Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

latimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 689 posts

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#211

Post by duderific »

vkou wrote: post #80
nickthemagicman wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LA is getting better with mass transit. The problem is it's not running 24 hours. It shuts down around 1am so you it's not really good for doing things at night like in NYC. Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people, or kind of thuggish people. There needs to be some sort of loitering code enforcement on the train along with more security. I feel uncomfortable as a dude, I bet women fe…

> Also, there's a TON of crazy people riding, literal homeless crazy people, or kind of thuggish people. There needs to be some sort of loitering code enforcement on the train along with more security. I feel uncomfortable as a dude, I bet women feel even more so. One of the ways to improve the public transit, as a whole, is to make people of all socioeconomic classes take transit. Consider New York, for instance, wh…

Driving and parking in New York is so incredibly difficult and expensive compared to mass transit, especially the subway. In the cities where that is the case, there isn't the same class division between those who drive and those who take mass transit.

In LA, it is exactly the opposite: mass transit is incredibly difficult, slow, and in some cases more expensive than driving. How can you "make people of all socioeconomic classes take transit" in that scenario?

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#212

Post by twentythree »

martinald wrote: post #174
wwweston wrote: post #45

> The reason that electrical power and air travel don’t fail every time they get crowded is that we raise prices to manage demand. Air travel and electrical power: (1) Are easier to add capacity for during times of peak demand (2) Actually do fail (even though tolled!) when demand exceeds capacity (brown/blackouts for electrical power, cascading delays easily exceeding those for ground traffic when weather knocks dow…

1) is completely false. If you have a entirely full airport at peak like LAX, JFK or LHR, how do you add more flights? The marginal cost of more flights is another runway or terminal building, which is (tens) of billions of dollars. The same problem exists within electricial grids. Providing 'peaker' plants which are only used 5% of the time are incredible expensive. cf how expensive electricity got in california whe…

Demand response [0] is an interesting solution to the electrical grid problem; utilities will pay customers (usually large commercial customers) to use less energy during periods of peak demand (which allows the utility to build fewer plants, so everybody wins).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demand_response

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#213

Post by sebringj »

kelsus wrote: post #198

I wanted to read these comments to see whether HN readership was with or against this argument, and instead everyone just decides they have better ideas or different arguments. For what it's worth, I think this would be a great first start. It's an easy MVP (thinking agile here) to get data and then decide what the next potentially more costly step might be.

well maybe some of them but you didn't read all of them ;)

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#214

Post by grotsnot »

soheil wrote: post #74
prodikl wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

he touched on that > the most common complaint being: "Oh, so only rich people can drive?" > This critique ignores the fact that working Americans often suffer the most severely from the impacts of poor mobility. Working-class parents who are late to pick up their kids from day care, for example, often pay severe financial penalties. Having the option to reach their destination quickly could actually save them money.…

> Tolls may disproportionately burden the poor, but so do sales taxes, gas taxes and every other way we pay for roads. So let's add yet another burden? > Americans often suffer the most severely from the impacts of poor mobility. Wow, somehow my crazy brain interprets this as if you're poor you're probably not as American as the rest of us. > Working-class parents who are late to pick up their kids from day care, for…

> working Americans often suffer the most severely from the impacts of poor mobility.

You missed an important qualifier, there.

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#215

Post by l1ambda »

gozur88 wrote: post #208
l1ambda wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, buses and rail attack the congestion problem on the demand side, while tolls attack the problem on the supply side. So they're really complementary.

There's not a lot of point to instituting tolls unless you have an viable alternative for people to use, which isn't the case in Southern California. Well, unless the point is to raise money.

That is a very interesting point and it sounds like a similar situation occurs in parts of Texas. Without an efficient urban grid (walkable, cycleable), or a practical car alternative, like rail, buses, the outcome may be you can set prices however high, but people will still pay because there is no other option.

I would still argue that prices should be set however high whereas to eliminate congestion, even it is seems "too high", simply because there is a limit to how many lanes can be constructed and no amount of lanes can eliminate congestion, and then we must allow market forces to occur such that development and lifestyle patterns change, which takes time.

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#216

Post by ju-st »

tunesmith wrote: post #168

What's the state of the art urban planning in terms of actually giving people less reason to drive/travel? It seems you need more zoning pods in suburbs where mini city centers (with jobs) can pop up, giving people less reason for long commutes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed-use_development

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#217

Post by sebringj »

jayarcanum wrote: post #197

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. Fix it... hahahahahaha. Excuse to take money, oh yeah.

The problem is in LA, traffic blows. Not only blows, its becoming a liability costing productivity. If money is taken for this, money can be used for something else promoting less traffic. It isn't about taking money at this stage, I think that it way oversimplified. IMO LA is fubar in terms of traffic which is just one of the reasons I work remotely even though I'm 20 minutes away without traffic, meaning its fricken 2 am in the morning on a tuesday type traffic.

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#218

Post by timthelion »

bit_logic wrote: post #109

The true solution to LA traffic will never happen. And that solution is buses. But not the current underfunded system that barely limps along. A massive number of buses, like 5x the current number. And combined with tolls for cars to get cars off the road. The large number of buses is critical because it greatly reduces wait time between transfers. It also allows adding express bus lines between major areas. But buse…

Do you have any experience with busses? Was that experience "great"? For example, have you lived in Hong Kong, which I understand is a Bus city? I live in Prague, and the trams are great. It is a 100% better experience than driving. Smooth, quiet, usually plenty of leg room. Doesn't smell. The busses, however, are hell. That low key vibration of the motor, the smell of the gass, the cramped spaces, the steps, all add up to a horrible experience.

I think a lot of people in the US associate mass transit with sociallism and associate socialism with "everyone should live like the dirt poor live". But come to Prague and ride the trams, and you will find that mass transit can be a luxury item.

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#219

Post by sampo »

donatj wrote: post #44
r00fus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe we should also consider the concept of mass transit? The increased likelihood of injury or death from increased transit time in automobiles alone is a health hazard.

I'm certainly not writing mass transit off but I've simply never seen it work in practice. I know that my 7 minute commute is well over an hour by bus. I'd rather just pay the aforementioned tolls than waste 2 hours of my day on a bus, every day. That would add up to years of my life wasted pretty quickly. I'm far more hopeful for self driving cars than mass transit.

> I'm certainly not writing mass transit off but I've simply never seen it work in practice.

You've never been to New York, London, Tokyo? Or any 0.5m+ city in Europe or Japan?

Re: To fix L.A.'s traffic, we need tolls

#220

Post by Eric_WVGG »

revelation wrote: post #170
bit_logic wrote: post #109

The true solution to LA traffic will never happen. And that solution is buses. But not the current underfunded system that barely limps along. A massive number of buses, like 5x the current number. And combined with tolls for cars to get cars off the road. The large number of buses is critical because it greatly reduces wait time between transfers. It also allows adding express bus lines between major areas. But buse…

Buses are the worst form of public transport due to low capacity, low efficiency and large exposure to delays from individual transport (no personal car can hold up rail) with the resulting scheduling issues and low customer satisfaction. Light rail blows buses away.

Buses are one of those solutions that look great on paper. Proponents of buses point to flexibility of routing, lack of new infrastructure installation, cost, etc. It's very difficult to argue with any of their points.

And yet, bus transit is invariably a dismal experience, simply the worst. I think it's because a bus gives you the worst of both worlds — the stop and go headaches of personal automobiles, and the forced interaction with strangers on trains. (This isn't a real problem on a train, however, because one can usually simply walk away from an unwanted interaction.)

Post reply on HN