Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
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Suspect in 9-Year-Old's Murder Found Dead in D.C. Jail
Photo of the Day: November 25, 2009
Ballou HS Rocks the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade
A week ago, the Government Accountability Office, purveyor of all things dry and wonkish, came out with a report arguing that tolls might be the best way to reduce congestion on our roads.
A toll or surcharge ... would create incentives for drivers to shift their travel to periods of lower demand, use other roads, or make other adjustments, when the costs of their decision to drive during congested periods exceed the benefits they receiveWith High Occupancy Toll lanes, or HOT lanes, already slated for much of the Beltway, in addition to I-95 and the InterCounty Connector, what's the real deal with the tolls? Are they an effective traffic management tool, or just a ruse to sap drivers of more coin?
Photo by Slinger5
First of all, let's look at the theory behind tolling. Is it safe for us to assume that we've all taken Econ 101? Because there is a pretty obvious application of basic supply and demand curves when it comes to traffic. 
In this case, the commodity supplied is a space on the road. Drivers are the demand. The natural equilibrium point is commonly known as a traffic jam.
On an un-tolled road, the commodity is essentially free; supply is limited only by the width of the road and the speed at which vehicles can travel. At equilibrium, as many cars as possible will fit into the space available, and that means very low speeds. Unless demand is dramatically over-supplied, this is the natural state of a road.
Rising area populations such as ours are the main driver behind increased demand for more spaces on the road. Increasing supply by widening roads to meet this demand raises that equilibrium point. Unless demand is dramatically over-supplied, you might get relief for a while, but in the end, all you end up with are wider roads that are still congested.
Adding transit capacity certainly helps to mitigate increasing demand by giving people another transportation option, and one that is more efficient at that. But as we're seeing with Metro, transit capacity faces the same limits.
As the GOA report points out, allowing drivers to use roads for "free" fails to account for the consequences of their consumption, such as the space they take up and the pollution they emit. On the other hand, a variable toll, such as those to be used on the Beltway and ICC, puts a price on this commodity and the result of its consumption that reacts to current market conditions. The toll goes up as the number of cars on a road goes up. As a result, the equilibrium point is not dictated by the size of the road, which causes speeds to slow, but by a price, which does not. It's true that estimates show the price of such tolls could reach pretty high levels at peak times. But that just shows us how much of the price of our driving habit we don't pay for.
Theory is nice, but how 'bout a little practice? In places where toll roads have been put in place, such as Southern California and Canada, data shows that they can be effective tools for managing congestion, and, if implemented correctly, with very few downsides. Total vehicle-miles traveled, the metric traffic engineers use to measure road use, go down, delays go down, fuel use goes down, and air pollution (including carbon dioxide) goes down. Meanwhile, in areas where good service is in place, transit use goes up, and significant revenue is also generated. Those who consider it a double-tax, since gas taxes are still levied, fail to recognize that current gas taxes are not only insufficient to cover the cost of externalities like pollution and delay, but according the Federal Highway Administration, they are insufficient even to cover the cost of building roadways. The additional revenue tolls generate can be plowed back into expanded and better transit service, as well as the smaller fixes at interchanges and bottlenecks that can have a dramatic impact on traffic at a much lower cost.
In more ways than one, we've been getting a free ride on our transportation system for far too long. The result is make-or-break situations, such as the recent legislative debacle in Virginia. If people had been paying for the full cost of their road network to begin with, it's unlikely they ever would have been faced with such a dire situation. As officials desperate for a way to "fix" congestion try bold ideas like HOT lanes in more parts of the country, the benefits of assessing more of the true cost of driving will be more widely accepted. And in 50 years, we'd be surprised if any major road remains un-tolled.
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Yeah toll booths won't slow down traffic at all ... wise move
"Unless demand is dramatically over-supplied, this is the natural state of a road."
What does this even mean? I get the point of the article, and I agree that variable-rate tolls have some practical uses, but be a little more careful when you start throwing around words like supply and demand, will you? There are enough people on the planet who can't follow the basic logic behind traffic congestion, let's not confuse them any further.
That said, I'm not sure how one would implement variable-rate tolling on any useful scale in the District itself. It's not like we have that many limited-access freeways, and no one's going to wait for 10 minutes in line for a tollbooth so that they can save 5 minutes by taking the Whitehurst. What DC needs instead is either a commuter tax or a congestion charge zone.
Apparently they've never seen the lead-up to the Bay Bridge on a weekend... or weekday... or ever. Until the come up with an efficient way to collect tolls (there's none), it's a very counter-productive idea.
EZ-Pass or similar transponders should be required, in my opinion. Cash booths will just result in more gridlock as the backups trickle out to every part of the beltway and surrounding roadways.
An interesting point to note about widening roadways is that some studies have shown that as supply increases by widening roadways, demand also increases, because people are more willing to make trips since there is more capacity; so that somewhat paradoxically, by widening a roadway traffic is increased.
I wouldn't worry about toll collection...people will quickly see the benefits of an E-Z Pass and get one. I wonder, however, if it would push industry out into the surrounding urban centers, such as Tysons Corner and the like. A significant amount of people are going to essentially receive a pay cut if this happens (they aren't all going to just up and move into DC). Many non-location-critical businesses could start up just as easily in MD or VA as they could in DC. In an already competitive business world, who needs another expense?
Toll Booths?...honestly are you still using dial up. This will all be done with ez-pass tech. You could enter and leave at speed. No slowing down, no cash, just a nice little box by your rear view mirror, and a major credit card....sorry Discover.
