>Here’s how it works: From 5:30 to 9:30 a.m. eastbound and from 3 to 7 p.m. westbound, Monday through Friday, tolls will fluctuate to maintain a minimum average speed of 45 mph; there is no cap on tolls. Put simply, as traffic increases the toll rises to help manage the vehicles entering the roadway. The tolls change every six minutes.
Seems similar to the "surge pricing" that Uber uses. This actually sounds like a pretty good system for addressing insufficient supply (capacity of the express lanes) -- what's the point of using an express lane if it doesn't actually move traffic along more quickly?
I don't doubt that it's unfortunate to get stuck with a high bill, but that seems like something that will shake out quickly as awareness of how the system works increases.
You may not be from the area but I used to live there and moved about 3 years ago.
The bigger issue is that these people have paid taxes for years to pay for these roads which already exist and are now being told they can't use the road without paying 10x more money. A road they paid for in the first place. This isn't a toll road built which was funded privately and is trying to make a profit.
Pretty much. Most of the complainers seem to be missing this fact.
There is a wrinkle, though. They slightly expanded the HOV hours at the same time they added the tolls. So there are some small windows where you could have (legally) driven solo previously and would now have to pay.
Which location? Inside the beltway it was always HOV on all lanes during the restricted hours from the moment it (inside the beltway) opened. That was part of the "deal" made between VA, Arlington (the VA county with the majority of the "inside the beltway" portion), and DOT to even get the road finally built.
The "single lane HOV" part was outside the beltway.
Inside the Beltway was always HOV-only during rush hour. It was originally HOV-3; but, was reduced to HOV-2. If the goal was to decrease the number of cars and increase car-pooling, they could have gone back to HOV-3.
I don't think any of those things are true. The lanes were HOV-only before, and HOV users can still use them just as they always have. Only the newly allowed single-occupant users have to pay. And it is funding new construction (widening of I-66).
I grew up with the sound barrier for 66 in my back yard and lived in the area for 30 years. It was absolutely completely open and then a single lane HOV and then HOV at certain hours in certain directions and now the express lane toll.
Things change over the course of decades...just because you paid taxes for "this road" 30 years ago doesn't mean you should always get unrestricted use of it. And thinking of it as "this road" doesn't make sense, either. Roads have to be maintained. I suspect that over the course of 100 years, more is spent on road maintenance than the initial construction cost.
Sure, at one point it was, but this plan didn't skip straight from completely open to express lane tolls. Twice as many people live here now as 30 years ago, and this road no longer has the capacity to support that kind of totally unrestricted use. Traffic in the area had become a problem, and the only real remedies are to incentivize less driving, incentivize more efficient driving (more occupants per vehicle), or build more road capacity (and find a way to pay for it, since existing revenues don't). At least to some degree this plan does all of those: preserves existing incentives to share vehicles by keeping HOV free and maintaining reasonable traffic speeds in HOV lanes, creates new disincentives to drive single-occupant in the form of high tolls, and funds a roadway expansion.
> incentivize more efficient driving (more occupants per vehicle)
Not just more occupants per vehicle but more efficient use of road space. You can fit 4 motorcycles in the space it takes for 1 car. Look at the biggest metropolises in the world and motorcycle use is significantly higher than in the U.S.
"Motorcycles and vehicles carrying two or more people have free use of the lanes." So only those who are driving solo are being charged. That seems fair to me. People who are taking so much space for one person is unfair. This is a great way to encourage them to carpool or take public transit.
Once a road is built, it still costs money to maintain it. That is an issue for states that have large areas of roadway, yet have dwindling population.
Paying taxes doesn't guarantee unlimited free use of a resource. You pay taxes that help national and state parks, but you still get charged to enter or to park your car.
Americans get so upset about this because they've come to believe that free road usage and free parking are fundamental rights. They're not.
Tolling on congested roads -- and for that matter, for parking in dense areas -- is good policy.
> Americans get so upset about this because they've come to believe that free road usage and free parking are fundamental rights. They're not.
This is such an odd portrayal of Americans. Americans (compared to the rest of the world) are routinely lambasted for being too concerned about the cost of government-provided services and infrastructure compared to the rest of the developed world. Besides, Americans grow up learning, "Driving is a privilege; not a right". I'm guessing you're basing your generalization on a handful of out-of-touch Americans.
Oh, wish that it were so, friend. But I'm American, and have lived in the bay area, Seattle, Utah, NYC, and Alabama.
And it's completely accurate. Americans think driving is a privilege? Please, then why are judges so reluctant to take away licenses from people for reckless driving or DUIs compared to other developed countries?
As a transportation and land use nerd, I've seen over and over again how people in the states react to parking being reduced: with fury. Especially when it's "their" parking (read: public parking that they've become used to). Take away a parking lane to make room for buses or bikes in a growing major city? WAR ON CARS!!
