Stefanie wrote:
I think you're right about that. I don't think charging peak-hour tolls is feasible, and Anthony Downs further explains why in a related article: Anthony Downs wrote:
Transportation economists have long been proponents of this tactic, but most Americans reject this solution politically for two reasons. Tolls would favor wealthier or subsidized drivers and harm poor ones, so most Americans would resent them, partly because they believe they would be at a disadvantage.
Well, that's a reasonable argument, but also one that was addressed in the original article. To wit, some percentage (about 1/3 based on a few samples), of the collections would be redirected into subsidies for low-income drivers who would otherwise be harmed by the opportunity cost of driving into the cordon. There are a number of compaints I can imagine in response to this, not least of which is the administrative overhead, but I think all are tractable. Anthony Downs wrote:
The second drawback is that people think these tolls would be just another tax, forcing them to pay for something they have already paid for through gasoline taxes. For both these reasons, few politicians in our democracy—and so far, anywhere else in the world—advocate this tactic. Limited road-pricing schemes that have been adopted in Singapore, Norway, and London only affect congestion in crowded downtowns, which is not the kind of congestion on major arteries that most Americans experience.
The author is also cognizant that educating the public about the difference between taxation and paying for something is one of the main hurdles to such schemes. Again, the economic argument is that driving is currently cheaper than it's *real* cost, becuase harm to the environment, business development, etc., are undervalued. Americans will probably largely reject this argument on reflex, but I think it has a great deal of merit. Still, merit doesn't make things happen, necessarily. ...I disagree with Downs when he claims that we can't make the situation at least a little better. He states that "living with congestion... is the sole viable option," and discounts the options of "greatly expanding road capacity" and "greatly expanding public transit capacity." While I agree that constantly expanding road capacity is impractical, I think he has given up on public transportation (in the form of rail systems) too easily. If trains were available in more areas (connecting neighboring cities, and connecting downtown areas to the suburbs), I think many commuters would use them. No, I don't expect it to eliminate all congestion, but I do think trains (above or below ground) would help.
Absolutely. There is a *huge* difference between accepting the reality of some congestion and adopting a fatalistic argument that there's no way to fix the problem. That's categorically absurd. There's bad traffic in Osaka and Tokyo, to be sure, but when I was in Japan it didn't affect us because we spent exactly 40 minutes in a car, taking a taxi from the burbs (sort of) at 3 am (burbs we had *reached* by train, I must add). The majority of people never have to deal with congestion. Suggesting that they must is just nuts. I completely disagree with Downs' suggestion for more HOT and HOV lanes.
With you. Not so much because I care about the issue of utilization by all taxpayers, but because it doesn't have the intended consequence. Or, anyway, not the stated consequence... they may well have intended to utilize HOV as a revenue generation strategy, which I agree is not ok. HOV lanes are essentially dangerous, and do not serve to incentivize carpooling since they're typically slower than the main highway. I would like to see the HOV lanes on I-85 and I-75 scrapped and that 40 foot wide swathe replaced with light rail. I don't know what the width requirements are exactly... you might need to steal another half lane or so from one side or the other. The RT 400 MARTA line looks to be about 50 feet wide. Granted, there's a bit of extra cost incurred in building stations out over the highway, or else having the rails cross to the side (say, at the Regal Hollywood 24? Huh?) but the benefits of gaining those ordnials would be great for commuters, or anyway they *could* be, if other changes were made. And of course there's CFPT's plan [PDF], which is mind-blowingly awesome compared with what we live with now. Downs' suggestion to raise gasoline taxes is just plain silly. Five days out of the week, I drive 70 miles, round trip, to/from work. I can't just decide to go to work only two days each week because the taxes are higher. Higher taxes won't reduce necessary business driving (rush hour), but it will anger most drivers. Besides, using taxation as punishment and/or to influence citizens' behaviors is fundamentally evil, as far as I'm concerned.
