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> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't? I think the real root of the problem is that congesti

> Why is congestion pricing okay when applying the same philosophy to other matters of public good isn't? I think the real root of the problem is that congestion pricing is never okay in matters of public good, we've just conditioned ourselves to believe that infrastructure is this special case of impossible problem to solve, so our terrible workaround to this artificial problem sometimes seems begrudgingly reasonable in context. Which is why, if you took the exact same logic and applied it to almost anything else, the public would be outraged.

Eridrus 9y ago
Manhattan is fundamentally limited by space, not sure how you expect to solve this problem when there is going to be more demand for this good than we can actually supply. This problem is only going to get worse as we get self-driving cars.
tbihl 9y ago
The immediate problems of infrastructure are two-fold: funding and the matching of supply and demand. Ignore the environmental ramifications for the moment and kick that can to your kids like everyone else does. Supply and demand solves itself. The solution is staring right back at you any time you drive around a city at 5PM local. The funding could be solved by taking more money out of general revenue from income and other taxes. It's not too far a stretch from where we are now. The argument for congestion pricing could be framed as frustration with either of those two components. First, some people want to pay for their use in dollars instead of hours. Second, some people would rather target the users of the public good to recoup the enormous costs of it. Personally, I try to opt out to the maximum extent because I find the time cost unacceptable, and I would avoid the monetary cost for the same reason. And given the risk of runaway time cost or runaway money cost for a rare trip, I'd rather keep the time. If nothing else, my loss aversion would make me avoid driving like the plague after paying a high toll. We prefer bakeries to bread lines, and food is arguably more important to life than driving. So why should we want the bread line equivalent when it comes to driving? As far as I can tell, it's because that's the system we're used to, and change is hard.
- randomsearch 9y ago
  Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. This is the unforeseen problem with road building schemes. The solution is mass transit and city planning to reduce road commuting.
  - tbihl 9y ago
    I was working in the frame of parent's comment to show that delays and congestion are another solution to the problem. It's certainly not the one I'd choose, but I was trying hard to give an unaffected discussion of the tradeoffs (until the sarcasm in the last paragraph.)
  - maxsilver 9y ago
    > Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. That is never an acceptable reason to neglect infrastructure. By your logic, we should never build hospitals because building hospitals 'creates' sick people. We should never build public water systems, since that would 'create' sewage. We should never roll out faster broadband internet, because people will simply 'waste' the bandwidth. Yes, induced demand is a concept that exists. But it's a gross misunderstanding of that concept to use it as an excuse to undersupply infrastructure capacity. > The solution is (more) mass transit I agree, that is one way to help the problem. Notice though, that it's not congestion fees on public right of way, and that it is additional infrastructure (the kind you just claimed would not work because it would create more demand).

Eridrus 9y ago

Manhattan is fundamentally limited by space, not sure how you expect to solve this problem when there is going to be more demand for this good than we can actually supply. This problem is only going to get worse as we get self-driving cars.

tbihl 9y ago

The immediate problems of infrastructure are two-fold: funding and the matching of supply and demand. Ignore the environmental ramifications for the moment and kick that can to your kids like everyone else does. Supply and demand solves itself. The solution is staring right back at you any time you drive around a city at 5PM local. The funding could be solved by taking more money out of general revenue from income and other taxes. It's not too far a stretch from where we are now. The argument for congestion pricing could be framed as frustration with either of those two components. First, some people want to pay for their use in dollars instead of hours. Second, some people would rather target the users of the public good to recoup the enormous costs of it. Personally, I try to opt out to the maximum extent because I find the time cost unacceptable, and I would avoid the monetary cost for the same reason. And given the risk of runaway time cost or runaway money cost for a rare trip, I'd rather keep the time. If nothing else, my loss aversion would make me avoid driving like the plague after paying a high toll. We prefer bakeries to bread lines, and food is arguably more important to life than driving. So why should we want the bread line equivalent when it comes to driving? As far as I can tell, it's because that's the system we're used to, and change is hard.

randomsearch 9y ago
Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. This is the unforeseen problem with road building schemes. The solution is mass transit and city planning to reduce road commuting.
- tbihl 9y ago
  I was working in the frame of parent's comment to show that delays and congestion are another solution to the problem. It's certainly not the one I'd choose, but I was trying hard to give an unaffected discussion of the tradeoffs (until the sarcasm in the last paragraph.)
- maxsilver 9y ago
  > Building more roads creates more traffic i.e. more “demand”. That is never an acceptable reason to neglect infrastructure. By your logic, we should never build hospitals because building hospitals 'creates' sick people. We should never build public water systems, since that would 'create' sewage. We should never roll out faster broadband internet, because people will simply 'waste' the bandwidth. Yes, induced demand is a concept that exists. But it's a gross misunderstanding of that concept to use it as an excuse to undersupply infrastructure capacity. > The solution is (more) mass transit I agree, that is one way to help the problem. Notice though, that it's not congestion fees on public right of way, and that it is additional infrastructure (the kind you just claimed would not work because it would create more demand).