Look at some FAQ from other HOTLANE sites:
http://www.wsdot.wa.gov/Projects/SR167/HOTLanes/faq.htm#work
http://www.mdot.state.md.us/Planning/Express%20Toll%20Lanes/ETL%20FAQ
http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/hov/faq.htm
Tolls, in principle, may be fine. But it is hard to make arguments when which roads have tolls is somewhat arbitrary from the driver's point-of-view (they may make a lot of sense based on how they were built/funded, but not really on where they go).
One point missing here is that current proposals for toll lanes charge everyone the same toll. The lobbyist making lots of quid gets charged the same as a janitor. Wealthy people can afford the HOT lanes whereas poor people get stuck in traffic. Also how would commercial vehicles be charged? Goverment vehicles?
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Or the poor people could carpool/ use mass transit/ live in the jurisdiction where they earn thier income. It's a tax on use, if you use it you pay.
One quote from the article I thought was interesting: "If we do nothing, the HOV lanes, slugs, carpools and bus service in the I-95 corridor will cease to function"
They keep billing this as an 'optional' solution. i.e: If you don't want to pay for HOT lanes, you don't have to use them. However, they are saying we have to do something or else i95 will 'cease to function.' But the HOT lanes are the solution. Meaning if you don't pay to use them, you're stuck on the road that will inevitable 'cease to function.' All benefits and consequences aside, how "optional" are they really going to be?
As I recall, studies of West Coast HOT lanes show significant use by those who can afford it least. Why? The working poor do not have the same flexibity of work schedules as the wealthy, and rightly feel they may be fired if they are late due to heavy traffic. HOT lanes: another regressive tax.
I should have made this more clear in the post, but the tolling I am talking about is on area highways. This is different from the congestion charging that London, Stockholm, and Singapore have implemented, and NYC and DC, among others, have proposed.
As for the toll collection system, like RJ said, it will via open road tolling systems that collect tolls with EZ-Pass technology but at highway speeds without booths or lane dividers. Here's a great pic of a system in use on the I-90 Kennedy Expressway outside of Chicago.
Also, surveys in the San Diego and L.A. areas have shown that, while very wealthy drivers do tend to use the lanes about 20 percent more often than most drivers, both lower-income and more middle class folks tend to use them with about the same frequency. Finally, if the revenue generated is used for transit improvements, you can argue that some benefit accrues to everyone.
Another guest said: "One point missing here is that current proposals for toll lanes charge everyone the same toll."
Just like Subway charges everyone the same price for a sandwich and Metro charges everyone the same price for a ride. Not every transaction has to be progressive.
Howsabout you put some labels on the axes of those graphs, so we know what the hell they're supposed to be telling us, other than that you can use a drawing program?
I've always wondered why municipalities don't make one of the tollbooth lanes a topless lane. Double the tolls and driver's can see a tollbooth dame with a huge rack. Kind of a peepshow vibe, complete with nasty sax music, pasties, g-string, the works. You'd divert the SUV-driver-with-penis-anxiety traffic to that one booth, so the rest of us could breeze through the others.
Of course, for the ladies you'd need the female equivalent, which would involve some twentysomething beefcake with washboard abs and a tiny ass who'd wax longingly about how much he wants to just cuddle all night and talk about his feelings. Whatever jams avoided by the former would be gained by the latter.
I can see how converting an existing highway might lead to a reduction in vehicle miles traveled. However, this may not occur when a new tolled highway is built. In the case of the Intercounty Connector, VMT is expected to be 20% higher if the highway is built than if it were not, because people would be making trips they otherwise would not make.
Add to that the devastation of forests and wetlands that would result from its construction, and it's clear the ICC would be more harmful than helpful in the fight against global warming.
Unless demand is dramatically over-supplied, you might get relief for a while, but in the end, all you end up with are wider roads that are still congested.
I'm all for smart growth, transit, HOT, etc. But I just wanted to point out that there is a benefit to wider roads that are equally congested, namely more people are getting to where they want to go. In other words, more people get to live further out without increasing the length of a trip to the city. This isn't necessarily my view of a benefit, but it is a benefit to some nonetheless.
Also, user of highways do pay for them as it is. Federal highway funds come almost wholly from user fees (i.e. gas tax). Ironically, it's the gas guzzlers that are paying more than their share. You can argue that they aren't paying for the externalities (health effects, environmental, cost of land taken up by roads, etc.) but the actual costs of road building and maintenance for highways are paid by the users.
But the thing is, a new lane on a highway is worth more in the aggregate to drivers than the cost to build it and maintain it. Therefore, it doesn't matter that the users are paying for it, it's still becomes a scarce resource. Variable pricing is the best way to allocate a scarce resource. That's why I'm for HOT lanes and congestion pricing.
You can't understand congestion without understanding that automobiles are a tool of capitolism, meaning that by driving I save time at the expense of other people's time. However, transfer of time-life, as capitol, is very inefficient, so my cumulative cost to everyone else is always greater the the benefit to me.
If 1% of people drive, you have Royalty benefiting from a more efficient system. If 95% of people drive, the majority of time is lost to inefficiency, and the little remaining time is distributed equally among drivers.
There's no such thing as over-supplying roads, because because cars, as capitol-intensive machines, migrate to the market with the greatest return on their currency, in time-exchage. The only tether is the owner's source of revenue to feed their car.
Since bicycles provide the most efficent and equitable transit system, and work well in tandem with efficient rail lines, congestion is best solved by migrating towards labor-intensive cycling and pedestrian access to revenue-producing locations, with a royalty system of rail-lines to address address situations where transport improves access.
Smaller cars, motorcycles, and congestion pricing, as well as trading auto travel and parking capacity for other uses, are at least baby steps in this direction. People use whatever the goverment invests in. Investing more money on the most efficient systems, is the best use of money.