here (Washington DC) it'd be a huge win if all of the suburban commuters stopped their commute at a subway / bus station rather than attempting to drive the last 3 miles into the very congested downtown (my walking speed is higher than the average traffic speed at 8am). Simply putting a toll point at the bridge would be a great way to encourage that last step not to be a single-occupant vehicle.
The other, major win would be to stop subsidizing parking below market rates: city parking is usually cheaper than the commercial lots, which means a significant amount of congestion is caused by drivers slowing looking around for cheaper parking. Making that savings less dramatic would encourage people to simply park at the first available space.
Is it a market rate? Or, it it some penalty scheme, where those that get pay significantly more than they did before for basically the same thing and others are shut out even though they're still expected to pay capital costs?
Who could possibly object to that?