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After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

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Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#71

Post by jcranmer »

swebs wrote: post #26
toomuchtodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User fees are the most "fair" way to pair for infrastructure. It's not economically efficient to collect taxes on fuel in the aggregate, and then piecemeal out highway funding by any other metric than usage (although it makes for great politics).

Could you go into more detail? I always wondered why public roads would opt for awful toll plaza back-ups over increasing the gas tax.

You don't have to put a toll gate and slow everyone down to 15mph to collect a toll. Open-road tolling, such as in the Chicago region, can easily read a transponder (or a license plate) at 70mph. Some places have gone so far as to move to all-electronic tolling, with no toll booths (e.g., Mass turnpike).

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#72

Post by alexhutcheson »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #54
toomuchtodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User fees are the most "fair" way to pair for infrastructure. It's not economically efficient to collect taxes on fuel in the aggregate, and then piecemeal out highway funding by any other metric than usage (although it makes for great politics).

They can be a good allocation method, but often you get 'premium' roads and weird routing because of splitting things up. Now if there was a toll on all major roads of 2c a mile for cars and ten times that for trucks, then I'd be all for it.

Economically, that's pretty much what a gas tax does.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#73

Post by barbecue_sauce »

Someguywhatever wrote: post #45
untog wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After witnessing 2008, I'm not sure that even another Great Depression would get America back to the New Deal mindset. Politicians would just blame welfare recipients, or something.

It was the government forcing banks to lend to people who would normally not qualify for mortgage loans that caused the crisis in the first place. The people who the banks accurately predicted couldn't pay and were normally denied loans were instead actually given loans, subsequently couldn't pay, aaaand everything collapsed. I think that the securitization and sell off of these mortgage backed securities were the ba…

The government?

It was demand for mortgage-backed securities (viewed as traditionally safe assets for investment) from investment funds that led to more and more lenient mortgage qualifications to increase supply, weakening the previous strength of those securities overall that, through layers of financial indirection (see tranches), were not valued correctly until too late (with the subsequent credit default swap responsibilities crippling interbank loaning).

This was targeted predatory lending, often targeted at people who already had home equity in some form. This was not something significantly exacerbated by the FHA.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#74

Post by bonzini »

jcranmer wrote: post #55
dcole2929 wrote: post #9

Stuff like this is why I have exactly zero faith in the US ever building the type of high speed rail systems that other countries have and we clearly need. These projects are simply to expensive for private entities to undertake alone and federal and local governments can't stay aligned long enough to see anything that last longer than an election period through to it's finish. Unless someone invents teleportation, w…

In the US, true HSR (by which I mean 220mph/350km/h service) is not viable outside of the Northeast (where Acela already exists), California, and maybe Texas. Medium-speed rail, running around 125mph, could probably be viable in a Midwest network centered on Chicago, but the needs of Chicago's commuter rail and freight rail networks likely preclude mixing higher speed intercity trains with generally slower local and…

In Europe most high speed rails use dedicated tracks. For example, tracks for high speed trains are welded together, unlike tracks for slower trains. Instead of leaving a small gaps along the track, high speed tracks deal with thermal expansion by pre-stressing the tracks with hydraulic tensors [1] as they are welded (so high speed trains have no too-toom-too-toom :-))

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_stressing

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#75

Post by jcranmer »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #59
jasonlotito wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not really an issue these days. In this area, EZ-Pass is pushed hard, and makes toll plazas a non-issue for the most part. There is very little need to slow down as most can just capture your license plate number and charge you that way, making the entire experience easy. This ensures that the roads that actually get used get the money from people using them, something that doesn't happen with a gas tax.

>In this area, EZ-Pass is pushed hard Because it has the side benefit of being an easier/cheaper way to track people than license plate cameras. They could just do pay by plate and give people a paperless discount if they only wanted to save money. I bet EZpass gets a cut too so that adds yet another dimension to it. >There is very little need to slow down Yet morons still feel the need to do so creating the same tra…

> Because it has the side benefit of being an easier/cheaper way to track people than license plate cameras. They could just do pay by plate and give people a paperless discount if they only wanted to save money. I bet EZpass gets a cut too so that adds yet another dimension to it.

A lot of the E-ZPass system is about the simplification of the back-office processing. When you get a transponder, you have an account set up to do the debiting and also identify your current mailing address. License plate recognition, by contrast, requires getting details from different databases, and the mapping to the vehicle owner is less robust. It really is easier for the toll providers if they use a transponder system than it is to do license plate recognition.

Also, E-ZPass is an interagency consortium, not a company. It's actually largely run by the Port Authority of NY and NJ. The only fee that appears to be collected is a one-time $10 to use the trademark.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#76

Post by gamblor956 »

dcole2929 wrote: post #9

Stuff like this is why I have exactly zero faith in the US ever building the type of high speed rail systems that other countries have and we clearly need. These projects are simply to expensive for private entities to undertake alone and federal and local governments can't stay aligned long enough to see anything that last longer than an election period through to it's finish. Unless someone invents teleportation, w…

The I95 is a 1900-mile long interstate highway...

That being said, with the exception of public transit systems like the NYMTA, etc., essentially all of the rail in the US is privately owned, and was privately funded.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#77

Post by [deleted] »

jcranmer wrote: post #71
swebs wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you go into more detail? I always wondered why public roads would opt for awful toll plaza back-ups over increasing the gas tax.

You don't have to put a toll gate and slow everyone down to 15mph to collect a toll. Open-road tolling, such as in the Chicago region, can easily read a transponder (or a license plate) at 70mph. Some places have gone so far as to move to all-electronic tolling, with no toll booths (e.g., Mass turnpike).

[deleted]

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#78

Post by Dylan16807 »

alexhutcheson wrote: post #72
Dylan16807 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be a good allocation method, but often you get 'premium' roads and weird routing because of splitting things up. Now if there was a toll on all major roads of 2c a mile for cars and ten times that for trucks, then I'd be all for it.

Economically, that's pretty much what a gas tax does.

If you ignore the part about allocating money, yes. But the allocation was rather the point of the comment I was responding to.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#79

Post by larrybud »

swebs wrote: post #19

I really don't understand the problem. From NY to just outside Philadelphia, I-95 is part of the Jersey Turnpike. Then the Jersey turnpike is suddenly labeled I-295, and I-95 teleports to the highway running through Philadelphia. You can see it from this map [1]. They both then meet up again in Wilmington, where they both merge into 1-95 again. Why not just keep the designation of I-95 on the Jersey Turnpike througho…

I read somewhere (looking for the link now) that back when the highway system was being planned, it was felt that i95 had to go through all the major cities down the eastern seaboard, and it would be an "insult" to Philadelphia to give its highway another designation.

Yes, it would have been be logical to simply redesignate the NJ Turnpike as i95 for its duration, and relabel the highway that goes through Philly with another number, but instead we got the craziness that exists till today.

Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete

#80

Post by Dylan16807 »

RightMillennial wrote: post #66
Dylan16807 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can be a good allocation method, but often you get 'premium' roads and weird routing because of splitting things up. Now if there was a toll on all major roads of 2c a mile for cars and ten times that for trucks, then I'd be all for it.

The problem with tolls, and gas taxes and vehicle registrations for that matter, is that they disproportionally affect the poor. I, and many on HN might not give the marginal cost second thought, but for many it adds up.

You have a point, and charging too little in certain taxes is one strategy to help the poor.

I'd rather keep the tax and give them money, but that seems... difficult in the current political climate.

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