$40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology • Hacker News Board

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#191

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:09 PM UTC

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.

All depends on what problem you are trying to solve.

IMO, the problem is "how do we allocate road so that high utility use gets precedent over low value use, without defining high/low value as 'rich/poor person wants to get from a to b'"

Expiring credits is an idea, as are a lot of options. Designed markets are a devil-in-the-detail endevours. A market is a good tool for this job, that's why economists and wonks like tolls. But, not every market needs to be the market. In this case, The Market is probably worse than the no market free-for-all.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#192

Post by soheil » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:09 PM UTC

I find these types of articles massively deceiving, if there is a simple explanation for something, a complicated explanation isn't required, ie. the human psychology. Here is one reason why the drivers reaction makes sense, when previously people were disallowed to use the toll road it wasn't about money when you charge them $40 it is all of a sudden a question of money. Previously people were perhaps understanding of congestion problems and it's natural when you have so many cars on the roads that the government should disallow some and they understood that otherwise the traffic wouldn't move. Now when you make it about money, it's no longer arbitrarily decided who gets to ride in the toll road, it's about who can afford to ride on the toll road. (or to the extend that it was arbitrary before)

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#193

Post by karl11 » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:09 PM UTC

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)…

The other under-reported issue is that they expanded the window that these tolls are in place vs. the old HOV model. Lots of people used to drive in at 6AM before it was HOV, or at 9AM after it was over, and now there are heavy tolls during both those periods. So there are lots of people that were legally driving in for free and now cannot do so without leaving even earlier or later.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#194

Post by broknbottle » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:10 PM UTC

pwg wrote: post #112

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #5

I guess I'm at a loss here because I've lived in DC almost 6 years now and it never occurred to me that I-66 was HOV only during certain portions of the day. I know I am not alone in this because I see similar conversations happening elsewhere. Additionally, many comments say that single traveler HOV use is forbidden however I frequently see single drivers in the HOV lanes on 66 and elsewhere un-restricted. As a comp…

> guess I'm at a loss here because I've lived in DC almost 6 years now and it never occurred to me that I-66 was HOV only during certain portions of the day. Here is a photo of one of the HOV restriction signs: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/17/20... This sign seems perfectly clear, provided of course one has learned the acronym "HOV". These signs (and they are large signs, the small no-truck…

If you're not familiar with HOV lanes then they're not clear. I recently moved to the Northern Virginia area, coming from Michigan a state without HOV/Toll Roads, I was not familiar with all this nonsense.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#195

Post by dalbasal » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:13 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #172

dalbasal wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a 1st principles economic rationale that agrees with you. In a nutshell, you need to get down to the "utility" concept. It's used (for example) to theoretically prove/support the idea that free exchange is always beneficial for both parties. Putting prices onto otherwise unrestricted resources likewise optimizes for utility, especially if there are tragedy of the commons issues. The catch is that uti…

I would like to see some less idealistic economists take over on these issues. One interesting option is creating a fake "currency" for fast lanes. If poor people don't have enough money, then we should give them money instead of fake currency. Giving them fake currency reduces utility. If we give them money they can buy whatever they want/need the most. If we give them scrip that can only be used on one thing then t…

The problem in this case is not really "not enough money" in an absolute sense. To use the fast lane in a floating price system, you need to outbid the rest of the people. IE it's a function of income distribution.

You'd need to solve inequality. That's a great thing to do, but meanwhile we can just fix fast lanes separately. ...just in case inequality still exists in 10 years.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#196

Post by gm-conspiracy » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:16 PM UTC

So, in the article, the author says (as the 2nd of 3 possible options):

Add lanes, which Arlington doesn't want and there's no money for (or would require high tolls to fund); or

Does adding lanes alleviate anything?

I have seen multiple studies indicate adding lanes does not help w/ traffic, and actually makes things worse.

Is it simply assumed that more roads = less traffic?

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#197

Post by shawnz » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

nsnick wrote: post #169

kbutler wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a really market-oriented guy, but I have concerns about wealth's distorting effect on markets. That is, the "cost" of an item is much less to a wealthy person than to a non-wealthy person. Billionaire Bob can spend $100,000 on a whim, but Pauper Paul can't scrounge $10,000 for life-critical health-care. Or after a natural disaster, market theory says equilibrium prices rise to balance demand, but prices cannot ri…

You are talking about ration cards. This has been tried. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ration_stamp

It is still being used in the United States with the food stamps program.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#198

Post by drelihan » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

Let's assume that overall, this does not make the road any more or less efficient ( i.e. the same # of product, i.e. people and goods, still pass through the highway stretch per hour ).

For those whose $time_saved_in_traffic > $40, they now have a more economical option.

Imagine a business that bills out labor at $100/hr and offers to pay the $40 toll + $10 extra per day if the employee can and is willing to bill another 30 minutes. Employee is better off ( they effectively spend the same amount of time "at work" plus and extra $10 and likely slightly less gas money ). Employer bills out an extra $50, assuming 20% of that is markup over labor cost, this is an extra $10 in their pocket. The government gets an extra $40 (minus whatever the base toll is) to reinvest elsewhere.

The downside is that the remaining lanes ( those who cannot justify the cost of the fastlane ), will end up paying more in slightly longer commute times if the remaining lanes are now more congested.

What society should be paying attention to is how the efficiency of the road overall improves.

If there is open ( i.e. wasted ) capacity in the HOV lane, opening HOV lane to more traffic will improve efficiency in the road overall.

If the additional revenue can be reinvested to improve efficiency, this should improve things for everyone overall.

If there are no ( or negative ) efficiency gains, then those forced to ride in the mainstream lanes will bear the net cost.

tl;dr; Focus on improving the overall efficiency of the road.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#199

Post by gm-conspiracy » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:17 PM UTC

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…

Everybody in Congress gets free health-care for life, no?

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#200

Post by AnthonyMouse » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 3:21 PM UTC

jonstewart wrote: post #182

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.…

> Have you ever heard of induced demand?

That is not what happens. The effect they're measuring is that a road gets congested, the congestion suppresses the natural demand, and if you expand the road to reduce the congestion then more of the natural demand comes back and there is still more congestion than you expected.

But the same applies to any of the alternatives. If you build more housing in the metro area then there are less cars, which reduces congestion some, but not very much because as soon as there is less congestion for any reason, more people drive.

The only way to eliminate the congestion is to satisfy the entire demand. You can do that by expanding the roads, you can do that by making it less expensive to actually live in the city, but it's often more effective to do both.

A much worse choice is to suppress the natural demand with tolls, which will certainly reduce congestion, but will also screw up your city even worse because people are severely punished for living in the suburbs even though there still isn't enough urban housing. So urban housing prices go up, commuting costs go up, and everyone in the city becomes poorer (except the landlords and toll companies).