{"id":33646,"date":"2021-09-10T12:16:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-10T16:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=33646"},"modified":"2021-08-30T07:30:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-30T11:30:50","slug":"express-lanes-dumbness-with-concrete-for-a-country-that-cant-be-intelligent-with-electronics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2021\/09\/10\/express-lanes-dumbness-with-concrete-for-a-country-that-cant-be-intelligent-with-electronics\/","title":{"rendered":"Express lanes: dumbness with concrete for a country that can\u2019t be intelligent with electronics"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As part of our escape to the Florida Free State<\/a>, I drove our minivan down I-95 from Maskachusetts. Mindy the Crippler and I hit traffic in Virginia, associated with an I-95 Express Lane extension project<\/a> (massive traffic jams now with the promise of clear sailing in the future).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A friend who is an expert on these matters told me that the entire concept was a terrible idea. “Adding two express lanes in the middle of a highway requires building two extra shoulders and lots of overpasses for the exits,” he pointed out. “It is spectacularly high cost compared to adding two lanes to the main roadway.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words, instead of having two new express lanes, for the same cost we could build six new lanes on the main road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What about the congestion and tolling angle? These new express lanes will require a fee to be paid (or an EZ Pass set to “HOV mode”). If we had gotten organized with in-car transponder electronics and a display reading “You’re now being charged 30 cents\/mile,” we could just designate the leftmost lanes of a wider main road as toll-required express lanes. It should also be safer and easier to have the HOV mode set automatically by the car, e.g., with weight sensors on the seats or an in-camera camera that can count the number of occupants and subtract for canines. (Our 2021 Honda Odyssey, relying on weight sensor alone, gets upset when Mindy the Crippler sits in the front seat and is not belted.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We’ll be fueling inflation by printing money to spend on infrastructure (see “Inside Biden\u2019s $4.5 Trillion Infrastructure Plan”<\/a>). If my friend is right about the off-the-charts dumbness of the highway-inside-the-highways express lane idea, I wonder if most of the $4.5 trillion will be wasted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Related:<\/p>\n\n\n\n