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Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

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Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#161

Post by gpm »

chroma wrote: post #154
gpm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against here that I find most compelling is that the externalities of you driving your car are so insanely huge that it should be priced into the range of ridiculousness. Things that you have to consider (The numbers attached are completely made up and probably off by multiple orders of magnitude in most cases, but are to make the point that you should be assigning costs to these things. Then you should…

It's circular logic to assume the externalities are ridiculous, therefore we must price cars into the realm of ridiculousness. If you want your argument to be more than cheering against cars, you should actually calculate the externalities and you should do so for competing modes of transportation. Heck if you're talking about noise pollution, someone dribbling a basketball is far more distracting to me than the whit…

> It's circular logic to assume the externalities are ridiculous, therefore we must price cars into the realm of ridiculousness.

You're missunderstanding me, I'm just stating the possible conclusion that makes this an interesting argument (that it's ridiculously high and no one would pay it except on rare occasion) before the logic (look at all these externalities).

> you should actually calculate the externalities

That sounds like inviting lots of nitpicking debate on the internet. I invite you to though. If you do so in good faith and come up with a number that is reasonably low, well congrats, you shouldn't find the argument convincing.

> you should do so for competing modes of transportation.

True - I haven't personally because I think it's intuitive that they are far lower, if you disagree feel free to include them in your version of the calculation.

> you are only calculating the costs of cars to others, not the benefits.

I struggle to think of any positive externalities for personal cars. Everything you list are benefits to the owner except tolls. Tolls naturally don't count because that's the mechanism by which we ask them to pay for their externalities, to count them as a positive would be double counting.

If you think there are some compelling ones, again, feel free to include them in your version of the calculation.

> a sin tax on driving

Pricing in externalities is not a "sin tax". A sin tax would be "being lazy (driving) is a sin so we're going to tax them for driving".

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#162

Post by cobbzilla »

hopler wrote: post #129
dmix wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That top tweet of the police just casually harassing the placard guy for filming an officer’s car is very interesting. Particularly how the officer is using carefully chosen words “I’m giving you an order to show me your ID” to skirt the fact he had no legal right to demand his ID. So much of law enforcement abuse of power depends on intimidation and (most) people’s default reaction to trust their authority in all si…

“I’m giving you an order to show me your ID” isn't skirting the law, it's invoking it. It's illegal to disobey police, even illegal orders.

At least in the US, you are definitely not required to obey unlawful orders. Otherwise the police could tell you to commit a crime and you’d be in a Catch-22.

Now, the police will never tell you whether an order is lawful, they’ll try whatever they think they can get away with. So whatever the citizen/police equivalent of “Caveat Emptor” is, it definitely applies in these situations; asymmetric information is not your friend.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#163

Post by pseudonom- »

gpm wrote: post #140
electric_muse wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My compelling reason is that I live in Manhattan and frequently make trips to visit family that are not well served by public transportation. And when I'm there, I prefer using a vehicle to get around. I often return to New York with a carful of groceries, luggage, etc. I've tried this via public transit -- it's a miserable affair. The utility of a personal vehicle for me is very high -- perhaps substantially higher…

The argument against here that I find most compelling is that the externalities of you driving your car are so insanely huge that it should be priced into the range of ridiculousness. Things that you have to consider (The numbers attached are completely made up and probably off by multiple orders of magnitude in most cases, but are to make the point that you should be assigning costs to these things. Then you should…

There are serious attempts to estimate the externalities that arise from automobile use in general: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.661...

Adjusting those estimates (only) for inflation, they work out to about $2.14 per gallon in driving externalities.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#164

Post by gpm »

pseudonom- wrote: post #163
gpm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against here that I find most compelling is that the externalities of you driving your car are so insanely huge that it should be priced into the range of ridiculousness. Things that you have to consider (The numbers attached are completely made up and probably off by multiple orders of magnitude in most cases, but are to make the point that you should be assigning costs to these things. Then you should…

There are serious attempts to estimate the externalities that arise from automobile use in general: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.661... Adjusting those estimates (only) for inflation, they work out to about $2.14 per gallon in driving externalities.

Note that these estimates are attempts in general, not in the context of Manhattan, or downtown in any other city.

I'm not aware of any studies that attempted to estimate them in such an environment, I think that local factors (basically density of people) change the calculation substantially.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#165

Post by dragonwriter »

cobbzilla wrote: post #162
hopler wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“I’m giving you an order to show me your ID” isn't skirting the law, it's invoking it. It's illegal to disobey police, even illegal orders.

At least in the US, you are definitely not required to obey unlawful orders. Otherwise the police could tell you to commit a crime and you’d be in a Catch-22. Now, the police will never tell you whether an order is lawful, they’ll try whatever they think they can get away with. So whatever the citizen/police equivalent of “Caveat Emptor” is, it definitely applies in these situations; asymmetric information is not you…

> Now, the police will never tell you whether an order is lawful

Not to mention that police have very little education on the law in the first place; “criminal justice” or “administration of justice"—what amounts to the practice of law enforcement—maybe, but that has a more distant and tenuous connection to law than one might think.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#166

Post by chroma »

gpm wrote: post #161
chroma wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's circular logic to assume the externalities are ridiculous, therefore we must price cars into the realm of ridiculousness. If you want your argument to be more than cheering against cars, you should actually calculate the externalities and you should do so for competing modes of transportation. Heck if you're talking about noise pollution, someone dribbling a basketball is far more distracting to me than the whit…

> It's circular logic to assume the externalities are ridiculous, therefore we must price cars into the realm of ridiculousness. You're missunderstanding me, I'm just stating the possible conclusion that makes this an interesting argument (that it's ridiculously high and no one would pay it except on rare occasion) before the logic (look at all these externalities). > you should actually calculate the externalities T…

Instead of nitpicking, we can just look up the actual calculations.[1] They're on the order of 20 cents per mile traveled. Half of that is crashes, which insurance already covers. Most of the rest is congestion costs. Air pollution and global warming costs are actually quite low compared to the harm caused by crashes and congestion. Noise is also a rounding error.

