171–180 of 375 posts
in addition to the odometer, include a chronometer: something like "hours driving above 5mph". Then tax on a combination of those.
That seems like it would have been be able to implicitly price congestion into a progressive use-based tax.
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That's the cost of having a functioning society. I don't have kids, yet I still pay school taxes because even though I'm not participating in that particular aspect of society, I still benefit from it. Public biking infrastructure wouldn't be possible without the roads and right-aways we already have for cars and pedestrians; someone only using a mile of roadway on their daily commute is benefiting from the entirety…
I don't think your op was arguing against roads, I think they were more arguing that the cost algorithm is wonky for those roads - for some reason, people that chose the significantly more road- and space- and environmentally- damaging option of the SUV while on that road are paying the same to use it as the bicyclist.
And as for the environmental damage, that is clearly the bailiwick of fuel taxes rather than congestion pricing.
So the only thing congestion pricing could be good for is to reduce congestion, i.e. suppress demand. But you don't want to suppress demand -- you don't want people to stay home instead of patronizing local businesses etc. The problem isn't too much demand. Demand is good. The problem is insufficient supply.
In some cases, particularly in suburban areas, when there isn't enough supply you can solve it by expanding the roads. In urban areas you typically end up with alternatives like increasing housing density near mass transit hubs, to shift the demand away from the roads because there isn't space to expand them. But in any case what you want isn't to eliminate the demand, it's to satisfy it somehow. Because once you have enough supply to satisfy the demand, you no longer have congestion.
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It’s well established that Uber and lyft INCREASE the amount of cars on the road (and thus congestion) because they incentivize non-car-owners to take car trips they wouldn’t normally take. Uber and Lyft lead to a net INCREASE in cars on the road, not a decrease.
> It’s well established that Uber and lyft INCREASE the amount of cars >> Our findings provide evidence that after entering an urban area, ride-sharing services such as Uber significantly decrease traffic congestion time, congestion costs, and excessive fuel consumption. To further assess the robustness of the main results, we perform additional analyses including the use of alternative measures, instrumental variabl…
I can say, anecdotally, in SF there are lots of Uber/Lyft drivers who drive in from outside of the city (and even Bay Area) because they can make more driving in the city. If they disappeared, would they be replaced by an equal or greater number of private cars? Given the parking situation in SF, I doubt it, but who can say.
[0]https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/study-half-of-sfs-increase-i... [1]http://www.schallerconsult.com/rideservices/automobility.pdf
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How do people feel on a congestion fee for sidewalks. Too many people on sidewalks in NYC making them almost unusable. If you want to walk on a sidewalk during the busiest times you should pay a congestion fee. Why would we stop at just roads?
You are getting lots of comments, but the most obvious reason is that the act of driving on a road degrades it much faster than walking on a sidewalk. Thus, it needs to be repaired more frequently. Increase the number of cars and the frequency of repair (i.e. costs) increases.
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A quick google gave me this: https://uber.asu.edu/ . I would be more confident if the paper was issued by an entity with no economic ties with Uber.
It appears the paper was published two years before the partnership began. There's also no disclosure in the paper that Uber provided any funding (for whatever that's worth). [0] https://asunow.asu.edu/20181031-asu-news-uber-and-asu-partne...
According to this article [1], combined Uber and Lyft ridership in NYC was about 200,000/day in July 2016 (the most recent possible date for the original data). By July 2018, daily ridership was almost 600,000.
Is possible that Uber/Lyft lower congestion when first introduced, but worsen it over the long-run?
[1] https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/01/uber-lyft-rid...
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> Taxis and Ubers are forms of public transportation, and likely reduce the overall number of cars on the road The charge is levied on private transport and Ubers et cetera . It's unlikely to shift demand from Ubers to private vehicles. On the risk of regressive taxation, I agree. But it's a risk, not a certain outcome. Properly varying the charge throughout the day will incentivize deliveries when the roads are less…
> On the risk of regressive taxation, I agree. But it's a risk, not a certain outcome. Properly varying the charge throughout the day will incentivize deliveries when the roads are less crowded. Better utilizing our freight rail infrastructure may also dampen the effect. The congestion already does that. The issue is that it's a hard problem. You can't make deliveries to shops at 3AM because there is no one there to…
Every other city's experience with congestion pricing shows decreased car use in favor of alternatives. Effects on local grocery prices were minimal. And in the end, revenues paled in comparison to the health, infrastructure, policing, quality of life and economic costs of traffic congestion.
I'm disappointed that motorcycles/scooters and lane splitting aren't brought into the conversation more when discussions about traffic congestion come up. It feels like a win/win for nearly everyone to promote two wheeled transportation and allow them to split lanes or filter through traffic. Those who do not want to ever ride on two wheels still get the benefit of others doing so and essentially taking themselves ou…
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Drivers pay fuel taxes already. Fuel taxes are proportional to vehicle weight and power. IMHO, it better to tax normalized_area normalized_weight normalized_congestion . For example, if vehicle is 30% spacer than average, has 50% more weight per space than average, and uses road at peak hour when road usage is 50% more than average, then it should pay 1.3 x 1.5 x 1.5 = ~3x tax. If owner want to reduce tax, then it sh…
I mean, are they really proportional to weight and power? My Cayman weighs less than 3000 lbs, uses very little of it's power, in traffic, and gets 12-16 mpg (around 30 in no traffic). My rx300 weighed nearly 4000 lbs and would get 21-23 mpg in no traffic. My rx300 saw almost no traffic whereas my Cayman sees a lot simply because my last job didn't care whether or not I came into work (unless there was a meeting I ne…
Weight or axles, but fuel tax isn't the way to do this. I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to come up with the sedan MPG necessary to beat a 40,000 lbs. semi that gets, say, 3 MPG. (And, BTW, semis haven't done as poorly as 3mpg for a long time.)
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That's the cost of having a functioning society. I don't have kids, yet I still pay school taxes because even though I'm not participating in that particular aspect of society, I still benefit from it. Public biking infrastructure wouldn't be possible without the roads and right-aways we already have for cars and pedestrians; someone only using a mile of roadway on their daily commute is benefiting from the entirety…
I don't think your op was arguing against roads, I think they were more arguing that the cost algorithm is wonky for those roads - for some reason, people that chose the significantly more road- and space- and environmentally- damaging option of the SUV while on that road are paying the same to use it as the bicyclist.
The cost algorithm is wonky because the value algorithm is wonky. Actually, there IS no value algorithm. Even if the data were available (and it wasn't Big Brotherly for the gov to collect and keep it) there's no way to calculate the individual value extracted per person, it's NP-ish yeah?