3 ms·

Poor people already mostly can’t afford cars. Only about 25% of people in the bottom 10% of income have a car. If we want to help poor people we should just gi

Poor people already mostly can’t afford cars. Only about 25% of people in the bottom 10% of income have a car. If we want to help poor people we should just give them money rather than indirect subsidies that mainly favor wealthier people with cars.

bombcar 5y ago
Agreed - but if you increase that to people from a household with a car, I bet the number increases. And if people are getting dropped off at work and later picked up, they’ll get dinged twice. Unless the city was really built around transit (and not just once developed in a hub and spoke like so many cities) it’s hard to beat a car door to door. That’s what we should be focusing on fixing (things like inter borough travel in NYC). Massive congestion charges might be part of that, however.
- namibj 5y ago
  I'd propose a somewhat automatic congestion toll: the toll for a segment of road adapts to keep (assuming only car traffic; extension makes it less trivial but by no means impossible) the road just about empty enough to let everyone drive at the design speed (AFAIK 90 mph for most of the US interstate network). The effect is that the mechanism prevents significant latency degradation from demand. While it's not necessarily possible to go that far over night, looking at how much of the traffic/congestion is from cars, and how many occupants they have, should allow to calculate what reduction perfect car pooling (with, say, 4 people per car) would allow, and at what speed that reduced number of cars could drive (without tailgating). Then, add some safety margin and set that reduced speed as the target for the auto-toll-pricing. If car pooling physically can't fix the congestion, it'd take a bit for the problematic roads to get enough (mini)bus service to enable the full design speed. WFH isn't the solution, and proper mass transit takes a while (5-10 years) to build even if you're in a hurry.

bombcar 5y ago

Agreed - but if you increase that to people from a household with a car, I bet the number increases. And if people are getting dropped off at work and later picked up, they’ll get dinged twice. Unless the city was really built around transit (and not just once developed in a hub and spoke like so many cities) it’s hard to beat a car door to door. That’s what we should be focusing on fixing (things like inter borough travel in NYC). Massive congestion charges might be part of that, however.

namibj 5y ago
I'd propose a somewhat automatic congestion toll: the toll for a segment of road adapts to keep (assuming only car traffic; extension makes it less trivial but by no means impossible) the road just about empty enough to let everyone drive at the design speed (AFAIK 90 mph for most of the US interstate network). The effect is that the mechanism prevents significant latency degradation from demand. While it's not necessarily possible to go that far over night, looking at how much of the traffic/congestion is from cars, and how many occupants they have, should allow to calculate what reduction perfect car pooling (with, say, 4 people per car) would allow, and at what speed that reduced number of cars could drive (without tailgating). Then, add some safety margin and set that reduced speed as the target for the auto-toll-pricing. If car pooling physically can't fix the congestion, it'd take a bit for the problematic roads to get enough (mini)bus service to enable the full design speed. WFH isn't the solution, and proper mass transit takes a while (5-10 years) to build even if you're in a hurry.