Of course this is aggregate data. Congestion costs are higher in cities and higher during peak driving hours, so it makes sense to have dynamic pricing for that.

1. Quantifying the External Costs of Vehicle Use: Evidence from America’s Top Selling Light-Duty Models (http://www.ce.utexas.edu/prof/kockelman/public_html/trb08veh...)

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#167

Post by gpm »

chroma wrote: post #166
gpm wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's circular logic to assume the externalities are ridiculous, therefore we must price cars into the realm of ridiculousness. You're missunderstanding me, I'm just stating the possible conclusion that makes this an interesting argument (that it's ridiculously high and no one would pay it except on rare occasion) before the logic (look at all these externalities). > you should actually calculate the externalities T…

Instead of nitpicking, we can just look up the actual calculations.[1] They're on the order of 20 cents per mile traveled. Half of that is crashes, which insurance already covers. Most of the rest is congestion costs. Air pollution and global warming costs are actually quite low compared to the harm caused by crashes and congestion. Noise is also a rounding error. Of course this is aggregate data. Congestion costs ar…

If you can find any studies that take the context of Manhattan (or anywhere else in the first world with similar population density really) I'd be happy to look at them. The study you're looking at doesn't do so.

So while I assume that it's a perfectly valid study it really doesn't apply.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#168

Post by mjmahone17 »

isoskeles wrote: post #156
gpm wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument against here that I find most compelling is that the externalities of you driving your car are so insanely huge that it should be priced into the range of ridiculousness. Things that you have to consider (The numbers attached are completely made up and probably off by multiple orders of magnitude in most cases, but are to make the point that you should be assigning costs to these things. Then you should…

> Noise pollution. How about we start taxing loud talkers? > Pedestrian safety. Congestion. And people who take up the whole sidewalk. I don’t see people arguing for extreme measures, to the point of “ridiculousness”, to improve the state of walking around cities. So I don’t take this too seriously, it doesn’t seem to be done in good faith so much as, “I don’t like cars and there are some negative externalities, let’…

Lots of people advocate for “superblocks” in lower Manhattan, where thru-traffic would be entirely banned and otherwise traffic slowed to something like 5-10mph. That is drastic, but very much in line with improving the state of walking around.

Admittedly a big focus on reducing cars in major cities likely is coming from the fact that the wealthy started moving to major cities rather than commuting from suburbia. Other people car commuting really does hurt their quality of life. But that seems more an argument that we should bring these policies even to poorer dense urban areas rather than limiting their roll-out only to Manhattan and other wealthy enclaves.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#169

Post by chroma »

jacobolus wrote: post #133
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Getting rid of most of the cars and putting people on trains does wonders for peak throughput. Getting people on trains by forcing them out of cars can't actually do that. If you make it more expensive/inconvenient/impossible to drive, at most the same number of people will take the train. In practice fewer will, because some of them will find jobs somewhere else or do their shopping somewhere else etc. So the comb…

Riding the train, subway, trolley, or bus and walking a couple blocks at each end is a heck of a lot “better” than sitting in traffic or driving 20 times around the block hunting for a parking space. Even moderately dense urban areas are inherently poor places for personal automobiles, whose infrastructure wastes tremendous amounts of space. The more neighborhoods are optimized for human-scale activity and pedestrian…

> Life in a place where all or nearly all trips can be made without needing to drive a car is very pleasant, especially for anyone who isn’t an able-bodied high-income adult.

I've found the exact opposite to be true. Cars are great because they mean you'll never come in contact with crazy vagrants.

For a few years I tried taking public transportation in the bay area, but I gave up because I had too many encounters with insane homeless people. I've had crazy people scream at me and call me things like "faggot" or "peckerwood". I've had people threaten to rob me after I asked them to turn their music down on the bus. They're never caught by the police. The last time I was on BART, a guy smoked meth and threatened to kick the shit out of me if I called the cops. He got off at the next station and the cops never caught him.

Now I avoid public transportation and either drive or take Uber or Lyft.

Re: Things that are more inequitable than road pricing

#170

Post by gambiting »

alistairSH wrote: post #124
gpm wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trades people can have legitimate reasons to need vehicles. Imagine your in charge of, say, taking care of a large planter. You need to bring with you: - Half a pickup truck of new plants - A few bags of fresh soil - A few shovels, buckets, a hose, and other similar tools They key is really just that vehicles are necessary to transport large quantities of stuff , regardless of whether or not it's a delivery vehicle.…

Modify the original post to "nobody needs to commute in a personal vehicle" and it works. The truck full of plants is a commercial truck (it might be personally owned, but should be getting reimbursed for mileage).

Well. I'd exclude disabled people from this group of "nobody". For many people with disabilities a car is usually the only real way to get anywhere.
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