Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

$40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

ggwash.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 284 posts

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#181

Post by colanderman »

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…

Exactly. Creating separate "deluxe" and "plebe" lanes only ensures that the quality of the latter degrades, because no-one with money and power sees any problems or is forced to care about them.

You see this same problem with public vs. private schools (public schools get ignored and degrade when everyone with means avoids them), the "projects" (in which quality of life is allowed to degrade as various factors lead to police disengagement), and many public transit systems (politicians can afford to drive/be driven and thus are blind to the issues faced by obligate transit users).

Arguments equating high-toll roads with "first-class airplane seating" or (I shit you not) "Bitcoin mining" (there's a candidate for @shit_hn_says) completely miss the mark by ignoring that these domains are market-driven (e.g. the quality of a SECOND-class airplane seat is still a function of the market). This is not true for freely-available (or subsidized) public anything (schools, housing, public transit, etc.)

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#182

Post by jonstewart »

sageabilly wrote: post #168

I live in Northern Virginia, and the statement "People who were totally banned from a road now could now use it at its busiest time" is false. People were already driving on I-66 solo during HOV-only hours, they were just counting on super lax enforcement and the law of probability falling in their favor for not getting caught. When riding in the metro in the mornings (which runs parallel to I-66 into DC for a time)…

Have you ever heard of induced demand? More roads and bridges are not the answer, especially since the associated capital costs could go a long ways towards fixing Metro and thereby provide greater utility.

Northern Virginia has some of the absolute dumbest land use policies and traffic planning of anywhere in the nation. It's reaping what it's sown with traffic congestion. This is a big step in the right direction. (I live in DC, because I can't stand Virginia.)

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#183

Post by balabaster »

Even for the honest ones, I would wager you'll find that most people fit into one of three categories:

1. The ones that won't pay at any cost for whatever reason.

2. The ones who will pay only if it's an emergency or they're in a rush and it's the difference between being on-time or late.

3. The ones who will pay just so they don't have to sit in traffic. Either the money is meaningless to them or they'd rather be happy than rich.

I'm reasonably frugal, generally speaking, but I'm still category 3. My sanity is worth more to me than the $40. Even if it costs me some percentage of my daily pay. I'd rather spend all my money on things that remove friction from my life so I have more time for fun than spend my time dealing with one frustration after another. My happiness is worth way more to me than money. I would say that a fair portion of my time and pay cheque every month is spent on removing friction from my life.

What would be interesting is if (as I predict) the majority of people fall into categories 1 and 2. If too many fall into category 3, I'm going to need to rethink my strategy.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#184

Post by jonstewart »

olympus wrote: post #4

I don't think people are being unreasonable by being unhappy with a $40 toll. The way the article words it, solo drivers all of a sudden saw a $40 toll where they previously had no permission to drive at all. What actually happened was that people were expecting to see a $6 toll be put in place and instead saw a $40. Imagine going to McDonald's where your friend told you that you could get a Filet o' Fish for $1 but…

That the toll is significantly higher than a Metro fare is a feature, not a bug.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#185

Post by pdkl95 »

OJFord wrote: post #132
jnty wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For poor people, $40 means you can't afford a date night this week. It's never worth it" That's a slightly naive view of what 'poor' means. Try "can't eat this week."

You've misunderstood GP - the $40 is not being taken from the hypothetical poor person - it's a 'get home in time for date night' product being sold for $40, so not affording date night means not doing it; not spending the $40. The ability to afford food for the week is then unaffected, as it would be if the figure were $4 or $400.

However, this does impact gas, which could be significant if the difference in time is large enough.

(This is assuming that the poor person is not driving e.g. a (more expensive, fewer available as used) hybrid car that can idle in traffic without wasting gas)

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#186

Post by colanderman »

humanrebar wrote: post #166
InitialLastName wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> change what they'll pay in rent, > the prices of homes, > the lobbying of their representatives for more public transportation, Those things all have a not insignificant cost that makes them potentially unavailable to the folks at the less wealthy end of our society.

Lobbying of local city council isn't expensive. It mostly involves time: contacting them, writing letters to local media, forming online groups to organize the neighborhood, etc. The price of homes and rent are actually really important. If low-density housing is much more expensive, it should be reflected in the cost of living for those places. If having the entire city on the same 9-5 commuting schedule is expensiv…

> Lobbying of local city council isn't expensive. It mostly involves time

Time is something poor people have very little of, as they generally spend most of it trying to make money to make ends meet.

(This is something I've often seen poorly understood: some people seem to think that because a rich person makes more money, their time is "worth more" to them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Each hour of a poor person's time spent gaining income has a significantly higher impact on their quality of life than the same for a rich person.)

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#187

Post by eli »

sageabilly wrote: post #168

I live in Northern Virginia, and the statement "People who were totally banned from a road now could now use it at its busiest time" is false. People were already driving on I-66 solo during HOV-only hours, they were just counting on super lax enforcement and the law of probability falling in their favor for not getting caught. When riding in the metro in the mornings (which runs parallel to I-66 into DC for a time)…

I think you're right, though some of those solo drivers might be in electric or hybrid vehicles, which have been allowed to use the toll lane free for a while.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#188

Post by pas »

harryh wrote: post #180
dredmorbius wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is some fake currency, say, HOV-credits, that is distributed on a monthly basis, equally, to everyone, then to a first approximation, you're providing for equivalence in capacity to pay. You can choose to spend, or not spend, your HOV-credits, on any given day. This also offers the opportunity for rationing, as it's possible to increase or decrease the allocations based on net usage. If the credits expire after…

1) If your roads are being overused you can easily ration that by raising the dollar price. 2) What is wrong with wealth accumulation? If credit recipients would rather do that than drive on roads they should be able to do so. They's how they get less poor! 3) If they credits are transferable then you are effectively giving people money. Just in an ass-backwards and overly confusing way.

Setting up a traffic-ration system fairly is probably a lot simpler than giving poor people money.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#189

Post by Retric »

avar wrote: post #142
Retric wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what gas taxes are for. Living near a freeway you are better off if they reduced congestion. Increasing congestion increases pollution as cars accelerate and break more frequently etc.

Fuel taxes are a very crude tool, road tolls are much better instrument to actually regulate the behavior you care about. If you raise fuel taxes because there's too much congestion that's going to equally affect someone who lives in some rural area where congestion isn't an issue at all, and someone who's driving down a busy freeway every day contributing to congestion. You also raise the price of gasoline, which ha…

You could have regional fuel charges. However, you don't want to discrage driving in a specific place you want to reduce it everywhere to reduce pollution everywhere.

PS: People often say you can't out build congestion, but the data in no way supports that argument. D.C. Metro area for example has horrible traffic, but just looking at road layout the failures are obvious.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#190

Post by colanderman »

snowpanda wrote: post #143
Joe-Z wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer to all of your questions is no and here's the important distinction to the roads-problem: private vs. public goods / services.

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

Bitcoins? Here's a better analogy:

Say the public grid is notoriously unstable. Electricity is on maybe 50% of the day. (This is in fact true in some countries.) Now the government (who pretty much has sole domain over running utility wires) offers a "deluxe" service, with 100% availability, for the low-low price of a week's worth of food for one day of service.

Congratulations. Now you've stabilized a scenario in which everyone with money and power is sated, and the government has little reason to allocate any resources to improving the service to the remainder of the public.

Post reply on HN