LA Traffic Panel Discussion - Volume II: "NO" to adding capacity, "YES" to tolls?!?

Here's the second part of that LA Traffic Panel Discussion: Ever-Lasting Gridlock? that took place at the L.A. Press Club on March 29 of this year.



And here's my response:

Mr. Johnston starts out with a very basic question:

"Why is it that when there's more traffic it moves more slowly?"

Mr. Moore, the USC professor of civil engineering and "expert on the technical side," replies:

"What transportation engineers really focus on is flow.

"At very low densities and high speeds, you got low flow, and you got very densities and very low speeds and you got low flow. And it's that region between jam density and no density at all where your flow would be theoretically maximized. And that's for most folks a low level of service. That's in the neighborhood of, say, 35 miles an hour--faily congested conditions in the minds of most folks. So when I'm driving around in the freeways, I'm thinking in terms of flow. [...]"

Mr. Johnston then asks why the 101 always gets jammed from Cahuenga to downtown.

Mr. Moore replies that "what you're seeing is a period of extended demand that exceeds capacity." That's why. And you have only three options:

"[1] You can add capacity--That's an option. That's expensive.
[2] You can better manage the capacity you have.
[3] We can try to suppress the demand.

Short of that I don't see any avenue for improvement. [...]"

Got it?

That's the technical assessment. In other words, the choices are stark. Expect to drive not faster than 35 mph on freeways in L.A. because at such high densities (a lot of cars on the freeway), drivers drive too defensively and cannot keep up higher speeds.

Then Mr. Johnston asks, "What about the issue of... if we build more roads, we simply generate more traffic."

Mr. Rubin "would be happy to take that." Here's his answer. Read (or listen) CAREFULLY.

"We can build our way our congestion. We have just decided NOT to!

"The problem we have is,... these are taken so seriously: the cost restrictions and the [sic] restrictions, that it becomes almost impossible in this day and age to think of adding capacity in an urbanized area. In many cases it can be done and it has been done successfully. But the limitations are there. And you add the statutory requirements.

"At the present time, in an area undergoing congestion, which therefore has some air quality problems [....], it is virtually impossible to get permission from the federal government to either build a new freeway or add general-purpose lane capacity to existing freeways. What you can do is add an HOV lane. That's the exception. So in many cases, we have seen HOV lanes being added, not necessarily because they're the best solution, but because it's the one thing you can build [...]

So what we have is a situation where if we made a decision we aren't going to add capacity, we have to either use what we have smarter, or as has been said [by Mr. Moore], ration it through various means. And this being the United States, where capitalism--I don't think--has totally completely died, tolls are very realistic. And tolls, particularly time of day tolls, will encourage people to change their behavior.

"One of the things that has happened that iis the single most significant thing that has happened in U.S. transportation is work-at-home. You take a look at all the model splits: how many people are driving, how many people are car pooling, how many people taking transit, time after time after time, year after year, area after area, there are only two things that are going on: single passenger vehicles and work-at-home. And as the technology increases and as that way of work increases, that is going to change as well more and more.

"We are responding to it, but it's not a question we can't do it, we can't add capacity. We can. The problem is that we have decided not to."

Let me get this straight:

We can add capacity, but we have just decided NOT TO in order to tax people with tolls to change their behavior?!?

If anybody out there gets any other conclusion from what he said, let me know! Because every which way you look at it, that's the ONLY conclusion one can get from what he said.

If I understand this correctly, in a country where capitalism "[hasn't] totally completely died," they CAN but they have decided NOT to add capacity. Why? In order to TAX you and make you change your behavior that way!

It may be a very "capitalistic" solution, but it's not a very fair and not a very "democratic" solution. We all know what would happen if tolls were implemented as a cure for traffic congestion. The rich and the upper-middle-class, and to a large extent the middle-class, would get to ride the freeways in absolute comfort at whatever speed they want. But the minimum-wage earners and the poor would have to take the streets to get to work, thus spilling the congestion from the freeways onto the strets. Tolls implemented to cure congestion, as Mr Rubin sugests, would be a form of regressive taxation that would affect the minimum-wage earners and the poor. Just like the high price of gas has not affected high and middle-income bracket wage earners but it has affected the the minimum-wage earners and the poor, tolls would affect the minimum-wage earners and the poor.

Moreover, can you imagine the jams, the congestion, before every toll booth? In L.A.? Are you kidding me? Not everybody would have a fast-lane electronic tag to get through the toll booth fast enough. Want proof? To take the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, you have to pay toll. Almost always, at certain times of day, there's an unbelievable JAM right there before the toll booth. And to require every car to purchase a tag would really mean that only those of high or middle-income level would be able to fork out the extra $50 or $60 a month to purchase a tag just to drive on a freeway. So THEY, the minimum-wage earners and the poor, would create a jam before the toll booth every day.

DO NOT LET THEM SELL YOU SUCH A DUBIOUS, SHODDY BAG OF GOODS, SUCH AN IDIOTIC IDEA.

You already pay enough tax to maintain freeways and roads. DO NOT let them now TAX YOUR RIGHT to drive on those freeways and roads. You should OPPOSE this idea with everything you've got. Pressure them to come up with REAL solutions, not IDIOTIC ideas.

See? This is what happens: politicans, under pressure from the electorate to find solutions to problems, put then pressure on these beauraucrats and academics, so-called "experts," to come up with solutions, and this is "the best" they can come up with: IDIOTIC IDEAS.

I deal at greater length on this issue in my posting Would taxing the Modern Hell (rush hour) turn it into the Modern Heaven (traffic-free cities)? as a response to Nobel Prize winner economist Gary Becker of the University of Chicago, who's one of the original proponents of this idea of tolls to cure congestion.

He may be a "Nobel Prize winner," but he should know that he is proposing an idiotic idea. And, as an economist, he should know that tolls would be a form of regressive taxation on lower-income earners and the poor.

Moreover, I think that to frame it in these dire, stark, black-and-white terms -- IT'S EITHER NO MORE CAPACITY OR TOLLS, MAKE YOUR CHOICE! -- is rather pathetic from people from whom we should expect REALLY CREATIVE SOLUTIONS. (For a really creative approach to solving the traffic congestion problem on the Westside, see my post: WESTSIDE SOLUTION AT A GLANCE)

DON'T YOU THINK?
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