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Why the focus should be mass transit instead of tolls to fix traffic congestion
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- erispoe 11y agoThis article conflates two very different things: creating new tolls on existing infrastructure, and creating new toll-funded infrastructures. The first one changes the incentives of existing users, the other one is creating induced demand for wealthy commuters. Wealthy or not, induced demand is still induced demand, and will create new congestion on the existing network. The main fallacy, however, is the goal of reducing congestion. If we want to move trips from cars to more sustainable means, congestion is a way of reducing the competitive speed of individual vehicles, therefore shifting the incentives towards public transit. edit: typos
- jseliger 11y agoMore simply, I'd observe that tolls and mass transit aren't rivalrous: for that matter, one could earmark funds from the former to pay for the latter. I don't see why assuming too that a particular toll scheme that didn't work in a particular place means that no such schemes can work anywhere under any system.
- _delirium 11y agoNYC is an example that imo works roughly as intended. The MTA owns a number of the bridges into Manhattan, which it charges a toll for. The toll is set significantly above the break-even level needed to pay for bridge maintenance, and the surplus is used to cross-subsidize public transit.
- jfim 11y agoThey're actually complimentary. If you think about it, having a toll system without good public transit isn't going to reduce congestion very much for inelastic demand (eg. trucks going to deliver goods, people going to work) and is essentially a tax. However, when there is both a good public transit and a toll system, people can then pick between paying the toll or taking public transit. The theory for toll systems is that by having a congestion charge, people will avoid using roads when they're congested makes sense, although it disregards several factors. Most people have to go to work between certain hours (which is why during rush hour the trains in Tokyo are crammed with people while outside of them they're not crowded at all) and that people often cannot relocate closer to work for various reasons (eg. children, unavailability of housing, etc.). Furthermore, specialized white collar work (eg. software developers, lawyers, accountants, actuaries, etc.) often is only done in city cores, not in suburbs, meaning that people not living in the city core either have the choice to pay the toll or be underemployed. As you mention, earmarking tolls to go towards improving public transit is a great idea; it will make the ratio of people paying tolls and taking public transit tend towards its equilibrium, as the more people deem public transit unusable, the more funds will go towards improving it.
- thisrod 11y agoThere is an extra benefit for public transport. If people have to pay to drive, they will be willing to pay more to ride. The more users pay, the less it costs the public, and more of it gets built.
- Piskvorrr 11y agoIn theory. In practice, the usual public-funding SNAFU abounds (the more complex the transport network, the worse).
- Retric 11y agoThe main fallacy is limited highways cause congestion. A highway can support a lot of traffic, it's exits and on ramps are generally the problem as traffic just backs up. Which often turns extra traffic lanes into really expensive parking lots.
- cromulent 11y agoYes, the road system is analogous to your blood vessel system - the smaller arterioles must have at least equivalent volume to the arteries or else you get bottlenecks. The highway can only function properly if vehicles can easily exit and enter. As they normally funnel vehicles into built up areas, they fail at peak times.
- dajohnson89 11y agoDoes it follow that the more exits per given mile of highway, the better traffic will flow?
- jacobolus 11y agoIn areas where people want to get off at many exits, a network of surface arterial streets has better commute-time throughput than a highway. Highways are great for long-distance trips to sprawling suburban destinations. They don’t really mix well with dense cities though. Highways have high speed but low capacity relative to the amount of space they take overall, in comparison to surface streets. When they reach a certain traffic density, highways get blocked up, even if you add a lot of exits. http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/07/is-induced-demand-really-about-road.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/07/is-induced-demand-re... (I think that blog may have better posts on this topic, but that’s the one I could find in a quick search.)
- zappo2938 11y agoDo you know why timed lights on one way boulevards are considered bad?
- Natsu 11y agoCongestion, among its other faults, leaves cars idling on the roads wasting gas. It also harms some of the more common mass transit systems. For example, nobody is going to see a bus as the faster option when they're both traveling the same congested streets as the cars do. That said, it does work sometimes. For example, if you're going to a baseball game, it's better to use the light rail than to go anywhere near the downtown traffic in Phoenix.
- grub5000 11y agoIf you have effective bus lanes (such as in Edinburgh), the busses offer a visibly faster alternative to driving. Even at peak time.
- beobab 11y agoI humbly suggest "especially at peak times".
- arethuza 11y agoBe thankful that Edinburgh's roads weren't "improved" in the 1960s: http://www.gcat.org.uk/blog/?tag=edinburgh-motorways http://www.gcat.org.uk/blog/?tag=edinburgh-motorways
- gsnedders 11y agoWhereas Glasgow still suffers from its motorway plan having been left half done, leaving the city with a single motorway crossing of the river (with only two lanes, down from five as you start to approach the city!).
- HerpDerpLerp 11y agoSurely everyone is on the tram now ;)
- Natsu 11y agoWe have HOV lanes, but those are on the freeway and none of the buses I ever rode used those on their route, though I have seen empty buses using them on occasion.
- briandear 11y agoSo make traffic worse to fix congestion? That's like killing the baby to save on diapers.