> Oh, wish that it were so, friend. But I'm American, and have lived in the bay area, Seattle, Utah, NYC, and Alabama.
I'm an American too :). "Driving is a privilege" is covered on the first day of every driver's education course.
> Please, then why are judges so reluctant to take away licenses from people for reckless driving or DUIs compared to other developed countries?
Because the United States has comparably poor public transit infrastructure and the vast majority depend on driving for their basic livelihood.
> As a transportation and land use nerd, I've seen over and over again how people in the states react to parking being reduced: with fury. Especially when it's "their" parking (read: public parking that they've become used to). Take away a parking lane to make room for buses or bikes in a growing major city? WAR ON CARS!!
I've lived all over the U.S. and Europe and people definitely crab about inconveniences of all kinds. Americans are more attached to cars (and largely for good reason--there aren't better options in most places). I've never heard "war on cars".
> I'm an American too :). "Driving is a privilege" is covered on the first day of every driver's education course.
Actions speaker louder than words. If driving was actually a privilege rather than a right, we'd be quick to revoke it on bad behavior, and we wouldn't enshrine car-first street and road design everywhere.
> Because the United States has comparably poor public transit infrastructure and the vast majority depend on driving for their basic livelihood.
You realize that right here, you're explaining why it's a right, not disputing that it is a right, yes? By your own admission now, we treat it as a right.
Yes, our very built environment enforces driving as a right. And whose idea was it to create communities where one was required to drive to live a normal life? Did we arrive in North America with wide roads and parking lots already laid out on the earth?
> Americans are more attached to cars (and largely for good reason--there aren't better options in most places).
Yes, we collectively decided to become attached to cars, because we saw them as a better way. And for some things they are, but there's a rather long list of negative side effects that have come along with our love affair.
> I've never heard "war on cars".
It most frequently pops up anywhere there's a serious movement to rebalance transportation towards a mix of modes, rather than focusing solely on private automobiles. Here's some examples:
> Actions speaker louder than words. If driving was actually a privilege rather than a right, we'd be quick to revoke it on bad behavior, and we wouldn't enshrine car-first street and road design everywhere.
Non sequitur. That driving is the default mode of transit is an artifact of history and practicality. It is simultaneously true that driving is a privilege and it is impractical to overhaul the national infrastructure. Whether or not the punishments are as severe as you would like doesn't make it less a privilege.
> You realize that right here, you're explaining why it's a right, not disputing that it is a right, yes? By your own admission now, we treat it as a right.
Non sequitur. There's no logical way to read my sentence and arrive at your conclusion. Both are true: driving is a privilege and for historical, geographical, and economical reasons it is also the primary mode of transit.
> Yes, our very built environment enforces driving as a right. And whose idea was it to create communities where one was required to drive to live a normal life? Did we arrive in North America with wide roads and parking lots already laid out on the earth?
More non sequiturs. There's no way to get from "roads exist" or "humans built roads" to "driving is a right".
> Yes, we collectively decided to become attached to cars, because we saw them as a better way. And for some things they are, but there's a rather long list of negative side effects that have come along with our love affair.
I agree. But for most people and communities, they're the most practical solution to the transportation problem. As technology and population density change, public transit options may improve.
Minneapolis has a similar system for demand-based pricing on some of our HOV lanes. It usually works pretty well, but the max price is $8 so the model breaks down a bit during extreme traffic conditions.
When they first brought these things to the DC area (the 495 express lanes in Virginia), the toll was capped at $10. It didn't take long before they were routinely hitting the cap and seeing traffic at a standstill in the "express" lanes, so they ditched it.
It would be fascinating to see a graph of historical price information for the 495 express lane tolls, even over just the last few days/weeks. A cursory examination of Google results didn't yield anything unfortunately. Maybe a fun weekend project?
That expresslanes URL is for I-495. The I-66 historical data is here: https://vai66tolls.com/
And I too would love to see that data in a more convenient form, via an API, etc.
Since the whole point is to reduce congestion, implementing a cap (price ceiling) is absurd. When a price ceiling is set, a shortage occurs. In the case of road usage pricing, a shortage means a shortage of capacity.
In other words, you end up with traffic congestion and tolls, the worst of both worlds.
I read a similar thing about Houston where it's capped at $8 and has little effect on reducing congestion. The first course of action should be to remove the price cap. (And expand the number of paid lanes, which would decrease the cost paid by drivers by spreading it out over more lanes.)
You can't have your cake and expect it to eat it too by imposing usage pricing with price caps.
Interesting system. That's effectively a sudden massive increase in price to whatever the fine is for an HOV violation. But the fact that it's a fine rather than a traditional price will change the way people think about it.
The difference is that Uber doesn't need a whole bunch of infrastructure to run the surge pricing program; they already have an app, surge is just another algorithm.
