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Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

latimes.com

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Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#201

Post by wjossey »

jedberg wrote: post #198
wjossey wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Induced demand doesn’t say that nothing happened. It says that demand just fills up the new supply. There are no alternatives to a road system in LA for most residents. If the roads were choked and there was an underutilized subway that I could use, I’d totally get the argument of taxing the road system or capping capacity, so as to push people toward more efficient methods. But, it’s not feesible to build out a subw…

> Let’s build tunnels under the mountain passes to add more connections into Hollywood so people have better access than winding canyon roads. This is an interesting idea. I just measured it out, and assuming you could build a straight tunnel to bypass the canyon at the 405, it would be 5.3 miles. To bypass Laurel Canyon would be a 3.0 mile tunnel. Coldwater bypass would be 4.1 miles. So the question is, do we the te…

I'm not an engineer of that sort, but I'd imagine if we can build subways in earthquake-prone zones like SF, LA, and Tokyo, we can build safe tunnels under mountains in an earthquake zone.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#202

Post by wjossey »

jedberg wrote: post #193
wjossey wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

-- Edit -- Sorry, I see now the above comments are more a refutation than a statement of, "Look how good the transportation system is." I'll leave these though just to make my general point about how horrible the options are. -- END EDIT -- Just pulled up google maps for Long Beach to Brentwood: Public Transit Option: 3 hours Car: 39 minutes (29.9 miles) Just pulled up Downtown to Beverly Hills Public Transit Option:…

To be fair, that was at 7:30pm, the tail end of traffic and after the busses switch to a reduced schedule. I'd be curious to see those results at 5:30pm. I suspect the car would still be faster though.

Plenty of people still need to get around at 8PM at night. So, I'd say a bodega worker in Brentwood going home to their less expensive apartment in Long Beach would prefer to be able to commute home at 10PM without it taking 3 hours :)

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#203

Post by asabjorn »

It is a tax to increase revenue. LA has almost non-existent public transit, so anyone riding Uber/Lyft is likely to drive on their own.

It is disingenuous to describe this as anything that has any remote chance to even reduce traffic minimally. LA is an extended suburb, and only infill development of higher density over time can make more public transit economically viable.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#204

Post by robotresearcher »

javagram wrote: post #134
stale2002 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Efficient cars cost the city less money. This is because efficient cars are usually smaller, and cause much less damage to the roads. It is a good thing for society that they are using Priuses. It makes road maintenance cheaper. Why should we be trying to lose money, by discouraging behavior that helps the city out? IE, fuel efficient, smaller cars.

Hybrid cars like the Prius actually weigh more because of the weight of the batteries. Tesla cars other than the roadster are also huge and heavy.

2019 models curb weight, base model data from Google:

Corolla: 2,840 lbs

Prius L: 3,075 lbs

Camry: 3,241 to 3,572 lbs

Model 3: 3,686 lbs

Model S: 4,769 lbs

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#205

Post by vallsurf »

integrate-this wrote: post #88

I'm a LA resident. People in this city like to talk about congestion as though they see it as a problem, but they don't actually see it as a problem. Only people in the valley see it as a problem because there are limited choke points into and out of LA proper which keep people from getting to work. LA's limited transportation infrastructure prevents DTLA's homeless from getting to Beverly Hills, Long Beach's gang-re…

I can't tell if this is a humorist take on the issue or not because its so completely off base. If you were really a knowledgeable LA resident you would realize that the Valley actually pays for most of LA's expenses (which is why the vote to make the Valley a separate city decades ago failed), but also more importantly realize that there is a lot more to LA's traffic situation than just the 405 and 110 chokepoints.

The simple fact of the matter is that LA has a serious housing and urban planning crisis with no real solution. The city has already been investing heavily in public transportation for years now with multiple heavy rail lines been under construction (purple and crenshaw) and some already opened (gold) - but the fact of the matter is that until a public transportation system that can replicate the freeway system - meaning a system that can replicate both the breadth and depth of the system (Think a 'good' Euro rail system spread across a 30-60 mile radius) - LA will always be a congested mess - unless a paradigm shift in transportation occurs (hyperloop, Uber Elevate, etc.)

