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$40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

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Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#131

Post by Thiez »

speedplane wrote: post #113
dalbasal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a 1st principles economic rationale that agrees with you. In a nutshell, you need to get down to the "utility" concept. It's used (for example) to theoretically prove/support the idea that free exchange is always beneficial for both parties. Putting prices onto otherwise unrestricted resources likewise optimizes for utility, especially if there are tragedy of the commons issues. The catch is that uti…

Agree that dollars are not the ideal measure of utility, primarily because of of diminishing marginal returns as you get more wealthy. But they are pretty good for the majority. Appealing to a right to an egalitarian "family dinner time" is also not terribly convincing. There are plenty of rich people who don't care much about family dinner time. There are plenty of poor who would eagerly spend half their day's wages…

> There are plenty of poor who would eagerly spend half their day's wages to make it home on time.

How does that not drive a person insane? Let's assume an 8 hour workday (so this would be a $10/hour job). How would you feel if you knew that after working your first 4 hours of the day, you basically aren't making any more money for the next 4 hours: all the money you make from that point on will be spent on getting home early. Why not just go home after your first 4 hours? You'll be home even earlier than when you take the $40 toll road, and you bring home the same amount of money for half the hours worked?

It seems to me that if you are regularly spending half your day's wages just to make it home on time, you are urgently in need of a different job (either closer to home or with different hours).

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#132

Post by OJFord »

jnty wrote: post #119
dalbasal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a 1st principles economic rationale that agrees with you. In a nutshell, you need to get down to the "utility" concept. It's used (for example) to theoretically prove/support the idea that free exchange is always beneficial for both parties. Putting prices onto otherwise unrestricted resources likewise optimizes for utility, especially if there are tragedy of the commons issues. The catch is that uti…

"For poor people, $40 means you can't afford a date night this week. It's never worth it" That's a slightly naive view of what 'poor' means. Try "can't eat this week."

You've misunderstood GP - the $40 is not being taken from the hypothetical poor person - it's a 'get home in time for date night' product being sold for $40, so not affording date night means not doing it; not spending the $40.

The ability to afford food for the week is then unaffected, as it would be if the figure were $4 or $400.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#133

Post by shawabawa3 »

IshKebab wrote: post #121
madaxe_again wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a strategy in the UK to get everyone to pay £40 tolls, regardless of your income - by stealth. There’s been a trend towards digital tolls - that is, no physical means to pay, you just have to know that you need to go online to their site to pay within an hour of leaving the toll road/bridge. Thing is, many operators have little signage, poor or unavailable websites, and you can end up in a situation where y…

Rubbish. I guess this happened to you once somewhere and now you think it is a 'strategy', but the only automatic toll I can think of is the London congestion charge and everyone knows about that.

There's the dartmouth bridge crossing, where there are about 50 signs either side saying "PAY YOUR TOLL ONLINE OR FACE A PENALTY"

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#134

Post by crankylinuxuser »

jessriedel wrote: post #50
mfgmfg wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will they last proportionally as long?

No idea and I'm certainly not claiming that. The reasons for the dramatic increase in costs in the US is not well understood by academics.

It's a simple answer and no clue how to actually fix it.

It's because the US is being bifurcated into a 1st world and 3rd world in the same country. Both use significant corruption in very different ways to get things done. The price increases you're seeing is the response to the various types of corruption used.

How do you fix it? Go back to many of the Socialist policies from the '40s that were enacted then, and maintained until the Capitalists chipped at them one at a time. In other words, reign in the Capitalists, and protect the working class. That's a solid way to reduce corruption. It wont happen immediately. It'd likely take a Great Depression style event, ousting of many Capitalists, and laws passed like they were in the 40's.

If it doesn't happen, the Capitalists will just loot more and use their bought out govt regulation to claim legality. And the working class will cheat the capitalists because they wouldn't be able to get back to where they used to be if they didn't. And, the Capitalists need the workers. Not enough people on the rich end to actually do the hard work needed.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#135

Post by dalbasal »

speedplane wrote: post #125
dalbasal wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's fair. I'm not making an emotional appeal. I'm making (or attempting, at least) a rational one. You can put it in diminishing marginal value terms, but I'm basically saying the same thing with fewer assumptions. Family time (or TV time or whatever) is an example to demonstrate that utility does not scale with money. On the whole poor people commuting enjoy their free time, pleasant commutes and th…

I see your point now. I think you could go further with it. Arguably, a poor person who has never been on an airplane would get far more "utility" from a flight on a private jet than someone who flies every day. So one could argue (a stretch), that the poor, and not the rich, should ride that toll road if it would increase total happiness more. But that seems ridiculous, and I think the issue here is that we're confl…

Capitalism is another kettle of fish perhaps.