But toll lanes need infrastructure that needs to be constantly maintained. Your toll is paying for the times that the toll is not active. And now that the toll gates and whatnot are all setup, it will be much easier for a politician to expand their usage after a few years.
Aside from all that, we have a similar setup in Ontario, Canada. One of our major highways has a "hot" lane, which can be used for cars with 2+ people or by cars with a special sticker you pay monthly for. The problem is, all of the traffic we experience is around the interchanges and off ramps. All of the lanes move very well until you hit an interchange, where there is a flurry of lane changes and everything grinds to a halt. So you'll shave 5 minutes off your commute using the Hot lane, only to waste it all at the interchanges. Then, when you want to get off the highway, you have to sit in a line at the off ramp, and a line at the next few stop lights right after.
Toll lanes are just such a huge farce. It would be much more effective to tax companies that require in-office staff. You want people to drive to work just to sit at a desk and use a computer? Pay up. Use corporate tax to change the commute behaviour.
Why does all coverage and outrage about this seem to ignore the fact that it used to be HOV ONLY before, and now HOV is still free? A $35 toll is still less than the $125 ticket you used to get if driving alone.
It wasn't always HOV only. It is a road, paid for by taxes which used to be open for all. Then it became one lane HOV, then all lanes at certain hours and now the fees are through the roof.
wait for a few more years, and 66IB will be HOV-3 with express option. Many DC commuters will be in for a slow and rude shock once they hear that news.
I agree mostly, but they also increased the time frame that is HOV only. People would use the road very early or very late when traffic isn't bad. Now there is a toll. Since it's demand based, I'd imagine it's not anywhere near 35 bucks, but its probably 2 bucks for a road that is wide open.
It would make good economic sense to switch to a utilization tariff for basically all road usage, instead of the current gas tax. The technology is there, with license plate readers and/or RFID toll meters. In practice this would probably look like a $5-50 monthly bill that every registered vehicle owner would get in the mail based on the roads they had travelled on and how congested they were. If we set aside the dystopian concern about tracking, this would definitely lead to a more efficient use of the public roadways and more equitable distribution of the maintenance burden.
Just kidding. This is a brilliant solution, but government doesn't like brilliant solutions. The more you can hide the cost of things, the easier it is to embezzle and/or fund pork barrel projects. I say this being an elected official in a small town. It's embarrassing how much everyone is just looking out for themselves.
My first lesson when I joined the local government was that the situation is just as bad as you thought it was, maybe even worse. Small, vindictive, selfish minds.
This would probably only work in urban areas where you can justify the infrastructure cost. In low-traffic rural areas the gas tax is much more efficient.
That's true. Really it would turn this into a last-mile problem where rural communities that didn't have the land value to justify big infrastructure projects would have terrible roads.
So knowing how the discourse is around here, there will likely be ardent support and the rural people can just be told to pound sand and move to civilization.
Snark aside, it makes more sense just to add an additional tax to semis during the licensing process to go to road maintenance. There's already way too much tracking going on as it is, and then there's the fun of having your plates stolen or whatever getting you stuck with another bill to contest.
If such a system were rolled out state- or nation- wide infrastructure costs would fall. If rural roads were only enrolled once major upgrade/repair work was done, it would probably constitute a small portion of the project cost.
>this would definitely lead to a more efficient use of the public roadways and more equitable distribution of the maintenance burden.
Efficient use of public roadways is a sideshow to a well running society which is the big goal which is why all mass transit (like highways) are publicly subsidized to some extent whether profitable or not. Raising the cost of any method of transportation across the board does not further that.
A tax that only poor people are hit strongly by (many here spend more than $50/mo on buying alcohol at bars and other luxuries) hurts far more than it helps. Congestion provides its own congestion charge anyway. Nobody wants to be in a traffic jam or packed into a subway car. Those who can avoid it at a cost (money, time or otherwise) they can justify do so.
I would rather live in a society that has traffic jams (regardless of the medium of said traffic) than one where people get stuck with a reduced quality of life because the cost of getting from A to B is artificially increased so that getting from A to B is more convenient for those who can afford to do so.
Would you support a congestion charge for subways, buses and bike rentals?
The gas tax still has a useful purpose even if there's full utilization taxes since it encourages more fuel efficient vehicles which have a lower environmental impact and reduced pollution in cities could lead to big improvements in health saving money elsewhere.
Or we can have those that cause damage to the roads actually pay for it, instead of regressively taxing the poor. A semi causes 1,400x more wear on the same stretch of road than a car! [1]
"A 1962 American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Road Test Report shows that concentrating large amounts of weight on a single axle multiplies the impact of the weight exponentially. Test results show that an automobile axle weighing 2,000 pounds would have to pass over an interstate highway 7,550 times to have the same impact as 20,000 pounds concentrated on a single truck axle. As a result, the impact of heavy trucks on pavement is disproportionately greater than the weight carried."