Well, it depends on your definition of "necessary", but I concede that many people have little choice in the matter, and are heavily affected by increases in gasoline prices. Though, I might ask why you *must* live 70 miles from work. That's partially rhetorical... you may have an entirely valid reason, but I think most people in similar situations simply have made a cost/benefit decision about where to live and settled on "far" because of the relative cost, feelings of security, proportion of people of similar race/class, or whatever. Increasing the gasoline tax would simply change that calculation. To the extent that it encourages people to live closer, then it's a good thing, in my mind. Again, there's a distinction between pure taxation and accurately reflecting the cost of an activity. Driving, expensive though it may seem, is unrealistically cheap in the U.S., for a myriad of reasons. But perhaps tax is the wrong way to handle it. Maybe all roads should be toll roads. Maybe you should pay per mile driven. I don't know. The point is that the word tax is loaded, but the goal must be kept in mind. Things should cost what they actually cost. Where they don't, someone's getting fucked. In this case, it's all of us, though not necessarily equally... Anyway, you want to pay less to drive? Tell it to the oil companies. They'll happily "apologize" from atop their mountains of profit. Anthony Downs wrote:
Peak-hour traffic congestion in almost all large and growing metropolitan regions around the world is here to stay. In fact, it is almost certain to get worse during at least the next few decades, mainly because of rising populations and wealth. This will be true no matter what public and private policies are adopted to combat congestion.
Also stupid. Or at least facile. Certainly congestion is a reality and will remain so. Equally certainly we can, and must, mitigate the extent to which we are affected by it. That means a lot more than taxing gas or building roads or even building trains. It means, above all, planning comfortable, *walkable* communities, even in the suburbs. It means encouraging telecommuting. It means, also, changing our politics. Frankly, one of the most insidious and consistent contributors to these problems is lobbying activity on behalf of road-builders. I think the power of lobbies is one of the biggest problems in this country, because while a lobby begins as a mechansim for collectivising an underheard group of voices, it ends up being a mechansim for further entrenchment of established interests. Roads are built because road-builders have power. That's a bad response, and I think it presents a distorted view of the genuine gestalt of the population. The voices of lobbyists are loud enough to drown out competing dialogue. Oh, and those gas taxes we talked about before? Turns out that a sizable proportion of road building activities in the US are funded by gasoline taxes already. Unfortunately the purse strings are largely controlled, indirectly, by road-builders. Trains are left sctratching for, if they're lucky, SAD's or TAD's -- both of which are quite directly taxes on *potential* beneficiaries of the eventual development of the train and ancillary commercial development. Say what you will about gasoline taxes... at least the cost is incurred by the actual beneficiary of the product being taxed. In the case of Atlanta's Beltline, some $900 million of the proposed funding was ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court... the first thing on the chopping block if the money can't be raised elsewhere? The trains. So in that case you'll have a special tax paying for commercial developers to build some "greenspace" (which is bound to be less "What a lovely park!" and more "Oh there's some grass between the mall and the condominiums.") and a ton of new retail and housing of the sort we already have in more than sufficient quantity. Just imagine a string of Atlantic Station's all around the perimeter, with no train to connect them. Just what the city needs, right? Anthony Downs wrote:
For the time being, the only relief for traffic-plagued commuters is a comfortable, air-conditioned vehicle with a well-equipped stereo system, a hands-free telephone, and a daily commute with someone they like.
I can't abide the suggestion that what we need more of is large SUV's and cell-chattering, unsafe drivers. Fuck that. It's not even just about commuting. It's about lifestyle. I've never worked more than a 30 minute drive in anti-rush-hour traffic from home (and the average is more like 10 minutes). These days, I'm probably one of about 100 professionals that walks to work in Atlanta. For me it's about everything else. Want to get a bite to eat? Drive. A drink with friends? Drive. See a show? Drive. Do all three in the same night, probably Drive, drive, and then drive. Oh, and then drive home. It's awful and makes me want to stay home with my XBOX. Everywhere I go is a parking headache, even after dealing with the traffic, and then when it's time to leave, I get to do all over again. Fuck it. Fuck Atlanta forever. Not that Atlantans need my curses, they're killing the city quite capably already. The same goes for nearly every other city in America. RE: America’s Traffic Congestion Problem: Toward a Framework for Nationwide Reform |