A lot of liberal market ideas (Smith, Ricardo, etc) are essentially utilitarian. That is, they use utilitarian arguments to prove their points, so they're basically tied into the same assumptions. Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage is pure utilitarianism, and is the classical economics "proof" that trade is efficient. To this day, the most important theory of trade.

Efficiency in economic theory is almost all utility efficiency. The If not, what does efficiency? I guess you could say that in this case it's about maximizing revenue from willing payers. That's ok, but calling it efficiency is misleading.

When you say putting a scarce resource to its (most productive) use, what do you mean if not the enjoyment and benefit of its users?

Incidentally, there is a cool example of an artificial market for allocating food to US food banks. It uses a highly. Manipulated fake currency, with negative pricing and competitive bidding to improve "efficiency." The trick to making it work was all about being willing to define utility in non monetary terms.

Stating efficiency in dollar terms can lead to circular logic.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#136

Post by raverbashing »

eru wrote: post #109
raverbashing wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Donated organs are a scarce resource Radio spectrum is a scarce resource You can't solve those with market mechanisms Electrical transmission and generation facilities are somewhat scarce and we all see how the "free marked" worked great in the Enron case there

Are you trolling? Radio spectrum auctions are fairly commonplace these days. Organ markets work reasonably well in Iran, and would be great for the rest of the world as well. Electrical transmission and generation work really well in a market setting in most places that's been tried. What does Enron have to do with it?

> What does Enron have to do with it?

Before accusing others of trolling make sure you understand the arguments presented, which you clearly don't.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#137

Post by zimpenfish »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #133
IshKebab wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rubbish. I guess this happened to you once somewhere and now you think it is a 'strategy', but the only automatic toll I can think of is the London congestion charge and everyone knows about that.

There's the dartmouth bridge crossing, where there are about 50 signs either side saying "PAY YOUR TOLL ONLINE OR FACE A PENALTY"

Minor nit: It's the Dartford Bridge Crossing, not Dartmouth (which is in Devon).

Although, bizarrely, if you enter "dartmouth bridge crossing" into Google, it'll return the Dartford one.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#138

Post by madaxe_again »

IshKebab wrote: post #121
madaxe_again wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a strategy in the UK to get everyone to pay £40 tolls, regardless of your income - by stealth. There’s been a trend towards digital tolls - that is, no physical means to pay, you just have to know that you need to go online to their site to pay within an hour of leaving the toll road/bridge. Thing is, many operators have little signage, poor or unavailable websites, and you can end up in a situation where y…

Rubbish. I guess this happened to you once somewhere and now you think it is a 'strategy', but the only automatic toll I can think of is the London congestion charge and everyone knows about that.

Liverpool, merseyflow, and I’m a long way from alone - there’s one sign, a website (merseyflow.co.uk) with major availability and usability issues, and they charge a toll on both the old (used to be toll free) and new bridges.

The first month of operation generated £1M of revenue from fines alone. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/li...

The same article asserts a revenue of £50m+/yr from fines for dartford - same administering firm. With toll barriers this revenue would have been zero.

Looks pretty strategic to me.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#139

Post by zimpenfish »

IshKebab wrote: post #121
madaxe_again wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a strategy in the UK to get everyone to pay £40 tolls, regardless of your income - by stealth. There’s been a trend towards digital tolls - that is, no physical means to pay, you just have to know that you need to go online to their site to pay within an hour of leaving the toll road/bridge. Thing is, many operators have little signage, poor or unavailable websites, and you can end up in a situation where y…

Rubbish. I guess this happened to you once somewhere and now you think it is a 'strategy', but the only automatic toll I can think of is the London congestion charge and everyone knows about that.

As mentioned below, Dartford Crossing (bridge + tunnel) is an automatic toll (using ANPR).

There are also a few other places which use ANPR for charging (Betteshanger Country Park car parking springs to mind) but I don't think you can consider those "tolls" in the traditional sense of the word.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#140

Post by Joe-Z »

todd8 wrote: post #103
Joe-Z wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and now there's a privileged option for privileged people, whereas before it was just banned / equal for everybody (everybody driving solo, that is). That's what the GP was getting at, I think.

Should first class seating on airplanes be eliminated? Should seats to sporting events all cost the same? Should all of us drive the same model car or should all models just be priced the same? Should steak be priced the same as hamburger? I observe that economic discussions here on HN are dominated by two interesting perspectives: (1) We should have a Star Trek like economy: no one wants for anything. (2) If smart p…

The answer to all of your questions is no and here's the important distinction to the roads-problem: private vs. public goods / services.
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