To put some numbers to this, lets take the model that damage scales with weight per surface area to the fourth power. If you double the number of axles but maintain the same weight. Then there is half as much stress on twice as much area, 16x less damage per area, 2x area. 8x less total damage.
http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue116/hottopics116.htm
Usually the damage done on a material varies by the stress to some power, not exponentially, as in the link. My understanding is the damage to asphalt scales with the 4th (ish) power of stress, which is in line with the provided numbers.
20,000/2,000=10 , 10^4 is roughly 7,550.
You're not just paying for the damage done, you're paying for the space. If all cars weighed a pound, you'd still need to maintain and repair the road due to aging/weather damage.
I think a fuel tax is superior while electric vehicles are still in the minority. Not only are the privacy implications much less severe, but bigger, more damaging and more polluting vehicles pay more per mile. Congestion charging should be zone based rather than road based, because of the perverse incentives that would create for rat runs on otherwise quiet streets. And doing it using concentric zones again decreases the privacy damage.
Not really, IC cars vary greatly in fuel efficiency. Additionally because older cars have lower efficiency and tend to be owned by the less affluent it is regressive.
Except you are taxed equally for usage at 2am when there is a surplus of road space as you are for usage at 8am when there is a shortage of road space.
> In practice this would probably look like a $5-50 monthly bill
I divided my state's total transportation expenditures(including fed dollars)[1] by estimated miles driven in 2016[0] and I got 31.5 cents per mile[2]. Is that about the order of magnitude you were thinking? If you drove 5000mi/year that would be about $130/month.
In practice the tax would probably be more successful if setup as a refund, like income taxes. So gas would have a huge tax and you'd get a monthly refund based on your actual miles driven.
> If we set aside the dystopian concern about tracking,
If you carry a cell phone you're already tracked by at least three parties: google/apple, your mobile provider, the nsa.
I think we'd be better off discussing as a society how law enforcement should use this information and passing strong privacy laws to regulate its use than avoiding more efficient taxation.
Why? IMO it would be way better to follow the model used for sales tax and require charging devices to collect a tax for vehicle charging. Historically, it's much easier to tax and police dispensers vs. end users.
Wide-scale road systems are super expensive. Systems like EZ-Pass are only cheap compared to toll operators; the transaction costs are ridiculous and the vendors who operate the systems make a obscene amount of money for a guaranteed slice of a huge cash flow.
I suspect that their dynamic tolling algorithm is broken.
I drove I-66 eastbound this morning and the road was nearly empty until about half a mile before the river. Then it turned into stop-and-go traffic. No surprise, since the HOT portion ends and everyone wants to get across the bridge into DC, which dumps everyone out into slow local streets.
It seems like they're trying desperately to limit congestion at this very last part, when it's completely beyond their power anyway. They'll probably have to give up trying to maintain their speed guarantees for the last little bit.
Thats true irrespective of 66 having the express lanes feature/bug. Without fixing the traffic crossing the bridge, everything else feels like a waste of opportunity/money.
Right, I don't mean that the bridge congestion is somehow the fault of this scheme, just that it looks like the dynamic tolling algorithm is exhibiting pathological behavior due to circumstances beyond its control.
"Solo drivers, who before were barred from I-66 during rush hour, can use the lanes if they pay. That includes drivers of hybrid vehicles, which are no longer exempt. Motorcycles and vehicles carrying two or more people have free use of the lanes."
This is a new toll for allowing non-HOV drivers to use the HOV express lane.
Nitpick: it's not an express lane, it's the entire roadway for this section. Non-HOV drivers have to either pay or take a completely different route. HOV drivers still get to use it for free, of course.
They were already burdened by non-HOV traffic. They might get it a little more during the expanded hours, but those could have been changed regardless. For most people, this is adding an option, not subtracting one. I don't get the outrage.
At $690 every four weeks for just one way, I simply don't see how this isn't a land grab of infrastructure for the exclusive use of the rich. At those rates even well paid engineers can't afford the trip. If the round trip cost is the same, we're talking $1380 every four weeks. That's more than rent in most places. At those prices, you could literally hire someone to sit in the car with you for minimum wage and get by cheaper. Hell, for $70 a day, you can have this person wait outside your work for 8 hours a day and you'd still be better off than paying the toll ($60 for 8 hours at $7.50). DC already has a long tradition of "slugs" so maybe this could be the next evolution: slugs for hire. In the desperate society that infrastructure like this creates, that could be a highly sought after job.
It's a way to fund new infrastructure construction by only charging rich people instead of charging all users (e.g. by raising the gas tax) or everyone (income tax). It removes no options for existing users.
