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Let’s cut traffic by road rationing, Italian style
- andrewchoi 12y agoAlso has happened in China: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beijing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_space_rationing_in_Beijing
- evanpw 12y agoI don't get it. Congestion pricing is bad, because it gouges the poor. But if we make the price much higher and call it a fine, then everything's okay.
- raldi 12y ago"It's a regressive tax!" is the universal torpedo; you can use it to shoot down anything. Congestion pricing, parking meters, the gas tax, drought-driven price-of-water increases, fishing licenses, soccer field rental fees...
- adamnemecek 12y agoYou can base the fine on income http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-fine I'm actually kind of surprised it's not more popular.
- marincounty 12y agoI've been wanting this for years, but their needs to be a upper fine limit. No one should get a $5000 ticket. That said, a $500 ticket can make some poor people loose their residence, or go without eating. I remember getting a high priced ticket in college, and my transmission went out on that day too. It ate up all my savings, and I seriously thought it's(college) is not worth it. I was working on the weekends at a union job, but barely getting by. It just doesn't make sense that a person's income isn't a factor in the fee structure. (My mom used to go to court and the judge would reduce the fee, but that was the 70's- 80's; I hear that tactic seldom works, or the reduction is not much?)
- adamnemecek 12y ago> No one should get a $5000 ticket. Why not? This http://www.businessinsider.com/a-millionaire-in-finland-got-a-60000-speeding-ticket-2015-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/a-millionaire-in-finland-got-... seems pretty fair to me.
- djf1 12y agoIf person A and person B commit the same fineable offense, it seems fair to me that the fine should be the same for both people. After all, shouldn't the fine be, in expectation, equivalent to the damage caused by the offense?
- adamnemecek 12y agoDo you think that it would be a good idea to have a fixed amount tax? I'm not talking about a flat tax, I'm talking about making everyone pay the same amount.
- ptaipale 12y agoBecause it creates a situation where it becomes stupidly risky to be affluent; people do make mistakes with e.g. speed limits - not everyone crosses them intentionally - and paying a € 50 000 fine for doing 21 km/h over a speed limit really makes people consider emigrating and taking their businesses to a more reasonable place. It also makes it more difficult to attract high-income workforce from abroad, thus having a negative impact on high-tech industries.
- tomohawk 12y agoIt just puts more pressure on people to move their wealth into corporations. How would you fine someone with no income or wealth, but who controls corporations that have plenty? Also, a persons wealth has nothing to do with the crime. Punishment should be based on the crime, not on a person's status.
- maxerickson 12y ago
- martinald 12y agoIt also doesn't work very well. Rich people just end up buying two cars.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- evanpw 12y agoGoogle found this: http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ldavis/df.pdf http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/ldavis/df.pdf. But those high-order polynomial fits (see Figures 9 and 10) seem a little shady to me.
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- evanpw 12y ago"the evidence indicates that HNC led to an increase in the total number of vehicles in circulation as well as a change in the composition of vehicles toward high-emissions vehicles"
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 12y agoIn Beijing, they also ration plates, so that isn't very effective either. And parking, damn, parking sucks. Two cars? That would suck twice as much.
- raldi 12y agoNote: By "it", the parent post is referring to even/odd restrictions, not congestion pricing.
- megablast 12y ago
- masterleep 12y agoIt's the same foolishness as supporting mandatory water rationing instead of raising the price for water during a drought.
- thrownaway2424 12y agoIf you keep the existing rates on the first reasonable-amount-of-water amount of water per unit time and progressively charge more for every unit over that, you get as much savings without appearing to gouge anyone, rich or poor.
- CalRobert 12y agoIf you can't afford congestion pricing, you probably can't afford car ownership. Note: millions of people own cars despite the fact that they really can't afford to.
- hueving 12y agoMillions of people live in the city, despite the fact that they can't afford to. We don't use that form of argument because it's stupid. People live in cities and use cars because they are necessary. If you have a family of 3 kids, using public transit costs more than a car. Fix that, then discourage cars.
