$40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology • Hacker News Board

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#151

Post by trentmb » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:14 PM UTC

Joe-Z wrote: post #100

todd8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This $40 was a charge that allowed willing, solo drivers to use the car pool lanes. No one had to pay the $40; they could continue to drive solo in the non car pool lanes as they had previously. This option was just added.

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.

The privileged were already using the road because

* 1) they can afford the ticket

* 2) the probability of getting a ticket is quite low

So it seems more money might get captured from the privileged now.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#152

Post by bane » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:17 PM UTC

mattmcknight wrote: post #144

todd8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This $40 was a charge that allowed willing, solo drivers to use the car pool lanes. No one had to pay the $40; they could continue to drive solo in the non car pool lanes as they had previously. This option was just added.

Not quite...there aren't, and haven't been for over 20 years, any non-HOV lanes on the road at rush hour. They expanded the rush hour HOV time period, so it catches people that left early or late to avoid it. They also removed an exception for hybrid vehicles with special plates and traffic to the airport. The real issue is that the NIMBYs in Arlington won't let them expand the road at all.

Right, if the rush hour times hadn't changed (and the other exceptions) the toll wouldn't seem like as much of a money grab.

One interesting thing, is how this might incentivise people to ignore the toll altogether since the price over even a short period of time are likely to be higher than the fines.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#153

Post by Tinyyy » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:17 PM UTC

Joe-Z wrote: post #146

snowpanda wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same applies to public goods/services though. E.g. if you can afford the electricity (public utility) to mine bitcoins, should we not?

The important thing is that the rules for using publicly financed goods/services are the same for everybody. If you pay for your electricity of course you are free to choose what you do with it. This is not the same as with roads though, since they are a finite resource (whereas, arguably, electricity can be seen as infinite in this case). You can't ask people to pay for roads which they then can't use because they c…

But the rules remain the same for everyone: if you want to use the road and don’t want to carpool, you pay.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#154

Post by NoGravitas » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:18 PM UTC

mattmcknight wrote: post #144

todd8 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This $40 was a charge that allowed willing, solo drivers to use the car pool lanes. No one had to pay the $40; they could continue to drive solo in the non car pool lanes as they had previously. This option was just added.

Not quite...there aren't, and haven't been for over 20 years, any non-HOV lanes on the road at rush hour. They expanded the rush hour HOV time period, so it catches people that left early or late to avoid it. They also removed an exception for hybrid vehicles with special plates and traffic to the airport. The real issue is that the NIMBYs in Arlington won't let them expand the road at all.

Expanding roads doesn't help with congestion ([Induced Demand][0]). So no, NIMBYs in Arlington are not the real issue.

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

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#155

Post by wyager » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:19 PM UTC

jopsen wrote: post #92

kbutler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a really market-oriented guy, but I have concerns about wealth's distorting effect on markets. That is, the "cost" of an item is much less to a wealthy person than to a non-wealthy person. Billionaire Bob can spend $100,000 on a whim, but Pauper Paul can't scrounge $10,000 for life-critical health-care. Or after a natural disaster, market theory says equilibrium prices rise to balance demand, but prices cannot ri…

The resources people need: ice to cool insulin, food, healthcare, day care, basic housing, etc. are not scarce, or at the very least scarcity is fixable for little money. You just need to be a little less greedy.

> healthcare, day care, basic housing, etc. are not scarce

“Scarce” in economics doesn’t mean “rare”, it means “has a non-zero marginal cost” and usually “has a concave supply curve”.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#156

Post by wyager » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:21 PM UTC

vog wrote: post #87

rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Road capacity is a scarce resource, and it should be allocated with a market mechanism like every other resource. You can then take the economic gain created by the increased efficiency and tax it to provide more public transit services.

Ouch! Regulating infrastructure purely by market mechanisms is an ugly anti-pattern that is well-known for decades, if not centuries. Among others, this creates an incentive to keep the resource scarce and to not invest into maintaining and expanding it. Why? Because the lowest level infrastructure is a natural monopoly: Even if it was technically feasible (put wires next to existing wires, put pipes next to existing…

> Among others, this creates an incentive to keep the resource scarce and to not invest into maintaining and expanding it.

Price signals are exactly the sort of thing that can be used to optimize (and fund) the maintainance of infrastructure. Right now roads are placed and funded by fiat, which is why they’re often located nonsensically or in highly irregular states of repair.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#157

Post by wyager » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:24 PM UTC

kbutler wrote: post #70

rayiner wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Road capacity is a scarce resource, and it should be allocated with a market mechanism like every other resource. You can then take the economic gain created by the increased efficiency and tax it to provide more public transit services.

I'm a really market-oriented guy, but I have concerns about wealth's distorting effect on markets. That is, the "cost" of an item is much less to a wealthy person than to a non-wealthy person. Billionaire Bob can spend $100,000 on a whim, but Pauper Paul can't scrounge $10,000 for life-critical health-care. Or after a natural disaster, market theory says equilibrium prices rise to balance demand, but prices cannot ri…

> Or after a natural disaster, market theory says equilibrium prices rise to balance demand, but prices cannot rise enough

This happened recently in Texas not because of a market failure, but because Texas has “anti-gouging” laws that prevent people from raising prices around a disaster, which entirely predictably had the effect of people being unable to get what they needed (wood, water, etc.) during Harvey.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#158

Post by wyager » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:27 PM UTC

dalbasal wrote: post #98

maxxxxx wrote: post #37

My main concern is that with tolls that high that only people with a lot of money can afford them (I make six figures but I doubt I would ever pay $40 for a toll. I would need much more money). These are also often the most influential people so they may think that everything is OK because they can afford the toll and never suffer in traffic. I think the same is happening with health care. Most people in Congress hav…

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…

> On top of all that, roads are not "full" markets. This is not a free market solution. You can add a price system. but you don't have supply side effects.

The solution is to auction road capacity and use the auction proceeds to fund maintenance of that road and construction of others. Besides being vastly more efficient (from a market perspective) than an arbitrary fixed rate, it also means that resources are allocated towards roads more efficiently (if your fund allocation mechanism makes some sense).

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#159

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:29 PM UTC

Thiez wrote: post #131

speedplane wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 h…

Low income and few choices are pretty interlinked. That's why you find absurd commute/labour, childcare/labour or other ratios at the bottom.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#160

Post by Tinyyy » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 1:29 PM UTC

JauntyHatAngle wrote: post #29

I mean, one of the problems with tolls is that it is another form of taxing that has a bigger impact the lower income you have. Without getting into an ideological discussion, having surge pricing on tolls would contribute to a minor divide in class. In Australia this is a current topic, as (in Sydney specifically) there was a recent controversial highway widening which has been funded by tolls and constructed by a p…

Actually this is a form of progressive taxation that has less impact the poorer you are. Because the poor are less likely to pay for the roads, they on the average pay less taxes. And given that the road was previously completely banned, they also have access to plenty of alternatives, be it taking other roads or carpooling. On the other hand, the ‘dumb rich’ will pay out of their nose to not have to share their car with someone else.