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

431–440 of 689 posts

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

#431

Post by reillyse »

shams93 wrote: post #389
shams93 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real problem is how impossible it is to get remote work in LA, employers here demand onsite even when it hurts the project, its very hard to get remote work living in La as most employers are looking for remote employees in cheaper cost of living areas.

I have to travel 6 hours a day to get to work and back but my employer doesn't let me work remote, not even 1 day a week, attitude is its hard for everyone to get here and the harder the location is to reach, the better.

Sounds like you need a new job.

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

#432

Post by secabeen »

m-j-fox wrote: post #284
P3R3 wrote: post #10

The article falsely assumes that the HOV lane has spare capacity. During rush hour here all lanes are equally clogged, and sometimes the HOV lane is actually slower than the other 4 lanes. The only way to fix LA traffic with current infrastructure is self driving car pools. If/when they can get to the point in which they are safer than normal drivers, and safe for the riders (crime inside of self driving cars) LA tra…

Here's my idea: Rather than high-occupancy lets make the left lane a guaranteed-speed lane. The rule is that all cars in the lane move at 80 mph. If you can't merge in or out of the lane is such a way that no one else has to brake, then you're not allowed to merge. You're not allowed to slow down unless there's an emergency and those will be rare because users will be required to maintain their vehicles in top condit…

How do cars exit the guaranteed-speed lane if the left-most normal lane is only going at 25mph?

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

#433

Post by idlewords »

reillyse wrote: post #427

LA doesn't have a traffic problem. People just have overly high expectations. As someone who has also lived and commuted in lots of cities around the world, LA just doesn't have that much of a problem. What other major city in the world would you expect to be able to drive 15 miles through the centre at rush hour and get to your destination in under an hour (I'm using as reference Downtown LA to Santa Monica at 9am,…

London, Paris, NYC and Tokyo all have a comprehensive subway system and light rail covering the extended metro area. For many parts of LA, driving (or taking a bus through terrible traffic) is the only option.

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

#434

Post by xenihn »

reillyse wrote: post #427

LA doesn't have a traffic problem. People just have overly high expectations. As someone who has also lived and commuted in lots of cities around the world, LA just doesn't have that much of a problem. What other major city in the world would you expect to be able to drive 15 miles through the centre at rush hour and get to your destination in under an hour (I'm using as reference Downtown LA to Santa Monica at 9am,…

>What other major city in the world would you expect to be able to drive 15 miles through the centre at rush hour and get to your destination in under an hour

It takes thirty minutes to go a mile in traffic where I'm at (West LA, near Brentwood and Santa Monica).

Then an hour to go 5 miles in any direction on the 10 or 405.

It's really bad.

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

#435

Post by megablast »

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…

Sure, lets do a hole lot of stuff, costing billions, and moving businesses around, involved lots of planning and disruptions, and may not even work.

Or lets just introduce tolls, something that is proven to work, is easy to do, and raises funds to help fix the issue by improving roads and public transport.

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

#436

Post by jobu »

bufordsharkley wrote: post #401
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…

Most of these have to do with inefficient use of land, and ultimately can be aided with the big kahuna of fixes: a land value tax.[0] It would work to push back against restrictive zoning policies (holding costs of land go up), and would create a virtuous cycle of land values being invested back into local infrastructure, resulting in higher land values (you can get transit for free). Donald Shoup (the author of "The…

Wouldn't that create some incentive to move further out into the suburbs or rural areas to avoid taxes?

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

#437

Post by dragonwriter »

secabeen wrote: post #432
m-j-fox wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my idea: Rather than high-occupancy lets make the left lane a guaranteed-speed lane. The rule is that all cars in the lane move at 80 mph. If you can't merge in or out of the lane is such a way that no one else has to brake, then you're not allowed to merge. You're not allowed to slow down unless there's an emergency and those will be rare because users will be required to maintain their vehicles in top condit…

How do cars exit the guaranteed-speed lane if the left-most normal lane is only going at 25mph?

I don't actually think the concept is a good one (it's unworkable without a level of automation at which you'd have much better alternatives) but the exit problem is already frequently addressed with HOV/bus lanes—have dedicated left-sode exits so they don't need to cross the slower lanes to exit.

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

#438

Post by sampo »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #384
sampo wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> [rail] will always have the last mile issue That is true only for heavy rail (commuter trains). But light rail (trams, or perhaps called streetcars in American English) can have stops as often as buses. Here is a tram in Karlsruhe, Germany: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3470/3906930335_f3b2e209c2.jp... Here are some in Helsinki, Finland: http://static.panoramio.com/photos/large/47004637.jpg https://i.ytimg.com/vi/…

> But light rail (trams, or perhaps called streetcars in American English) can have stops as often as buses. I have a hard time justifying trams/streetcars over buses. They largely seem equivalent except that buses are more flexible since they're not bound to a set of tracks. For example, if a car crash or other obstacle blocks the tram tracks, the trams have to wait for the obstacle to be cleared. A bus can just go…

It mostly depends on the number of passengers.

If you have less than 1000-1500 passengers per hour, buses can work fine. You cannot stuff much more than 100 passenger per bus, and you cannot run buses much more frequently than once per 5 minutes, otherwise the buses tend to cluster and not stay on schedule. (The first bus stops at all stops to pick up all passengers, and the next bus gets less passengers and starts to catch up on the first.)

You can stuff 200-300 passengers into a tram, and a single driver can also drive two linked units, so we're up to 500 passengers. So a single line with 5 minutes intervals can serve up to 6000 passengers per hour.

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

#439

Post by nikdaheratik »

timthelion wrote: post #218
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…

Taken the bus occasionally in Melbourne and Brisbane. Brisbane went hard core for buses even giving them separate roads/overpasses to take in some sections and it was very efficient and also heavily used. Melbourne is more mixed and the trains and trams are definitely used more than buses. The bus system wasn't scary, but it is underutilized in the suburbs and just as crowded in the inner city as other options. But with much longer wait times.

The biggest problem with mass transit in most of the US isn't "socialism" it's that everything is so spread out that it's impossible to make it economical. The attitude is kind of a way to help people ignore the fact that alot of people can't drive and have trouble getting around to where they need to go with the way the cities are set up. I think the best solution I've seen is for the city to contract for minibuses or other transport to help pickup some of the people. But that only works because they are often disabled and get special funding to get transport that can pick them up.

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

#440

Post by rayiner »

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…

> All the office buildings are in one central place.

That fact is what makes traffic manageable in places like NYC or Chicago. It allows building rail infrastructure that can move a ton of people in every morning and a ton of people out every evening. Commuting patterns where offices are spread out in different places (e.g. in the D.C. metro area where people will commute from one suburb to another) are worse, because it makes no sense to have rail between all the random suburbs people commute to/from.

Post reply on HN