- Zach_the_Lizard 12y ago>If you have a family of 3 kids, using public transit costs more than a car. Depends on where you live and how old the kids are. In my neck of the woods, kids get to ride free up to a certain age (like 4 or 5). After that they pay adult fares. If you're going the maximum fare distance at rush hour, it's something like $5.90 one way here per adult, but parking is like $15-$20. At that point you may be better of driving if you don't value your time (traffic is abysmal). My own commute is $2.20 one way at rush hour. Even with five adults (two parents and three kids over four years of age) the $22 you'd spend roundtrip on transit fares is comparable to the cost of driving and parking, but with less hassle. In cities like New York with cheaper fares and reasonable monthly passes you can drastically cut down on your transit costs and also have to deal with massively more expensive parking (if any) and tolls. Of course, one of the advantages of urban areas like mine with regards to travel cost is that many trips can be done without any wheels whatsoever, be they steel or rubber. The grocery store is across the street, next to the pharmacy, there're a few doctors offices, many restaurants, convenience stores, schools, parks, restaurants, tourist attractions, etc. all within a few minutes on foot. All of those trips are essentially free (minus the wear and tear on your shoes and clothes), promote good health, have a reduced environmental impact, reduce traffic, and require less tax resources than other forms of travel. Bringing the whole family on transit would be a less common occurrence. For certain trips, ZipCar or Car2Go may also be an option. Also, for trips outside of walkable or transit accessible areas, rental cars are available. I myself have a rental car agency across the street, so if I wanted to go hiking and didn't own a car I could.
- pseudonom- 12y agoIf revenue from congestion pricing is used for public transit, it tends to be progressive. (Also, those "on the clock" tend to be more sensitive to the high variance caused by congestion.)
- markvdb 12y agoMultiply throughput. Do it the Copenhagen way. Make it a bicycle first city. Reorganise urban planning around this. Build the infrastructure. Almost as many people commute by bicycle in greater Copenhagen as do those who cycle to work in the entire United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen
- iwwr 12y agoCopenhagen and most European cities are high density and were largely built before the car or zoning was invented. Most people there live within bike-commute distance, which isn't the case for the US.
- tormeh 12y agoAlso, Denmark is completely flat. Like, you won't believe how flat it is. Denmarks highest point is "The Sky Mountain" and it's 147 m (482 ft) high. That's how flat Denmark is. The utility of a bike increases a lot when you only have to pedal equal to the rolling resistance.
- prawn 12y agoMany American cities seem pretty flat to me. I don't remember huge inclines in NY, coastal LA, etc.
- iwwr 12y agoThere are also electrically-assisted bicycles (e-bikes), somewhat more expensive but good for short commutes.
- revelation 12y agoIf you are pedalling equal to the rolling resistance, you must be doing so in a vacuum. Do you cycle in space? That sounds awesome.
- ptaipale 12y agoYes, so Denmark is an exception to the rule where biking is always uphill and against the wind. In Denmark, it's only against the wind. That said, you are right. E.g. I live in Finland, and biking is more popular in Oulu (which is way up north, but on former seabed and completely flat) than in Helsinki (which has a more temperate climate, but is on exposed bedrock and has small-scale hills up and down all the time).
- Klinky 12y agoPerhaps we should considerably increase incentives for telecommuting. A lot of gridlock is from office workers who probably could do their job from home. This might also foster improved community development and less suburban sprawl, as people spend more time in their communities. Public transportation needs to dramatically improve. In a lot of places public transportation is expensive, takes longer, isn't as convenient and still stuck in the same traffic jams that other cars are. Setting aside single lanes for HOV or broken public transit seems incredibly inefficient. The simple fact is that moving people around a city is expensive and time consuming. The real solution is not having to move people in the first place.
- bequanna 12y ago> Public transportation needs to dramatically improve. In a lot of places public transportation is expensive, takes longer, isn't as convenient and still stuck in the same traffic jams that other cars are. Setting aside single lanes for HOV or transit seems incredibly inefficient. And sometimes it is just a really bad experience. When I first moved to the Bay Area, I would always take BART into the city. Now, I'm willing to deal with the traffic and drive into the city. I don't need something as posh as the Leap Transit solution, but it would be nice to ride public transportation without worrying about dealing with antisocial people urinating in train cars, etc.
- SSLy 12y ago> antisocial people urinating in train cars, What? I live in second-world country, and even there the most gross thing you could stumble upon in a tram are hobos that stink. WTF is wrong with BART?
- raldi 12y agohttp://sfist.com/2012/07/26/volume_of_excrement_in_the_wheels_b.php http://sfist.com/2012/07/26/volume_of_excrement_in_the_wheel...
