For years I have dreamed that U.S. state and local governments can escape their pension-commitment and healthcare-commitment insolvency while simultaneously freeing Americans from the agony of traffic jams. It seems that my dream of congestion pricing for driving is coming true in Virginia: “A $40 Toll to Drive 10 Miles? It Happened on Virginia’s I-66” (nytimes).
One glitch from my point of view: the toll is $0 for a car containing two people, which will generate just as much congestion as a car containing one person. (Do carpool lanes actually encourage significant numbers of people to carpool? I myself end up in them sometimes, but invariably because my passenger is someone with whom I would be sharing the trip anyway.)
In the San Francisco bay area, the wait for the bridge crossing between Oakland and San Francisco is so onerous that an informal “casual carpool” formed where people would pick up passengers (2 needed) at spots near bus terminals. Complete strangers, usually, although there’d be “thank god we didn’t get that guy again” moments when you dodged picking up passengers known to be abrasive or odd. It’s been going on for decades. To save $40 and maybe some time, perhaps people will be willing to pick up strangers. (Note that the activity I’m aware of centered around upper-middle-class neighborhoods)
Your dream revenue generator is a driving tax? And you’re still a committed North Easterner, right?
Tim: Not a driving tax, a congestion tax! First, we already have a driving tax (except on the sanctimonious Tesla owners) in the form of per-gallon fuel tax. Second, if people are driving at times when traffic is light they wouldn’t pay. (This is a dream because it would be the end of traffic jams, not because I’m excited about paying higher taxes, though I think that is inevitable given government spending commitments.)
HOV requirements have been in place in Northern Virginia for decades. At lest since I moved to the area in 1985. The have given rise to the culture of “slugging”. Picking up strangers in order to travel the carpool lanes. The system have developed its own network of pickup locations which are dependent on destination. Heading to the Pentagon? Wait at this spot. Capital Hill? Wait somewhere else. There is also an unwritten code of behavior for “slugs” including no food or drink, driver controls the radio, etc.
The new tolls on I-66 (and soon to come on I-395) are just a way to extract tolls from individuals who don’t want to be bothered to pick up riders. The real problem is that this is not a “tax” in the sense that it returns funds to the government to use in mitigating traffic or improving transportation. The tolls actually accrue to a private company that has taken over publically funded roads for their own use and profit.
Widespread car usage and urbanism are just incompatible. Once places hit a certain population density and scale cars don’t really work anymore in terms of: energy efficiency, air pollution, infrastructure costs, land efficiency, and congestion. This has to be dealt with directly. But people refuse to acknowledge any of this. Everyone wants to keep driving everywhere on expensive highways and live in single family housing. Jacking up tolls is a half measure that doesn’t really solve the fundamental problems.
The DC area has a dysfunctional public transport system and ever expanding unwalkable sprawl. The correct solutions involve a working public transit system and increasing walkable density that obviates car ownership. Refuse to build highways at all.
There’s this never ending ridiculous cycle where towns like Charlotte, NC had cheap housing and were easy to drive in. People and businesses moved there for that and the sprawl grew. Now after a decade+ of “growth” the city is dysfunctional and driving anywhere is impossible. The costs of maintaining sprawled out water and sewer systems in the long run are unsustainable. Governments just need to deal directly from the get-go with the reality that personal motoring and proper cities don’t mix.
I am just happy that having my baby in a car seat makes us a car pool.
Carpool lanes are the most RETARDED idea in the history of freeways. Let me put it this way… If you have a carpool lane on a 4-lane freeway, you are removing 25% of the carrying capacity of the road. If everyone drives alone you actually make congestion worse because you have 75% of the flow capacity remaining. If 25% or more of the drivers normally have a passenger, you are not making any difference because the carpool lane will be just as congested given that there is as high a percentage of qualifying cars as there are exclusive lanes. If less than 25% of the cars are dual occupancy or greater, it MAKES TRAFFIC WORSE UNTIL some drivers change their behavior. Simple logic right?
Here’s the RETARDED part. Statistically, 26% of cars on America’s freeways during rush hour are double or multiple occupied with or without carpool lanes. So, Carpool lanes are a waste of time. Add to that “green privilege” policies like carpool lane usage for single Hybrid and Electric car drivers and you make congestion worse and the idea DOUBLY RETARDED.