"For the rich" is simplistic thinking. $34.50 is the marginal cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost); in other words, the price paid at the time the decision to use the lane is made. Consider the situation of person who has an early meeting he needs to get to, or a job interview on some particular day that he wants to arrive at on-time. Or a person who needs to get their kid to a tournament on a particular day. Studies show that people of all incomes prefer this sort of thing for these situations (in particular, and perhaps surprising to some, lower income people with multiple jobs who need to get from one to the other on-time), because sometimes you'd rather pay and get something of a guaranteed travel time that risk arriving late. Also, you may choose to only use the lane in the mornings or afternoons, or certain days of the week, etc.
The thing that frustrates me the most about what they're doing in the area is that their public transportation is still terrible.
Try taking the Metro from Vienna to Springfield. You have to get almost entirely into DC, then change lines and come back out. Compare to other systems which are much more efficient.
I believe there would be significant less backlash if the Metro wasn't awful and more people were able to use it reliably without ridiculous wait times.
FWIW, I lived there and hated the metro and seldom used it. The tube in London on the other hand - I wouldn't buy a car if I lived there.
DC's problem, as always, is one of congestion and access. If we sidestep the tax burden ('we paid for it therefore we should be able to use it without charge') issue, there's a fairly typical large-city congestion problem, which is exacerbated by the lack of affordable housing in the immediate area.
The DMV area as a whole, especially the immediately DC-adjacent regions of Maryland and Virginia, is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. There are people commuting into DC from West Virginia(!). There's a fair argument for a congestion charge, as has been implemented in major cities (London and Singapore to name a couple), but the question then is one of access - the Metro (subway) system is good for America, but absolutely abysmal for the population density that it needs to serve. It doesn't help that the population is fairly spread out once you get further out as well.
It's a chicken and egg problem. Americans hold driving in religious devotion, and won't allocate serious resources to non-car modes until they're forced to.
I guarantee you those suburbs of DC are full of people hostile to transit. The only way they'll support their own areas contributing and going along with a regional transit plan is if they feel like they have no choice.
This roadway is known as "I-66 Inside the Beltway". It was built in 1982 [1], and runs from I-495 in Dunn Loring/Merrifield in the west to the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Bridge in the east, and except for short stretches, is generally two normal lanes wide in both directions.
Prior to this most recent announcement, at directional peak times, only HOV-2 vehicles (and special exceptions) were allowed [2]. Similarly, for a few additional hours on either side of the peak time, the corresponding shoulder lane is open for some sections as an additional travel lane.
Now, during peak times, all cars need an E-ZPass-compatible transponder of some sort to enter [3][4]. Outside of peak times, anyone can enter.
If you're HOV-2 and wish to avoid paying a toll, you need a switchable 'E-ZPass Flex', which has a physical switch on it to assert that you're currently HOV. It's largely enforced by the honor system and vigorous police presence. When it gets scanned and asserts that you're HOV, there is no assessed toll and the road is free. If your Flex is set to non-HOV, you get charged the current toll.
If you have a regular, non-switchable E-ZPass transponder, you get assessed the toll, regardless of your vehicle's actual HOV status.
Tedious comment, I know, but with the real title being
"I-66 express lanes debut with $34.50 toll, among the highest in U.S."
And it not being DC's I-66, this title is misleading. If the idea of DC being in the title is that important, use DC Area I-66, but really, it is a Virginia thing happening here, not DC.
The article mentions price gouging. Usually in that debate, the advantage is it makes efficient use of resources but the disadvantage is it strongly favors rich people.
So I have a partially serious idea: make the toll a function of how expensive your car is. The government is going to record your license plate anyway for electronic tolling purposes, so it can look up the car year, make, and model and from there estimate its value.
The idea being that this probably gives a better signal of who needs to use the toll lane. To a person driving an $80,000 car, a $5 toll is not nearly as big of a sacrifice as it is for someone driving a beater.
Of course, this would be pretty difficult politically, but in principle it's just a progressive tax.
As a long time slugline commuter (on 395), I'm not really a fan of the express lanes.
I-66 is already bottlenecked in the morning (267 merge 66, and before crossing the river). Not sure how can they justify charging even $100 to add more cars to that bottleneck during the peak hours.
Problem with the way express lanes are built, even on 495 (northbound), is that the point where the express lanes end, and merge with regular lanes, often are not equipped to handle the onslaught of the express lane traffic into existing lanes.
So all the rosy theories that convince the express lanes supporters are true until the last mile of the express lane, and then it is quite the opposite. The express lanes have a small backup of about half a mile, and the regular lanes often backup a mile or two.
I'm hoping that, with the proposed conversion of I-66 from HOV-2 to HOV-3 due some time on 2019 or 2020, sluglines form along 66 and 267, giving rise to the real rideshare transport system that has benefited those along I-395 for more than 30 years!
This two stage conversion of a HOV-2 in peak directions, to express lanes with HOV-3 is a great tactic to ensure commuters dont get super angry at once! (and surprising that WaPost missed it, unless they didn't ;)
The point is that they set the toll price to eliminate the bottleneck, i.e. to get the traffic flowing at 45 MPH or more. The previous bottleneck was caused by solo drivers who just ignored the HOV2+ restriction.
