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

391–400 of 689 posts

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

#391

Post by TomMarius »

timthelion wrote: post #385
TomMarius wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you live in a different Prague than I do, or you don't travel near the city centre often. When I tried to use trams in summer, they were full of people, so much I couldn't move, smelling and incredibly hot. I was very happy when my car finally got fixed. Yes, there are a lot of problems with driving (parking, one-way roads, ...), but it's much more comfortable, so much, that the discomfort caused by traffic i…

Sometimes the trams are full, yes. And sometimes there is trafic on the roads.

It's not about traffic, it's about comfort. In car, I'm comfortable even when I'm stuck in a traffic jam.

Also, it takes 39 minutes to go to my office using public transit, and 18 by car, and that's the worst case.

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

#392

Post by tomjakubowski »

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…

> Why? All the office buildings are in one central place.

No! The defining feature of the LA megapolis is that the offices and workplaces are not all in one central place. Just within LA County, there are major business districts in Hollywood, Santa Monica, Culver City, Burbank, Pasadena, Warner Center, Playa Vista, downtown, Westwood, Century City, … it goes on and on. As Human Transit says, Los Angeles is a "vast constellation of dense places." [1]

This feature actually makes Los Angeles a prime candidate for mass transit. In highly centralized "hub and spoke" metropolises like Chicago, packed trains rush towards the city center all morning, while no one travels the reverse direction. In the afternoon, the situation is flipped. This is an inefficient use of transit infrastructure.

http://humantransit.org/2010/03/los-angeles-the-transit-metr...

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

#393

Post by Osiris »

tn13 wrote: post #382
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…

> Increase the cost of vehicle registration or gas taxes to encourage workers to prefer jobs closer to their home. Or perhaps impose such high state taxes/ local body taxes that the people simply leave the town, state or even better the country! Just kidding. This is a very heavy handed solution that hurts a lot of people and especially poor, minorities and vulnerable groups. Roads, Vehicles and Gas has far too many…

> A toll however is a far better solution. A toll applied only on specific routes on specific times will directly change the traffic pattern and will have much greater consequences over longer time.

That's a good point. I'm trying to say that it needs to be combined with additional policies (that may not even be transportation policies) that are all aimed at reducing the NEED to travel, especially long distances.

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

#394

Post by wahern »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #346
Touche wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There's no easy fix. Americans pay more than enough money in taxes alone for the problems to be handled better. The issue is political, legal, and cultural; and it's systemic. There are plenty of countries that treat their mentally ill populations more humanely while also maintaining much cleaner and more comfortable public spaces.

I don't see what's wrong in pointing out the obvious. If public transit organizations are prevented from even recognizing the issue because of misguided shaming, they sure as heck won't lure more drivers to public transit. And we can't expect people to fix all the world's problems before we allow them to address their immediate issues.

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

#395

Post by jayarcanum »

kirykl wrote: post #83
donatj wrote: post #22

The problem as I see it is that we force everyone onto the freeway. Need to get somewhere a few miles from here? They make it very difficult to get there without getting onto the freeway. There was some point in the last 30 years where city designers decided the best way to handle local traffic was just to force everyone onto the freeway. It's horrible. There should instead be a reasonable main grid of smaller (2 lan…

Waze will get you anywhere in LA without a freeway. Once you learn the side streets, there's always a faster way when the freeway is backed up.

Ok fountain and venice are not going to save anybody from the free ways. People know about side streets, they're not really that much help. This problem isn't going away just like the cities revenue problem which is the only reason this is happening.

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

#396

Post by Symbiote »

martinald wrote: post #312
Symbiote wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

London hasn't adequately priced the externalities of traffic congestion. Air quality is still rather poor by European standards! The more recent changes are well overdue, but still don't go far enough.

That's mostly caused by buses though, not private cars. Eg Oxford Street is one of the worst but has no cars on it. Not sure how productive it is taxing buses...

Oxford Street is packed with black cabs, they always seemed smellier to me. I used to work in Zone 4, and there'd be lines of them outside the station, with engines idling all day, next to the "Buses must switch off engines while on stand" signs.

The new taxi regulations are a welcome improvement [1], but they're weaker than they should be. Why are Euro IV cars still allowed as new taxis? Why is it only voluntary for >10 year old vehicles to be replaced? No doubt it was the best deal Kahn etc could get, but it's disappointing that London/Britain can't do better.

The buses[2] at least, are all Euro 4 standard or better, with the majority Euro 5 or better, i.e. made since 2010.

[1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/tax...

[2] https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/publications-and-reports/bus-fl...

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

#397

Post by cperciva »

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…

There are a lot of cars on the roads. Why? People live far away from their work. Why?

Because they're not paying for the cost of the road capacity they're using.

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

#398

Post by timthelion »

striking wrote: post #374
timthelion wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We made paper stickers reminding people that they are illegally parked and we place them on the wind sheild. If it rains, then the person will spend a good 15 minutes getting the gunk off.

Reminds me of Russia's "Stop a Douchebag" ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMrKscEv_Ri1pvlRsLxsqJQ ). Except those stickers are intentionally very sticky.

This is great!

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

#399

Post by timthelion »

TomMarius wrote: post #391
timthelion wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the trams are full, yes. And sometimes there is trafic on the roads.

It's not about traffic, it's about comfort. In car, I'm comfortable even when I'm stuck in a traffic jam. Also, it takes 39 minutes to go to my office using public transit, and 18 by car, and that's the worst case.

It is only so fast, because the rest of us are in the tram though.

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

#400

Post by bobthepanda »

rusabd wrote: post #379
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…

O-Bahn might work quite well - combining benefits of rail and buses... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-Bahn_Busway It's fast, comfortable and those buses are able to collect passengers in suburbia.

The general idea (open-access busway) works well, but guided buses specifically do not, since you combine all the disadvantages of rail (expensive, compatible vehicles) with the disadvantages of the bus (much lower capacity, much higher labor requirement, etc.) Brisbane is a much better example of this: http://humantransit.org/2009/05/brisbane-a-short-tour-of-the...
Post reply on HN