- reustle 12y agoIt isn't uncommon (later in the evening) to come across sleeping homeless people in the NYC subway who also smell absolutely terrible. You often will see a few jam packed train cars, and then 1 empty car, and more jam packed cars. It is empty for a reason.
- powera 12y agoI seriously don't know if that article is being sarcastic or not.
- nemo44x 12y agoSo many cities/regions in the USA are simply broken by design in terms of having central business locations and urban sprawl living locations. Too many cities optimized around the highway which let greedy developers and poor urban planners dictate the present conditions of impossible congestion and the inability to have an effective mass transit system due to lack of population density. Simply put, that model doesn't scale and we are now seeing it affect more and more cities. Not to mention that urban sprawl is expensive to maintain in terms of roads, highways, sewers and utilities being consumed by people living so far apart and in low density areas. I propose we begin building planned cities focused on population density and mass transit that people actually want to use. Build up, not out. Share spaces like parks and have lots of little ones. Essentially, inherit from NYC where you don't have to, or even want to, own a car.
- toolslive 12y ago"build up, not out. share spaces like parks ..." This was essentially the idea of Le Corbusier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Corbusier They tried it around Paris and other cities in the mid of the last century, and failed miserably.
- Spooky23 12y ago
- goodcanadian 12y agoIf you want to get cars off the road, you need to provide some real alternatives. Build walkable communities. Build bike lanes. Build rapid transit that doesn't suck. I have seen all of these things elsewhere in the world, so I know it's possible.
- kuujo 12y agoI totally agree. I recently moved to LA for a job. A couple of months before moving I had bought a nice road bike. Even though I live 2.5 miles from work now, that road bike still sits in my closet every day. I would love to ride it to work, but LA doesn't even have enough lanes to support both driving and parking, let alone biking. The roads are full of traffic and impatient drivers and I value my life too much to risk riding my bike on the couple feet of shoulder that might exist on those roads.
- ptaipale 12y agoI sympathize and hope you could find out how to cycle to work; as a side note, however, a "nice road bike" is not very good for commuting 2.5 miles to work. 1) road bikes are not good for taking you and a laptop a short distance to work; they are optimized for doing long journeys on free roads, not city traffic. What you want is a bike where you sit upright and which enables you to look around more conveniently, a bike with no clip pedals which enables you to stop at traffic lights at ease, and a bike with a rack which enables you to put your bag on it, etc. 2) a nice bike will be stolen in no time unless you keep it in closet (even here, and my country/city has actually very little crime). That said, I understand your problem if roads are too scary. Where I live I have a dedicated bike/pedestrian lane 98 % of my work commute (10 km) and I mostly use a cyclocross bike which is almost like a road bike (slightly more agile, because there are many turns and crossings on the way, but I do use clip pedals). Too often people buy "fashionable" bikes for commute (a carbon-fibre road bike, a BMX or downhill bike, or a fat bike) when the best one would be a cheap, general-purpose hybrid bike that rolls relatively easily but can take you across stone slabs or grit without puncture, and has a relatively upright sitting position with efficient access to pedals.
- CalRobert 12y ago
- aaronbrethorst 12y agoIt's actually 1) a testament to how awful traffic in certain Seattle neighborhoods is, and 2) still really crazy to me that anyone at the Seattle Times would ever publicly endorse any measure that is anti-car[0]. The Seattle Times is notoriously anti-public transit, as evinced by articles like this one: http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/04/05/seattle-times-endorses-slashing-metro-buses http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2014/04/05/seattle... Notably, this article also appeared a couple days after Seattle saw its worst traffic meltdown[1] since an ice storm crippled the city and cost then-Mayor Nickels his job[2] [0] Proper context: I'm an 11 year Seattleite, and walk, bus, car2go, and uber everywhere. I hope that, someday, my city has a decent public transit system. I am also the maintainer of the iOS version of OneBusAway, for which I receive literally zero compensation. [1] http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/overturned-fish-truck-creates-highway-99-rush-hour-debacle/ http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/over... [2] http://www.seattletimes.com/politics/after-storm-of-criticism-seattle-mayor-reverses-no-salt-policy-for-snow/ http://www.seattletimes.com/politics/after-storm-of-criticis...
- javiramos 12y agoThanks for your work! There are thousands of happy public transit users thanks to apps (like OneBusAway) that make public transit more tolerable.