So you have a new choice, to pay and get a much more efficient and predictable commute.
As a bus rider, I love the toll lanes. They can set it to $1000 for all I care at this point. It makes my ride to work so much faster. It's just too bad that public transit is so fragmented and damaged in California. Anything that allows me not to drive makes the state 10x more livable.
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[ 8.0 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadSeems similar to the "surge pricing" that Uber uses. This actually sounds like a pretty good system for addressing insufficient supply (capacity of the express lanes) -- what's the point of using an express lane if it doesn't actually move traffic along more quickly?
I don't doubt that it's unfortunate to get stuck with a high bill, but that seems like something that will shake out quickly as awareness of how the system works increases.
The bigger issue is that these people have paid taxes for years to pay for these roads which already exist and are now being told they can't use the road without paying 10x more money. A road they paid for in the first place. This isn't a toll road built which was funded privately and is trying to make a profit.
There is a wrinkle, though. They slightly expanded the HOV hours at the same time they added the tolls. So there are some small windows where you could have (legally) driven solo previously and would now have to pay.
The "single lane HOV" part was outside the beltway.
(and I do live in the area, FWIW)
Not just more occupants per vehicle but more efficient use of road space. You can fit 4 motorcycles in the space it takes for 1 car. Look at the biggest metropolises in the world and motorcycle use is significantly higher than in the U.S.
Americans get so upset about this because they've come to believe that free road usage and free parking are fundamental rights. They're not.
Tolling on congested roads -- and for that matter, for parking in dense areas -- is good policy.
This is such an odd portrayal of Americans. Americans (compared to the rest of the world) are routinely lambasted for being too concerned about the cost of government-provided services and infrastructure compared to the rest of the developed world. Besides, Americans grow up learning, "Driving is a privilege; not a right". I'm guessing you're basing your generalization on a handful of out-of-touch Americans.
And it's completely accurate. Americans think driving is a privilege? Please, then why are judges so reluctant to take away licenses from people for reckless driving or DUIs compared to other developed countries?
As a transportation and land use nerd, I've seen over and over again how people in the states react to parking being reduced: with fury. Especially when it's "their" parking (read: public parking that they've become used to). Take away a parking lane to make room for buses or bikes in a growing major city? WAR ON CARS!!
I'm an American too :). "Driving is a privilege" is covered on the first day of every driver's education course.
> Please, then why are judges so reluctant to take away licenses from people for reckless driving or DUIs compared to other developed countries?
Because the United States has comparably poor public transit infrastructure and the vast majority depend on driving for their basic livelihood.
> As a transportation and land use nerd, I've seen over and over again how people in the states react to parking being reduced: with fury. Especially when it's "their" parking (read: public parking that they've become used to). Take away a parking lane to make room for buses or bikes in a growing major city? WAR ON CARS!!
I've lived all over the U.S. and Europe and people definitely crab about inconveniences of all kinds. Americans are more attached to cars (and largely for good reason--there aren't better options in most places). I've never heard "war on cars".
Actions speaker louder than words. If driving was actually a privilege rather than a right, we'd be quick to revoke it on bad behavior, and we wouldn't enshrine car-first street and road design everywhere.
> Because the United States has comparably poor public transit infrastructure and the vast majority depend on driving for their basic livelihood.
You realize that right here, you're explaining why it's a right, not disputing that it is a right, yes? By your own admission now, we treat it as a right.
Yes, our very built environment enforces driving as a right. And whose idea was it to create communities where one was required to drive to live a normal life? Did we arrive in North America with wide roads and parking lots already laid out on the earth?
> Americans are more attached to cars (and largely for good reason--there aren't better options in most places).
Yes, we collectively decided to become attached to cars, because we saw them as a better way. And for some things they are, but there's a rather long list of negative side effects that have come along with our love affair.
> I've never heard "war on cars".
It most frequently pops up anywhere there's a serious movement to rebalance transportation towards a mix of modes, rather than focusing solely on private automobiles. Here's some examples:
- https://grist.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/warvauto.pdf
- http://www.economist.com/node/1155093
- https://mises.org/library/war-cars-war-workers-and-poor
- http://www.heritage.org/transportation/report/washingtons-wa...
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8Lo0ieyQtQ
- http://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-torontos-...
- http://www.qchron.com/opinion/editorial/war-on-cars-also-a-w...
Having lived in Seattle, it's definitely something that's popped up a lot recently as the city has been adding bike lanes and investing heavily in transit, e.g. https://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/citys-vision-for-a-carl...
Non sequitur. That driving is the default mode of transit is an artifact of history and practicality. It is simultaneously true that driving is a privilege and it is impractical to overhaul the national infrastructure. Whether or not the punishments are as severe as you would like doesn't make it less a privilege.
