An Argument for Congestion Pricing in Los Angeles
Robert Poole, director of transportation at the Reason Institute, delivers an open letter to Los Angeles-area elected officials in the hopes of persuading them to adopt a federally-supported pricing system for the region's freeway network.
"We have more than a decade’s worth of evidence that congestion pricing works, from California’s two pioneering priced-lane projects—on I-15 in San Diego and on SR 91 in Orange County. Transportation planners from around the country have visited those projects and are now doing likewise—in Seattle, San Francisco, Salt Lake City, Denver, Minneapolis, Houston, Dallas, Miami, and soon in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC."
"The San Francisco Bay Area’s long-range transportation plan calls for a seamless network of HOT lanes throughout Silicon Valley and the East Bay. A recent study by Parsons Brinckerhoff and EcoNorthwest found that the projected system, if in place by 2018 under a rapid delivery option, would save travelers 75 million vehicle hours a year by 2030."
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HOT lanes: still bad.
Mr Poole's argument in favor of HOT lanes still fails to address the fact HOT lanes will make life in the HOV lanes more inconvenient. According to his reasoning, most HOV-2 lanes will soon go to HOV-3 lanes to meet speed requirements, but that 2 passanger vehicles will continue to use the lanes and share the tolls. How does adding single-occupancy vehicles to the mix spell anything but more congestion for buses and carpoolers?
I support his congestion pricing idea for parts of LA, but what would make the most difference would be to toll ALL the lanes EXCEPT for the HOV lane. Only that will reduce the number of vehicles. HOT lanes just move those who can afford to drive in them, into the HOV lanes, thus, encouraging driving and suburban sprawl.
Funds could be used to expand LA's very good growing public transit system.
Rob Bregoff
HOT lanes: still good, still a progressive idea
I think you missed the point. HOV lanes are fast becoming just as congested as the rest of the freeway. the point of HOT lanes is that when you need to you can pay the price for uncongested travel. The pricing is variable and is set so that the traffic is always free-flowing. If you've seen the famous S-curve of traffic congestion you'd see that lane capacity keeps going up with speed until congestion occurs then if plummets. In other words a free flowing lane is carrying a multitude more vehicles than a congested lane. So this means that a HOT lane will carry more vehicles than a congested regular lane.
The point of HOT lanes is not to indiscriminately add SOV to HOV lanes but rather to have lanes that people use only when they are willing to pay for them, SOV or HOV. The point about HOV-2 vehicles is that if you have a regular commute with a carpool, the more people you have the more likely you are to split the toll and take the toll road.
Studies done on the 91 freeway show that all different income brackets use the lanes, and that none, not even the wealthy use it exclusively. For example the tolls on Friday afternoon are $10. If you are going on vacation you might pay that just to get where you need to go. But if you are just coming home from work, even if you are well off you probably won't.
HOT lane opponents make the mistake of assuming that there are these magically wealthy people out there who don't care about money and will drop ten dollars/day on a car free commute. Even wealthy people care about money, and they will make the same mental calculus about whether to pay and get downtown in 15 minutes or not pay and get there in an hour.
What I don't think a lot of progressives understand is that this is the same calculus we need people to make about transit. For example, you can commute from Long Beach/San Pedro to downtown LA by Metro Blue line or you can drive the 110 freeway. With HOT lanes on the 110, people on this routes have three choices during rush hour: 1) Pay money (someday as high as $10) and drive in 20-30 minutes 2)Don't pay and drive sit in your car for over an hour 3) pay $1.25 and take the blue line for 45 min.
tolls will actually help transit significantly. Also if you support tolling of all the lanes than you should support HOT lanes as preliminary step, because its doubtful LA could transform all their lanes in one go.