- aaronbrethorst 12y agoThanks! Also, depending on your skill set/free time/inclination, I'd always love another pair of hands, or eyes, or anything else you can spare. We can always use more people raising issues to us on GitHub, or—even better—pull requests: https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone
- forrestthewoods 12y agoMeh. This article is way too hyper focused on one tiny corner of the city. Any and all traffic proposals must consider the greater region. I-5 into the city, 405 into Bellevue, within the city, 90/520 across the lake, etc. Almost 100% of people in the greater Seattle area care a lot of about traffic. It affects us all. Only a tiny handful care about South Lake Union specifically. The severe lack of arterials in our region is insane. The fact that there is no reasonable way to get from Ballard/Freemont to I-5 is mind boggling. Everyone loves to bitch about the gentrification of Capitol Hill/Central District. If there was more than one tiny land mass that allowed you to get across the lake it'd be less of an issue. If 520 was accessible by Freemont, Ballard, Queen Anne, and Magnolia the area that could live on the west side and commute to the east would increase by at least 8x.
- markvdb 12y ago"If 520 was accessible by Freemont, Ballard, Queen Anne, and Magnolia the area that could live on the west side and commute to the east would increase by at least 8x." Looks like the perfect reason _not_ to increase road capacity from Freemont, Ballard, Queen Anne and Magnolia to 520. That would encourage "live on the west side, commute to the east", and a complete standstill in the long run.
- forrestthewoods 12y agoWe could pass a law saying you must live within 1 mile or your job. I don't think that'd be a good idea. Or legal. But it would improve traffic!
- winterismute 12y agoI grew up in one of the Italian cities that adopted the "limited traffic zone" approach many years ago (Bologna). The fact is that many Italian cities were designed basically in the middle age and they have not changed much since then, hence they have very narrow streets, crossings, and sometimes wide sidewalks. They are simply not made for cars. Anyway, in the last years, the new administration additionally decided to completely "ban" cars from the main streets during weekends and public holidays: no cars of no type, no taxis, bus routes changed to only reach the beginning of the closed roads but they did introduce a small bus line that goes around the closed down zone. The idea was highly criticized at the beginning mainly by the business owners located there, who were afraid of seeing a sharp decline of customers. Instead, after a first period, those "T days" became a success: people re-discovered the pleasure of just walking everywhere on the streets, more and more events were organized, and also shops saw an increase in revenue, and in fact now they are asking to extend this ban to more days. Personally, I think we should start realizing that cars have put high cost on society in terms of pollution, safety, low efficiency in the use of resources (fuel), stress related to jams (which is a clear alienating experience). Maybe banning them from everywhere is not the solution, but at least the idea that every family must own (at least) a car should be publicly questioned.
- bane 12y ago> an increase in revenue If you think about it, it's not a surprise. Walking through a commercial area lets people window shop. People generally ignore window displays while driving through them. It's similar to the movement in the U.S. to reintroduce police to "walking a beat" instead of sitting locked away in their car all day.
- jakobegger 12y agoIt's the same story everytime a pedestrian zone is introduced in some town in Austria. Shop owners complain loudly that they'll lose customers, but as soon as cars are banned pedestrian traffic explodes, revenue increases, and a lively city center emerges. Yet it takes years (often decades) of discussion for a single road to become a pedestrian zone, because all those people fail to see how benefitial pedestrian zones have been every time that they were introduced. I don't even think it's only because people love their cars, I think it's just a general fear of change.
- orasis 12y agoSo, the author doesn't like congestion pricing because it is regressive. This is another strong argument for Basic Income - proper market solutions can be used for public problems without worrying about gouging the poor.
- mschuster91 12y agoThe problem with introducing traffic-rationed zones is that the areas surrounding those areas are going to be swamped with cars not allowed in (e.g. carsharing meetups as close to the border as possible). That happened in Munich when areas in the inner city first got parking restrictions (before, parking was free, and now you have to pay iirc 20ct/10min) and then the entire area surrounded by the Mittlerer Ring got caught up in "Umweltzone" (environment protection area, where cars with too bad emission values are locked out; this only affects diesel cars, as petrol engines don't have fine-particulate problems)... The entire border areas to those with pay-parking as well as anything outside the Mittlerer Ring is essentially so much swamped with outside cars that the locals don't get a parking spot any more. Edit: The solution of Munich is to just put more and more border zones under parking restriction too (and the locals have to pay for their parking spots which used to be free, and it's anything but cheap). And the Umweltzone... well, if you manage to avoid parking anywhere in public, then cops don't really care.