> You realize that right here, you're explaining why it's a right, not disputing that it is a right, yes? By your own admission now, we treat it as a right.
Non sequitur. There's no logical way to read my sentence and arrive at your conclusion. Both are true: driving is a privilege and for historical, geographical, and economical reasons it is also the primary mode of transit.
> Yes, our very built environment enforces driving as a right. And whose idea was it to create communities where one was required to drive to live a normal life? Did we arrive in North America with wide roads and parking lots already laid out on the earth?
More non sequiturs. There's no way to get from "roads exist" or "humans built roads" to "driving is a right".
> Yes, we collectively decided to become attached to cars, because we saw them as a better way. And for some things they are, but there's a rather long list of negative side effects that have come along with our love affair.
I agree. But for most people and communities, they're the most practical solution to the transportation problem. As technology and population density change, public transit options may improve.
https://www.expresslanes.com/historic-rates
You "just" have to pull it all in and present it nicely.
In other words, you end up with traffic congestion and tolls, the worst of both worlds.
I read a similar thing about Houston where it's capped at $8 and has little effect on reducing congestion. The first course of action should be to remove the price cap. (And expand the number of paid lanes, which would decrease the cost paid by drivers by spreading it out over more lanes.)
You can't have your cake and expect it to eat it too by imposing usage pricing with price caps.
Economics 101: price ceilings cause shortages.
I wonder if congestion will ever get so bad that they'll have to start adding tolls for HOV vehicles too.
But toll lanes need infrastructure that needs to be constantly maintained. Your toll is paying for the times that the toll is not active. And now that the toll gates and whatnot are all setup, it will be much easier for a politician to expand their usage after a few years.
Aside from all that, we have a similar setup in Ontario, Canada. One of our major highways has a "hot" lane, which can be used for cars with 2+ people or by cars with a special sticker you pay monthly for. The problem is, all of the traffic we experience is around the interchanges and off ramps. All of the lanes move very well until you hit an interchange, where there is a flurry of lane changes and everything grinds to a halt. So you'll shave 5 minutes off your commute using the Hot lane, only to waste it all at the interchanges. Then, when you want to get off the highway, you have to sit in a line at the off ramp, and a line at the next few stop lights right after.
Toll lanes are just such a huge farce. It would be much more effective to tax companies that require in-office staff. You want people to drive to work just to sit at a desk and use a computer? Pay up. Use corporate tax to change the commute behaviour.
Just kidding. This is a brilliant solution, but government doesn't like brilliant solutions. The more you can hide the cost of things, the easier it is to embezzle and/or fund pork barrel projects. I say this being an elected official in a small town. It's embarrassing how much everyone is just looking out for themselves.
My first lesson when I joined the local government was that the situation is just as bad as you thought it was, maybe even worse. Small, vindictive, selfish minds.
Snark aside, it makes more sense just to add an additional tax to semis during the licensing process to go to road maintenance. There's already way too much tracking going on as it is, and then there's the fun of having your plates stolen or whatever getting you stuck with another bill to contest.
Sorry, but that's a pretty large thing to 'set aside'.
Efficient use of public roadways is a sideshow to a well running society which is the big goal which is why all mass transit (like highways) are publicly subsidized to some extent whether profitable or not. Raising the cost of any method of transportation across the board does not further that.
A tax that only poor people are hit strongly by (many here spend more than $50/mo on buying alcohol at bars and other luxuries) hurts far more than it helps. Congestion provides its own congestion charge anyway. Nobody wants to be in a traffic jam or packed into a subway car. Those who can avoid it at a cost (money, time or otherwise) they can justify do so.
I would rather live in a society that has traffic jams (regardless of the medium of said traffic) than one where people get stuck with a reduced quality of life because the cost of getting from A to B is artificially increased so that getting from A to B is more convenient for those who can afford to do so.
Would you support a congestion charge for subways, buses and bike rentals?
[1] https://www.lrrb.org/pdf/201432.pdf
"A 1962 American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials Road Test Report shows that concentrating large amounts of weight on a single axle multiplies the impact of the weight exponentially. Test results show that an automobile axle weighing 2,000 pounds would have to pass over an interstate highway 7,550 times to have the same impact as 20,000 pounds concentrated on a single truck axle. As a result, the impact of heavy trucks on pavement is disproportionately greater than the weight carried."
There's a lot of similar sources out there.
I divided my state's total transportation expenditures(including fed dollars)[1] by estimated miles driven in 2016[0] and I got 31.5 cents per mile[2]. Is that about the order of magnitude you were thinking? If you drove 5000mi/year that would be about $130/month.
In practice the tax would probably be more successful if setup as a refund, like income taxes. So gas would have a huge tax and you'd get a monthly refund based on your actual miles driven.
> If we set aside the dystopian concern about tracking,
If you carry a cell phone you're already tracked by at least three parties: google/apple, your mobile provider, the nsa.