- erispoe 11y agoWe don't need to fix congestion. We need to make people move better, that's a very different problem.
- jsprogrammer 11y ago>This article conflates two very different things: creating new tolls on existing infrastructure, and creating new toll-funded infrastructures. The conflation is irrelevant. Both things may be rejected outright without consideration of their subtleties. Infrastructure of the type funded by tolls is massive and takes up significant space. No level of tolling will be able to compensate for the disruption to the non-users of the infrastructure.
- spoiledtechie 11y agoThis article is all well and good, but the BIG problem are traffic lights. Traffic lights are undoubtedly the problem. What can replace lights? Roundabouts. Plain and simple OR a startup that can compete with the current traffic light system.
- rewqfdsa 11y agoAre you trolling? A startup for traffic lights? Versus actual civil engineers who aren't idiots and who have probably fully explored the solution space of traffic handling arrangements? Traffic is a political problem, not an engineering problem.
- dajohnson89 11y agoUnfortunately civil engineers are hired/contracted by municipal governments. They^H^H^H^H Their employers are usually clueless and/or apathetic about really solving problems. After all, the taxes keep rolling in regardless.
- stephengillie 11y agoHaving seen some roundabout implementations, I'm no longer convinced. Traffic circles require a large flat space, and can't easily replace stop lights on steep hills or narrow crevasses. A roundabout replaced a set of traffic lights at a 3-way intersection in a crevasse next to SR-18 in Auburn, WA. It's a tight fit and difficult to navigate, and trucks regularly jump the curb. After driving it, I really wish they could change it back.
- Animats 11y agoRoundabouts may work very well for self-driving cars with some short-range communications capability. Merges can be negotiated, both at roundabouts and on-ramps.
- stephengillie 11y agoRoundabouts allow only simple traffic interactions, that's kinda the point. Nothing complicated like a left turn can happen. Why would special communication be needed?
- forrestthewoods 11y agoPublic transportation sucks and is terrible. Yes even in big European cities. It's asking for a faster horse. Any planning not built around self driving cars is dumb and behind the curve.
- lukeqsee 11y agoPerhaps the first is true, but I think (and believe I could substantiate) that traffic sucks a lot worse: for instance, I can read/zone-out/listen to a podcast on public transit; if I do those things in traffic, I meet the back of the car in front of me.
- forrestthewoods 11y agoRiding a faster horse is better than riding a slow horse. That doesn't mean it's good or what should be pursued.
- jacobolus 11y agoYou know what’s better than any of these? Having people live near where they work, so they can walk or ride a bike to commute. But for larger areas and longer trips, roads hit a hard limit after a certain point. Car traffic in denser urban areas around the world inevitably turns into a quagmire. Self-driving cars aren’t going to fix that, and they have nowhere near the passenger capacity of a subway line. “A subway track can carry 20,000 people per hour, some like in Tokyo carry up to 80,000 people per hour. A freeway lane carries about 2,000-2,500 people per hour.” http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/07/myths-of-oppressed-motorist-freeways.html http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/07/myths-of-oppressed-m... I’ll agree with you that buses can be terrible though, especially enormous heavy slow buses that run mostly empty half the time and stop every block or two. Ideally bus lines would switch to smaller vehicles at non-peak times, and during commute hours cities would work harder to get them dedicated lanes so they wouldn’t get stuck in car traffic. One awesome transit option in Hong Kong is the giant escalator. I’m not sure it would work in lower-density cities, but in my opinion it’s much nicer than closed vehicles of any kind. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central–Mid-Levels_escalator_and_walkway_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central–Mid-Levels_escalator_a...
- rebootthesystem 11y agoI can't speak for Canada. In a place like Los Angeles both mass transit and carpool/toll lanes are useless. Due to a contract I've been driving a pleasure-filled 100 miles per day on the lovely 405 freeway for a number of weeks. I'm not in a hurry, so I chill and kind of watch traffic like I'm not there. What I see ever day is, well, ridiculous. The carpool lane is a complete waste. It effectively removes 20% to 25% of the road's capacity without any real benefits at all. Why? - Cars with multiple passengers were going to have multiple passengers, carpool lane or not - Those cars were not removed from the road thanks to the carpool lane: No benefit - Business trucks with multiple passengers? Same issue: They were going to have multiple passengers anyway - Buses: They go slow and plug-up the carpool lane and actually create traffic jams. Today I watched an empty bus with probably 50 cars behind it going well below the speed limit. Crazy. - Cargo trucks (like 24 footers). Again, same problems: They were going to have multiple passengers anyway, they are going slow and cause congestion. - Tons of cars with a single person break the rules and use the carpool lane because nothing is enforced, particularly at night What's needed is a shift in mission, focus and concentration by two agencies: Caltrans and CHP. Maybe the DMV too, in that they'd have to push and experiment with new rules of the road. Their mission should be to make the roadways as efficient as possible. Don't pull over the guy doing 80 in the fast lane who is getting the hell out of the way. Pull over the dude doing 50 in the middle of the freeway and the nutcase one lane over doing 49.999 miles per hour who form a virtual "cork" in the road and create a pile-up behind them. And all those people who somehow can't press on the accelerator going uphill? We must do something about them. It's unbelievable. How about the guy doing 63.9 mph on the left lane who absolutely refuses to move over, creates a pile-up and has an asshole behind him driving one foot from his bumper? Ah, and one of my favorites: Let's get on the freeway at 40 miles per hour because we are afraid of the accelerator or we just don't give a shit! Cars pile up, swerve around and a huge potential for a nasty accident is created when these fine folk enter our freeways. Yes, we do have too many cars on the road, but they are also being driven in really stupid and inefficient ways, our agencies do exactly zero to improve the situation and, on top of that, lanes are taken away and road capacity is reduced for this imaginary idea of carpooling. I really don't think our highways are being used anywhere near peak efficiency. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the exact opposite were true.