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#206

Post by sbov »

megaremote wrote: post #157
gesman wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And add to that pollution caused by large trucks. Some are literally hard to follow behind due to the cloud of poison they are fuming all over. California's crusade on sedans to cut down on pollution is a joke.

You are joking right? Just because the pollution from cars is not visible, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. And there are a 1000x more cars than trucks.

No need to use the 1000x number, there's actually information about this out there, at least when it comes to greenhouse gasses. In 2016:

https://nepis.epa.gov/Exe/ZyPDF.cgi?Dockey=P100USI5.pdf

Medium and Heavy duty trucks: 425 Tg CO2

Light-Duty Vehicles (passenger cars + SUVs, pickup trucks, etc): 1,106 Tg CO2

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#207

Post by Pxtl »

blihp wrote: post #71
shereadsthenews wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really the view from a city budget. Cities don't have that many truck routes and their costs are dominated by maintaining streets where virtually all the traffic is light vehicles. For the state it is a bigger problem because almost all state route are truck routes.

Are you sure about that? I see garbage trucks, delivery trucks (package, furniture, appliance etc.), lawn service trucks, salt trucks, snow plowing trucks etc day-in, day-out.[1] And to do their job, they probably need traverse 95% of the paved roadways on a regular basis. Granted, you don't typically see 18-wheelers tooling around most neighborhoods[2] but there is quite a bit of truck traffic through even moderatel…

The salt and plowing trucks are part of the maintenance of the road needed for the cars. You defeat your own point here.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#208

Post by twblalock »

kbos87 wrote: post #171
twblalock wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Id like to see the start of a state owned rideshare network with specially zoned drop off, pick up, and lane privileges that Uber and Lyft don’t get access to. Uber and Lyft exist because the state didn't build one of those. In fact the state has built a completely inadequate public transit system in LA. Uber and Lyft are widely used because people in LA don't have an alternative.

Fine, but the concept is out in the world now. The cities should be able to replicate the concept, compete and leverage their strengths the same way any for profit entity could.

If the private market provides a service at a fair price, and consumers like it, why should the city try to duplicate it? It would be a waste of taxpayer money for the city government to try to clone a business that is doing just fine already.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#209

Post by blihp »

Pxtl wrote: post #207
blihp wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about that? I see garbage trucks, delivery trucks (package, furniture, appliance etc.), lawn service trucks, salt trucks, snow plowing trucks etc day-in, day-out.[1] And to do their job, they probably need traverse 95% of the paved roadways on a regular basis. Granted, you don't typically see 18-wheelers tooling around most neighborhoods[2] but there is quite a bit of truck traffic through even moderatel…

The salt and plowing trucks are part of the maintenance of the road needed for the cars. You defeat your own point here.

Not at all. I was making the point that there are lots of trucks on most roads all the time, not that they aren't necessary.

Also, while salt makes the road drive-able in the winter, it actually does long term damage to the road (increases the number of freeze/thaw cycles.) Similar with plows: they increase the rate at which the road surface deteriorates. While they both are necessary to keep roads operable for vehicles in the winter, they are the opposite of maintenance longer term as far as the road surface is concerned.

Re: Taxing Uber and Lyft rides is L.A's latest plan to free up congested roads

#210

Post by petre »

2dollars27cents wrote: post #21
modeless wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If efficient cars are a problem, tax efficient cars, not Uber. But given CA's environmental goals, this would be counterproductive.

As others have mentioned, taxing efficient cars doesn't seem to make much sense. Maybe tax actual miles traveled instead? That would solve the problem of increasing efficiency and also decrease the value of loitering and cruising in-between pick-ups.

It would make sense to use a differentiated sales tax for car for hire services. That'd be proportional with usage. It would also tax people who don't have a car and externalize car taxes and maintainance costs by using these services. EU countries already do ths for things like food, books, accomodation and restaurant services. Usually the sales tax is smaller for these sectors.
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