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

latimes.com

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

#341

Post by OrwellianChild »

avn2109 wrote: post #204
kkitay wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a middle ground between buses and rail: building defacto rail lines by transforming far-left lanes and middle dividers into dedicated bus tracks and semipermanent bus stations. Urbanized (Gary Hustwit, 2011) highlights the TransMilenio bus system, which serves the city of Bogota. It specifically covers elevating the experience and status of taking the bus by adopting positive aspects of rail systems: covered…

Bus themed solutions would definitely be an improvement over LA's status quo. However a better idea would be to reduce the need to travel long distances by building denser. LA roads are super wide right now, so the easiest way to raise density would be by putting buildings in the middle of the road, leaving a Really Narrow Street (tm) along either side. Ground floors of new buildings could be commercial, upper floors…

Bus Rapid Transit expansion is a near-term fix that can happen in a year or two. Rezones and construction to densify a city take longer. I don't think these two solutions are incompatible - they address the problem at different time scales.

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

#342

Post by HillaryBriss »

Osiris wrote: post #307

This is just a band-aid. Same with adding buses, lanes, trains, etc. When something goes wrong in software we usually try to resolve it by finding a root cause. There are a lot of cars on the roads. Why? People live far away from their work. Why? All the office buildings are in one central place. Why? ... Etc. The solutions to the root causes, whatever they are, are, unfortunately, a lot more complex and expensive th…

in LA, all the office buildings are not in one central place. all the jobs are not in one central place.

the patterns are not so easily discerned. the traffic is not so easily predictable. people often express surprise about how the traffic "was horrible and it was three o'clock in the morning on a Sunday", etc.

if there is a single main problem, it is that there are too many cars for the available road and freeway space and too many people feel compelled to get into those cars and drive absolutely anywhere at any particular time because public transport is usually too slow and uncomfortable (being confined, mostly, to the same congested roads).

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

#343

Post by twblalock »

DrScump wrote: post #329
twblalock wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the HOV lane is gridlocked, that means the price to use the HOV lane is not high enough. Keep raising the toll until traffic in the HOV lane moves at the desired speed.

By "price", you point out that California "HOV" lanes... aren't. "Carpool/HOV" lanes have been political toys from the start. A true carpool means more than one would-otherwise-be driver per vehicle. A minority of HOV lane users in CA have more than one licensed driver. The rest are "kidpools", "hybrids" (which, for all but the first 10-30 miles on a charge are less efficient than non-hybrids), "non-polluting vehicle…

In California, we have toll lanes too, and those are the kind of lanes I am referring to.

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

#344

Post by twblalock »

jedberg wrote: post #234
twblalock wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the HOV lane is gridlocked, that means the price to use the HOV lane is not high enough. Keep raising the toll until traffic in the HOV lane moves at the desired speed.

They set a max price on those lanes because otherwise poor people would get stuck in even worse traffic while rich people would be able to move quickly. That's already true but they are trying to minimize the disparity between rich and poor.

Fair enough, but there is no point having toll lanes if they are so cheap that everyone uses them.

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

#345

Post by Symbiote »

jessaustin wrote: post #289
bsder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or carry concealed permits. Um, no. The crazy people won't care, the gangbangers will be better armed and generally in a group, and the single mugger will now take your wallet AND gun AND may shoot you if he gets the drop on you instead of just taking your wallet. > in a small town It shows. Your assessment of the probability of crime and how you will interact with it is completely wrong.

'bsder you seem pretty confident here, despite the fact that everything you've said contradicts what I've heard from LEOs and other trained firearms users.

His assessment is exactly why teenagers in Britain are told not to carry knives -- they're worse than nothing when a bad situation arises.

But I have no idea if that could carry over to guns -- for one thing, they're more difficult to run away from.

[1] http://safe.met.police.uk/knife_crime_and_gun_crime/pressure...

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

#346

Post by OrwellianChild »

Touche wrote: post #334
nradov wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses in the LA region have a bad reputation because of other bus passengers. If you ride the bus you might have to sit next to someone who smells bad or plays loud music or acts out in inappropriate ways. That's why everyone who can afford it drives their own car: to be alone. The reputation would improve if they could get more "regular" people riding, but it's kind of a chicken-or-the-egg problem.

Am I horrible person to want higher end trains again (like there used to be)? So I can pay double but have the confidence that my fellow passengers have jobs and families they care about and don't have voices in their head. Does this make me a bad human to want this?

Bad is subjective. Implicitly in this, you want to pay money to avoid seeing the problems of other people instead of seeking to fix them. That might be worth thinking about.

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

#347

Post by enknamel »

Osiris wrote: post #307

This is just a band-aid. Same with adding buses, lanes, trains, etc. When something goes wrong in software we usually try to resolve it by finding a root cause. There are a lot of cars on the roads. Why? People live far away from their work. Why? All the office buildings are in one central place. Why? ... Etc. The solutions to the root causes, whatever they are, are, unfortunately, a lot more complex and expensive th…

I think LA and the Bay Area are going to eventually go the way of New York where you have huge buildings and residential and business well mixed. Right now the Bay is terrible because the jobs are all in SF, MV, SJ and fairly far from affordable housing. So most people do very long commutes adding in more traffic. I really shouldn't be working with so many people who commute 1-2 hours each way every day because they cannot afford to live any closer to their work.

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

#348

Post by OrwellianChild »

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.

This interpretation assumes that buses don't have their own right-of-way. Give buses their own lane, and suddenly they start looking like very cheap, quick-to-implement light-rail substitutes...

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

#349

Post by Symbiote »

biehl wrote: post #176
Asturaz wrote: post #34

LOL the same arguments where used in Sweden, Stockholm and Gothenburg, worked for a few months, the traffic is worse again. It was just a great lie for the the public to finance other prestige projects.

http://hub.jhu.edu/2017/03/02/health-effects-for-children-sw...

It would have been worth quoting from this article, since it shows what nonsense the original claim about Sweden was.

"When Stockholm, Sweden introduced a "congestion tax" to discourage driving in the center of town, traffic eased and the pollution level dropped by between 5 and 10 percent.

There was one other result that was unexpected, but welcome nonetheless: The rate of asthma attacks among local children decreased by nearly 50 percent, according to a Johns Hopkins University economist's study of the tax and its impact."

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

#350

Post by enknamel »

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 just make it easier for you to be uncomfortable. We need to eliminate the need for long commutes not make long commutes more sustainable. We should not be spending 10+ hours a week just on commuting.
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