- kspaans 11y agoHere is part 2: http://economicjustice.ca/2015/11/24/why-focus-should-be-on-mass-transit-instead-of-tolls-to-relieve-traffic-congestion-2/ http://economicjustice.ca/2015/11/24/why-focus-should-be-on-... But it's just a few maps of Montreal and Toronto, so I wonder if it's a placeholder...
- pjc50 11y agoSelf-driving cars are not a silver bullet for congestion, because they don't reduce the physical space required by cars. For example, the Sao Paulo 180km traffic jam: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19660765 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19660765
- odiroot 11y agoAlso, there's not only congestion but environmental issues. Even electric cars don't fix those.
- lukasm 11y agoSelf-driving cars will reduce physical space e.g. http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02748/Renault-Twizy-1_jp_2748020b.jpg http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02748/Renault-Tw... Currently, people are using only 30% of the seats, on average. Secondly, carpooling is more feasible. Various optimizations depending on time, traffic light, reusing train tracks. On this is just one vector. More remote work, VR meetings instead of face-2-face, delivery drones.
- pjc50 11y agoThe Twizy is already available and not self-driving. People might be more accepting of smaller cars once accidents have become vanishingly rare, but that's a very long way in the future. Remote work / non-face-to-face meetings are a social and managerial problem. Having your employees commute has no cost to managers and allows them to oversee them more easily. (See for example Yahoo had remote work and took it away; this kind of progress is not on a ratchet).
- serge2k 11y agoI wouldn't buy one of those. I wouldn't buy the google car either, it's ugly as hell. If I'm spending money I will get the car I want.
- evgen 11y agoWhy in the world would you think that you would buy a self-driving car? Your GooUberZipLyft has left the local depot and will be by to pick you up in three minutes (<link to realtime map here>) and your total cost for this trip will be $1.37. Thank you for using GooUberZipLyft!
- alkonaut 11y ago"Instead of tolls"? Why not both? Tolls should pay for mass transit. It's a win win. Want to take your car? Good, you are then paying tolls that subsidizes someone else taking the bus. I thought almost all cities that have congestion fees use them to pay for more public transit?
- mabbo 11y agoExcept that governments tend to sell the toll infrastructure, as they did with the 407 ETR. In that particular case, it was to balance the budget for that one year, so that way the Conservatives could claim their tax breaks didn't cause a deficit.
- bane 11y agoWhat you usually end up with is roads with tolls that don't subsidize mass transit (are usually just used for road O&M), and are often the main route to get to where the mass transit starts. Which then has its own fares and fees.
- tomohawk 11y agoI know several people who have attempted to live in cities nearby. In the end, they all moved to the burbs when (a) they realized they needed good schools for their kids or (b) they were mugged. Mass transit requires density. Density of housing and density of employment. Density requires a level of competence in governance that many US cities appear to lack.
- serge2k 11y agoThis is why park and ride is a thing.
- fche 11y ago"Density requires a level of competence in governance ..." And density requires a populace willing to suffer the indignities of such density too ... unless you were proposing that government should impose it regardless ... or that government can wave away those indignities.
- ska 11y agoIt's not like the alternatives lack indignities, though.
- tomohawk 11y agoNot proposing any such imposition. Just noting that if city governments were more competent, mass transit would not be an issue as cities would be a more desirable place to live and work as compared to the burbs. Whenever I see a new mass transit proposal put out by a nearby city, it seems that the major underlying reason is to have a public works project to steer money to vested interests rather than to provide useful transit.
- transfire 11y agoFuck tolls (http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/personal-flying-vehicles-close-to-reality/2843387.html http://learningenglish.voanews.com/content/personal-flying-v...)
- logingone 11y agoMaybe I'm alone on this, but is transport only an economic matter? I am not a package, a cardboard box. I have senses and a brain which processes to some degree, and as a result I need to be transported with more consideration than a parcel. I find the London underground to have crossed the threshold from acceptable human transport. Infinite shoe-horning is not a solution. I'm aware of the various problems that need to be considered, but I think my psyche should not be excluded from consideration.
- Numberwang 11y agoI moved to London two years ago from Sweden. The underground has really helped me get over my claustrophobia (by daily exposure).
- ilaksh 11y agohttp://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage http://runvnc.github.io/tinyvillage