I think we'd be better off discussing as a society how law enforcement should use this information and passing strong privacy laws to regulate its use than avoiding more efficient taxation.
[0] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policyinformation/travel_monitoring...
[1] http://www.modot.org/about/documents/FinancialSnapshot.pdf
[2] $2,154,365,000 / 6839000000 mi
Wide-scale road systems are super expensive. Systems like EZ-Pass are only cheap compared to toll operators; the transaction costs are ridiculous and the vendors who operate the systems make a obscene amount of money for a guaranteed slice of a huge cash flow.
I drove I-66 eastbound this morning and the road was nearly empty until about half a mile before the river. Then it turned into stop-and-go traffic. No surprise, since the HOT portion ends and everyone wants to get across the bridge into DC, which dumps everyone out into slow local streets.
It seems like they're trying desperately to limit congestion at this very last part, when it's completely beyond their power anyway. They'll probably have to give up trying to maintain their speed guarantees for the last little bit.
"Solo drivers, who before were barred from I-66 during rush hour, can use the lanes if they pay. That includes drivers of hybrid vehicles, which are no longer exempt. Motorcycles and vehicles carrying two or more people have free use of the lanes."
This is a new toll for allowing non-HOV drivers to use the HOV express lane.
Note that previously it was only the latter.
Are you sure you didn’t just misunderstand which jurisdictions were involved here?
Try taking the Metro from Vienna to Springfield. You have to get almost entirely into DC, then change lines and come back out. Compare to other systems which are much more efficient.
I believe there would be significant less backlash if the Metro wasn't awful and more people were able to use it reliably without ridiculous wait times.
FWIW, I lived there and hated the metro and seldom used it. The tube in London on the other hand - I wouldn't buy a car if I lived there.
Transportation and housing authorities should be at the metro area level. Lower than that just results in dysfunction.
The DMV area as a whole, especially the immediately DC-adjacent regions of Maryland and Virginia, is one of the wealthiest areas in the country. There are people commuting into DC from West Virginia(!). There's a fair argument for a congestion charge, as has been implemented in major cities (London and Singapore to name a couple), but the question then is one of access - the Metro (subway) system is good for America, but absolutely abysmal for the population density that it needs to serve. It doesn't help that the population is fairly spread out once you get further out as well.
I guarantee you those suburbs of DC are full of people hostile to transit. The only way they'll support their own areas contributing and going along with a regional transit plan is if they feel like they have no choice.
Prior to this most recent announcement, at directional peak times, only HOV-2 vehicles (and special exceptions) were allowed [2]. Similarly, for a few additional hours on either side of the peak time, the corresponding shoulder lane is open for some sections as an additional travel lane.
Now, during peak times, all cars need an E-ZPass-compatible transponder of some sort to enter [3][4]. Outside of peak times, anyone can enter.
If you're HOV-2 and wish to avoid paying a toll, you need a switchable 'E-ZPass Flex', which has a physical switch on it to assert that you're currently HOV. It's largely enforced by the honor system and vigorous police presence. When it gets scanned and asserts that you're HOV, there is no assessed toll and the road is free. If your Flex is set to non-HOV, you get charged the current toll.
If you have a regular, non-switchable E-ZPass transponder, you get assessed the toll, regardless of your vehicle's actual HOV status.
[1] http://www.dcroads.net/roads/I-66_VA/ [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20171018010139/http://www.virgin... [3] http://www.virginiadot.org/travel/hov-novasched.asp#I-66HOV-...
So I have a partially serious idea: make the toll a function of how expensive your car is. The government is going to record your license plate anyway for electronic tolling purposes, so it can look up the car year, make, and model and from there estimate its value.
The idea being that this probably gives a better signal of who needs to use the toll lane. To a person driving an $80,000 car, a $5 toll is not nearly as big of a sacrifice as it is for someone driving a beater.
Of course, this would be pretty difficult politically, but in principle it's just a progressive tax.
I-66 is already bottlenecked in the morning (267 merge 66, and before crossing the river). Not sure how can they justify charging even $100 to add more cars to that bottleneck during the peak hours.
Problem with the way express lanes are built, even on 495 (northbound), is that the point where the express lanes end, and merge with regular lanes, often are not equipped to handle the onslaught of the express lane traffic into existing lanes.
So all the rosy theories that convince the express lanes supporters are true until the last mile of the express lane, and then it is quite the opposite. The express lanes have a small backup of about half a mile, and the regular lanes often backup a mile or two.
I'm hoping that, with the proposed conversion of I-66 from HOV-2 to HOV-3 due some time on 2019 or 2020, sluglines form along 66 and 267, giving rise to the real rideshare transport system that has benefited those along I-395 for more than 30 years!
This two stage conversion of a HOV-2 in peak directions, to express lanes with HOV-3 is a great tactic to ensure commuters dont get super angry at once! (and surprising that WaPost missed it, unless they didn't ;)