Opportunity for business model reverse of Uber? Apps to find poeple who can ride in your car, instead of finding a car to ride-in?
Or if/when these tolls are on many different roads, maybe Uber can start carpool-person delivery service similar to that for food delivery with UberEATS?
Like with most things (healthcare, education, internet service), most people rebel against the idea that things which are in limited supply and in heavy demand should be made more expensive until the supply and demand curves reach a nice equilibrium.
As goes Calif*, so goes the world. Calif* has had congestion pricing for decades. Prices have risen with inflation. Want 2% interest on your mortgage? Everything needs to cost $40.
lion: California has congestion pricing? Aren’t most tolls more or less fixed? http://baybridgeinfo.org/tolling-information says it is $6 at rush hour peaks or $4 off-peak (but $0 eastbound during rush hour!). That bridge should probably have a $15 toll at rush hour in each direction?
Sadly, I’ll bet they just waste the money.
philg: IIRC, you’re not a commuter anymore, so you’re not the target demo for carpooling.
Adding to Dwight Looi’s good points: Carpool lanes cannot ‘fix’ traffic even if they did encourage behavioral changes in drivers. Carpool lanes create incentive BECAUSE traffic is bad in the other lanes, hence their incentive potential falls off a cliff right at the point at which traffic in the open lanes becomes reasonable. So the total cars per hour can’t go below some level using carpool lanes. The only thing carpool lanes can do is increase passenger flow (persons per hour) above the level at which traffic becomes hellish, by putting additional people in the same number of cars.
This wouldn’t be true if carpool lanes had an independent incentive. Now if you let people in the carpool lane drive arbitrarily fast… you’d probably create a spectacular number of accidents.
I don’t understand any of the anti-carpooling logic above. Encouraging carpooling gets more people through the highway per hour, which is the desired outcome. Encouraging carpooling and disincentivizing lone drivers makes perfect sense.
People who can’t carpool don’t like carpool lanes, just like people who don’t have money or commute time flexibility don’t like congestion pricing.
(I used to live in DC and drive the entire length of I-66 a few times a month.)
DC commuters into and out of Virginia *absolutely* have changed their commuter habits to take advantage of HOV (3-person minimum!) lanes on I-66 and the beltway.
Typically, people out in Virginia suburbs will drive to a metro station (many run parallel to I-66) and park (“park-and-ride”) or get dropped off (“kiss-and-ride”). Then they will take the metro a long distance into the city.
If someone needs to use a car on highways on or inside the beltway during rush hour, he will pick up strangers from metro stations to reach the 3-person HOV limit. This practice is called “slugging”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slugging
For years I have dreamed that U.S. state and local governments can escape their pension-commitment and healthcare-commitment insolvency while simultaneously freeing Americans from the agony of traffic jams.
I would think that toll revenue is restricted only for use in transportation projects (like gasoline excise taxes). So, no affect on the public pension tsunami.
Over the past few years, my state has chipped away at my future public pension by mandating a 3% employee contribution, raising the vesting period, and eliminating the COLA. Twenty years of service will earn me about $20K per year at age 62.
Over the past 30 years, I’ve lived and worked in five different mid-size cities; my longest commute is the one I have right now at 3 miles roundtrip!
Three miles is a leisurely fifteen minute bicycle ride. Dunno how that’d be a long commute unless you’re crazy or are joking about having worked at home in the other cities.
For once, I have to completely agree with bobbybobbob. If you want large, liveable cities, then you need to do away with personal cars for commuting and embrace higher density housing. (For the record, my personal commute is by bicycle.)
Carpool lanes make perfect sense because the aim is to get more people per hour, not cars per hour. @Dwight Looi, your idea of traffic “as a fluid flow” does not stack up to research done on traffic. If you reduce the number of lines, congestion does not always increase because people will avoid the congestion and seek alternative routes. In fact, the opposite is generally true: the more lanes you add into a freeway, the more congested it will become because more people see there is capacity and will start using it. Read on what Seoul did to Cheonggyecheon.