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I think most people would support congestion pricing, if all the money collected went to building more road capacity. The people paying to get a fast trip now w

I think most people would support congestion pricing, if all the money collected went to building more road capacity. The people paying to get a fast trip now would be seen (and actually be) supporting faster trips for everyone in the future. Right now it just builds more resentment toward the 1%. Unfortunately this situation is not really possible today as places that so congested to want to use congestion pricing of roads cannot build any more (very expensive and politically impossible). If Musk's Boring company works out and congestion pricing on freeways in LA would pay for new tunnels, I think everyone would be on-board with it.

deleted 9y ago
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dionidium 9y ago
This is directly in opposition to the goals of congestion pricing. Traffic engineering has some not-so-intuitive principles. Adding capacity, for example, increases congestion through a mechanism known as induced demand. We don't want to create more demand for private cars in Manhattan, so your suggestion supports an anti-goal.
- njarboe 9y ago
  Adding more capacity does not cause more congestion. That is not what the studies around induced demand state. Building more capacity allows more trips (obvious right) because, since there is less congestion or it is quicker to get somewhere, people will travel more. If you believe that people making trips by car is intrinsically immoral, then building more capacity for car trips is a bad idea. I rather think that traveling around in a car costs money and time, even if the roads are not jammed, so people won't generally just drive around for now reason. Being restricted on where and when to travel due to clogged travel paths is not a public good to strive for. People calling out "induced demand" anytime someone proposes building more capacity for on-demand point-to-point travel is just blinded by an ideology they probably don't even know they follow. Would you be against instant teleportation at low dollar, environmental and energy cost from point-to-point? I might be if used between cities or countries. The world is already pretty homogenized. But for within cities it would be great. The main benefit of cites is to have a huge number of possible people to interact with and the projects (companies, museums, clubs, etc) those groups of people create. Supporting policies of making people waste time waiting, doing nothing useful, to control where and when they move around seems like a very misanthropic and authoritarian view of how the world should work.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

dionidium 9y ago

This is directly in opposition to the goals of congestion pricing. Traffic engineering has some not-so-intuitive principles. Adding capacity, for example, increases congestion through a mechanism known as induced demand. We don't want to create more demand for private cars in Manhattan, so your suggestion supports an anti-goal.

njarboe 9y ago
Adding more capacity does not cause more congestion. That is not what the studies around induced demand state. Building more capacity allows more trips (obvious right) because, since there is less congestion or it is quicker to get somewhere, people will travel more. If you believe that people making trips by car is intrinsically immoral, then building more capacity for car trips is a bad idea. I rather think that traveling around in a car costs money and time, even if the roads are not jammed, so people won't generally just drive around for now reason. Being restricted on where and when to travel due to clogged travel paths is not a public good to strive for. People calling out "induced demand" anytime someone proposes building more capacity for on-demand point-to-point travel is just blinded by an ideology they probably don't even know they follow. Would you be against instant teleportation at low dollar, environmental and energy cost from point-to-point? I might be if used between cities or countries. The world is already pretty homogenized. But for within cities it would be great. The main benefit of cites is to have a huge number of possible people to interact with and the projects (companies, museums, clubs, etc) those groups of people create. Supporting policies of making people waste time waiting, doing nothing useful, to control where and when they move around seems like a very misanthropic and authoritarian view of how the world should work.