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Typical HN reaction - smug intelligent-sounding question to doubt the validity of a hypothesis backed by data and detailed analysis, by completely ignoring the

Typical HN reaction - smug intelligent-sounding question to doubt the validity of a hypothesis backed by data and detailed analysis, by completely ignoring the details in a given linked article. Your question is answered on page 15 (How Do We Determine the Causes of Changes in Congestion?) of the report you are happy to debunk so eagerly. Link (PDF): https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/content/Planning/TNCs/TNCs_Congestion_Report_181015_Final.pdf https://www.sfcta.org/sites/default/files/content/Planning/T...

bovine3dom 8y ago
It's hardly rocket science - the cost of driving/being driven has gone down, so usage has gone up. I think real issue here is that road usage is mispriced. Singapore does it well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing. A tax on just ride hailing is mad. They are cheaper than owning your own vehicle, in part, due to real efficiencies in terms of maintenance and depreciation. Why on earth would anyone want to incentivise individual car ownership?
- dsfyu404ed 8y ago
  >I think real issue here is that road usage is mispriced. The problem is not that roads are too cheap but that the alternatives are too expensive in terms of time, money and quality. Making what is the most effective (all things considered) transit option for a huge chunk of the population more expensive just hurts everyone. It's like raising prices on bandwidth in order to reduce network congestion. The solution is more capacity. That capacity doesn't need to be for cars but you need to add capacity.
  - bovine3dom 8y ago
    I don't think the problem is capacity so much as temporal capacity. There's a large opportunity cost in having a big road empty for most of the day. Surely a smaller road that's busier for more of the day would be better? I don't in principle have a problem with bandwidth being priced according to congestion. What we have instead is rationing. You could make road pricing approximately revenue neutral by reducing fuel and vehicle excise duty. Road traffic is a particularly good case for variable pricing because there is a discontinuity in traffic jam likelihood versus cars on the road - essentially, roads get full at a certain point, so the marginal cost of extra cars increases rapidly as it approaches that level. This would encourage traffic to spread across more of the network, deliveries to happen at off-peak times, the 9-5 work cycle to be relaxed, pollution to be spread out more evenly across the day (to times when people aren't walking around). So, for clarity: I'm saying make it cheaper to use the roads sometimes, and more expensive at other times.

bovine3dom 8y ago

It's hardly rocket science - the cost of driving/being driven has gone down, so usage has gone up. I think real issue here is that road usage is mispriced. Singapore does it well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Road_Pricing. A tax on just ride hailing is mad. They are cheaper than owning your own vehicle, in part, due to real efficiencies in terms of maintenance and depreciation. Why on earth would anyone want to incentivise individual car ownership?

dsfyu404ed 8y ago
>I think real issue here is that road usage is mispriced. The problem is not that roads are too cheap but that the alternatives are too expensive in terms of time, money and quality. Making what is the most effective (all things considered) transit option for a huge chunk of the population more expensive just hurts everyone. It's like raising prices on bandwidth in order to reduce network congestion. The solution is more capacity. That capacity doesn't need to be for cars but you need to add capacity.
- bovine3dom 8y ago
  I don't think the problem is capacity so much as temporal capacity. There's a large opportunity cost in having a big road empty for most of the day. Surely a smaller road that's busier for more of the day would be better? I don't in principle have a problem with bandwidth being priced according to congestion. What we have instead is rationing. You could make road pricing approximately revenue neutral by reducing fuel and vehicle excise duty. Road traffic is a particularly good case for variable pricing because there is a discontinuity in traffic jam likelihood versus cars on the road - essentially, roads get full at a certain point, so the marginal cost of extra cars increases rapidly as it approaches that level. This would encourage traffic to spread across more of the network, deliveries to happen at off-peak times, the 9-5 work cycle to be relaxed, pollution to be spread out more evenly across the day (to times when people aren't walking around). So, for clarity: I'm saying make it cheaper to use the roads sometimes, and more expensive at other times.