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

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#231

Post by cmurf » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:30 PM UTC

The true cost of a trip is masked behind sales taxes, property taxes, income taxes, various state fees unrelated to roads, insurance, rent/mortgage for the cost of space for the car, the loan for the car, etc. The technology exists to toll everyone for the actual cost per mile, with higher fees for higher weight (trucks wear roads way faster than cars), and congestion. It incentivizes more investments in cycling and pedestrian lanes, would affect how and where housing is built, and how much investment is made in public transit and where it's located.

Congestion fees are used by at least Long Island Rail Road, it's roughly 50% higher during peak times. So it can be applied to public transit as well. In fact a chunk of automobile transport is public transit because the biggest cost in the whole system is the infrastructure which is publicly owned and maintained, typically without direct user fees that relate to usage. Gasoline taxes only approximate a person's usage.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#232

Post by beamatronic » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:35 PM UTC

Stuck in traffic, you might as well be stuck in prison. Say your loved ones are counting on you to be somewhere. When you are stuck , you're letting them down! Suddenly you have an option when there were no options previously. Now $40 looks pretty cheap in the face of fighting a spouse, disappointed children, etc.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#233

Post by selimthegrim » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:37 PM UTC

nawtacawp wrote: post #141

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…

I live in DC and I recently took a trip to a rural part of America. I must say I was a bit shocked. I have been in my little metro bubble for so long that I was completely out of touch with how rough rural areas are looking.

I live in New Orleans but am not a native. Visiting DC this past fall (although not for the first time, I have been there when I was little), coming out of the Metro station on King St (in Alexandria) was absolutely cause for my jaw to drop.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#234

Post by larksimian » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:38 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.

3) You're giving them things that cost you nothing to produce which they can then sell for money.

I actually think this was a bit of an aha moment for me re: cryptocurrency and government.

It's possible for a government to setup a market for a public good, create a currency for that good and distribute that currency equally to people. All without spending actual currency(ignoring administrative costs of setting up a blockchain).

The value of the public good for people then determines the USD exchange rate, but poor people are never excluded from using the good and at the same time you are not massively inflating the money supply.

edit. In fairness, nothing about this requires a cryptocurrency/blockchain. It's more a general argument in favor of governments charging for public goods by creating custom (maybe fiat) currencies which they distribute equally to all citizens.

There might be administrative and/or psychological benefits to running all these custom currencies on blockchains.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#235

Post by johnm1019 » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:38 PM UTC

Consider that taxpayers fund and build airports. Available seats on an airplane are priced using demand based pricing.

Taxpayers provide land and (sometimes) fund rail infranstructure. Most long distance rail uses demand based pricing (the last seat costs more than the first).

Taxpayers also (sometimes) provide/pay for land and the costs to build roads. Until now, we haven't seen demand based pricing (the last slot costs more than the first), but it actually fits well with other modes of taxpayer funded transportation.

This approach also considers the cost and value of a road network in a congested area. This could possibly fund other new transport in the area if it really is such a valuable commodity.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#236

Post by carlmr » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

beamatronic wrote: post #232

Stuck in traffic, you might as well be stuck in prison. Say your loved ones are counting on you to be somewhere. When you are stuck , you're letting them down! Suddenly you have an option when there were no options previously. Now $40 looks pretty cheap in the face of fighting a spouse, disappointed children, etc.

If I drove there twice a day I wouldn't need to go to work anymore, because it would (almost) cancel out my salary. Granted I don't work with an American salary, but they're not THAT much higher. I don't know if that's what you call cheap.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#237

Post by Retric » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:50 PM UTC

avar wrote: post #219

Retric wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Discouraging driving in general is one thing with one market price, discouraging driving where it leads to congestion is another thing with a higher market price. Not all vehicles that cause congestion even use gasoline, which is another reason for why trying to solve congestion with higher fuel taxes is a bad idea. Your Tesla is just as bad for congestion as a gas guzzler. Even ignoring that, regional fuel charges d…

Congestion already has it's own price directly in increased travel time. Which pushes people to use optimal routes to a destination. However, routing around congestion increases pollution via trip length. So you want to increase peoples ability to go from A > B, not hinder peopling moving from A > B with increased cost.

PS: We want higher mileage people to get electric cars, so having no transit tax actually efficiently promotes higher mileage people from making the switch first. It's just one of many subsides associated with electric cars, but we will eventually just charge based on odometer readings.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#238

Post by antisthenes » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:51 PM UTC

londons_explore wrote: post #229

ihm wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tolls aren’t a market priced good. Treating them like one is just misusing the mechanism, with the net result being the people getting to use the road are chosen roughly to be the wealthiest people who want to. There are other resource allocation schemes besides giving resources to the wealthiest, for example by giving resources to the least wealthy. Or, as I suggested elsewhere, giving “highway passes” away by rando…

Why aren't they a market-priced good? It's a market with a fixed supply, but other markets like that work just fine. For example, the USA has a fixed amount of land, and that is sold at a market, and has settled on mostly reasonable rates.

Market rates for land in desirable place are anything but reasonable. I have no idea how you came to the conclusion you did, but in actual desirable places, land is unaffordable to all but the very wealthy.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#239

Post by thatcat » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:53 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #209

pas wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I disagree. We have all the technology and processes we could ever need to distribute and charge people dollars for things. Creating a whole new kind of currency with its own special rules is a huge undertaking. Not to mention the ongoing pain-in-the ass cost to every citizen when they have to carry around and think about a new special kind of money that can only be used for one thing.

The tech isn't the problem, it's that the avalibility distribution that is imposed on roads is the same as the income distribution. In a way it creates the same problems as removing net neutrality.

If you did that with roads, what's stopping the upper income distribution from excluding everyone else from entire cities? A gated community concept might scale to an entire upperclass city with a private airport, hostpital, and 1000$ entry fee to keep out the poor. This might even effectively reduce overall costs for the municipality since homeless and property crime would be greatly reduced.

On the other hand if other currency is used, it makes everyone easily trackable.

I think the dumb pipes model still has some advantages.

Re: $40 road tolls offer insight into commuter psychology

#240

Post by dredmorbius » Thu, Dec 07, 2017, 4:59 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.

Raising the HOV-units price provides equal purchasing capacity amongst all drivers.

I mentioned the option of transferability for completeness. I'm not advocating for or against it. I am noting that it would change the dynamics somewhat.

Your #2 is a rather more involved and tangential discussion. Historically, it has a strong tendency to end in tears, or worse.