4 ms·

This is just my theory, but bear with me. 1) Each trip has an economic purpose 2) Thus each trip has an economic value 3) The trip will happen if the economi

by ip26 7y ago

This is just my theory, but bear with me. 1) Each trip has an economic purpose 2) Thus each trip has an economic value 3) The trip will happen if the economic value is greater than the cost of suffering in traffic (Otherwise, it is not worth it & will not) 4) Ergo the trips that will be added by reducing congestion must be the trips of the lowest economic value.

woah 7y ago
Move to Siberia then
- dang 7y ago
  We've asked you repeatedly not to post unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments to HN. We ban accounts that do this, so would you please not do this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
runako 7y ago
Without coming down on either side of this, because I'm not familiar with the proposals... > 3) The trip will happen if the economic value is greater than the cost of suffering in traffic (Otherwise, it is not worth it & will not) This is true, but doesn't really account for the fact that most categories of trips fall into this bucket in the aggregate. That is, people could skip any one of them, but skipping all trips in a category due to persistent traffic would extract a very real cost. (So in general, people bias toward taking all the trips in that category instead.) Examples: commutes to work, where the cost of not going could be losing one's job. People will sit in a lot of traffic to keep a roof over their heads. That doesn't make it a good civic planning choice. Others: lots of trips will involve healthcare, which is ~20% of the economy. Those have potentially high costs to skipping. Education-related trips are the same, as long as people are generally required to be physically present at their classes. After-school congestion is filled with children going to swim classes & track meets. For many of these classes, the cost should be measured in terms of how many people would just leave the area if they couldn't afford the traffic cost of e.g. taking their kid to piano class.
- ip26 7y ago
  What happens in the case of commutes, school, and so forth is that people choose where to live based on the cost of suffering in traffic, thus determining what trips will happen. So in net, because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. Then if you improve congestion, people move to <exurb>, creating trips from <exurb>. Thus it would be an example of a trip that was of low economic value.
  - nitrogen 7y ago
    You could also look at it another way. Consider metropolitan areas as a sort of economic watershed, where the city receives workers and money from the surrounding areas. Improving transportation throughput and latency expands a city's economic area to more people at greater distances.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    People choose to live based on where they can afford to live. Traffic is a secondary concern, and plenty of people commute from 60 miles away because that's the closest they can afford to rent/buy a place to live, despite the horrible commute that comes with it.
  - burfog 7y ago
    You'd think so, but this is where we hit problems: zoning, real estate transaction cost, 2-income households, property tax rates that reset if you move... Fixing those problems would fix the traffic problems.
  - runako 7y ago
    > because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. On the topic of traffic cost in congested areas, distance is only loosely related to travel times. If we reword using 1 mile = 1.5 minute > because traffic is bad, "commutes from <location> ninety minutes away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <location> fifteen minutes away" happen. This is obviously false for congested metro areas. As another commenter notes, people live where they can afford to do so. Bringing it back to schools etc. For excellent teachers, it may be lower economic value for them to live in a congested area versus one where they can live closer to school. But the metro area lost an excellent teacher, presumably in favor of one with fewer other employment options. Congestion, like air quality, is a tax on every activity. It's not useful to only model it at the individual trip level.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
onion2k 7y ago
Are you assuming that trips with a negative value don't exist? That would require people to always be able to assess the value of a trip before they make it, which is obviously not going to be true.

by ip26 7y ago

woah 7y ago

Move to Siberia then

dang 7y ago
We've asked you repeatedly not to post unsubstantive and/or uncivil comments to HN. We ban accounts that do this, so would you please not do this? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

runako 7y ago

Without coming down on either side of this, because I'm not familiar with the proposals... > 3) The trip will happen if the economic value is greater than the cost of suffering in traffic (Otherwise, it is not worth it & will not) This is true, but doesn't really account for the fact that most categories of trips fall into this bucket in the aggregate. That is, people could skip any one of them, but skipping all trips in a category due to persistent traffic would extract a very real cost. (So in general, people bias toward taking all the trips in that category instead.) Examples: commutes to work, where the cost of not going could be losing one's job. People will sit in a lot of traffic to keep a roof over their heads. That doesn't make it a good civic planning choice. Others: lots of trips will involve healthcare, which is ~20% of the economy. Those have potentially high costs to skipping. Education-related trips are the same, as long as people are generally required to be physically present at their classes. After-school congestion is filled with children going to swim classes & track meets. For many of these classes, the cost should be measured in terms of how many people would just leave the area if they couldn't afford the traffic cost of e.g. taking their kid to piano class.

ip26 7y ago
What happens in the case of commutes, school, and so forth is that people choose where to live based on the cost of suffering in traffic, thus determining what trips will happen. So in net, because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. Then if you improve congestion, people move to <exurb>, creating trips from <exurb>. Thus it would be an example of a trip that was of low economic value.
- nitrogen 7y ago
  You could also look at it another way. Consider metropolitan areas as a sort of economic watershed, where the city receives workers and money from the surrounding areas. Improving transportation throughput and latency expands a city's economic area to more people at greater distances.
- gamblor956 7y ago
  People choose to live based on where they can afford to live. Traffic is a secondary concern, and plenty of people commute from 60 miles away because that's the closest they can afford to rent/buy a place to live, despite the horrible commute that comes with it.
- burfog 7y ago
  You'd think so, but this is where we hit problems: zoning, real estate transaction cost, 2-income households, property tax rates that reset if you move... Fixing those problems would fix the traffic problems.
- runako 7y ago
  > because traffic is bad, "commutes from <exurb> sixty miles away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <suburb> ten miles away" happen. On the topic of traffic cost in congested areas, distance is only loosely related to travel times. If we reword using 1 mile = 1.5 minute > because traffic is bad, "commutes from <location> ninety minutes away" do not happen and instead "commutes from <location> fifteen minutes away" happen. This is obviously false for congested metro areas. As another commenter notes, people live where they can afford to do so. Bringing it back to schools etc. For excellent teachers, it may be lower economic value for them to live in a congested area versus one where they can live closer to school. But the metro area lost an excellent teacher, presumably in favor of one with fewer other employment options. Congestion, like air quality, is a tax on every activity. It's not useful to only model it at the individual trip level.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

onion2k 7y ago

Are you assuming that trips with a negative value don't exist? That would require people to always be able to assess the value of a trip before they make it, which is obviously not going to be true.