Congestion toll in Boston?

tysmith95 said:
I don't see a zipper working on I-90. I-90 does seem to get more reverse traffic and less peak direction traffic than I-93.
Click to expand...

The 93 zipper NEVER worked. By cannibalizing what little shoulder space was left on a grandfathered interstate, stuffing the zipper barrier on the existing footprint wrecked what extremely small resiliency the highway had to withstand a disablement. It locks like it does every hour of every goddamn day because there is absolutely nowhere to weave around when traffic flow sustains a flesh wound. The highway would literally be improved by just getting rid of the zipper and re-claiming what little continuous shoulder space they can grab, but the only way it's going to be fixed at tangible improvement to traffic flow is by a billion-dollar Braintree Split-Southampton St. widening project that adds no lane capacity whatsoever but merely buffs out full Interstate-spec left and right shoulders through every bridge and overpass like vastly more resilient 128 now has. With the Pike, it already gets banged up daily by its lack of continuous breakdown lane inside of 128, though the road itself is much straighter than 93 so disablements don't yet bite traffic flow as hard as they do on the SE Expressway. But I can only imagine how awful it would be if you took what little shoulder remained and made a zippah out of it.

In Boston the only way a managed lane add is going to work completely trouble-free is if the pavement space allowances are akin to the sprawling I-84/I-91 carriageways east and north of Hartford: everything having full-width shoulders, including the HOV reservation. That's not construction we have any space to do in this region, certainly not for the dubious overall benefits of HOV's.
 
Last edited:
F-Line to Dudley said:
The 93 zipper NEVER worked. By cannibalizing what little shoulder space was left on a grandfathered interstate, stuffing the zipper barrier on the existing footprint wrecked what extremely small resiliency the highway had to withstand a disablement. It locks like it does every hour of every goddamn day because there is absolutely nowhere to weave around when traffic flow sustains a flesh wound. The highway would literally be improved by just getting rid of the zipper and re-claiming what little continuous shoulder space they can grab, but the only way it's going to be fixed at tangible improvement to traffic flow is by a billion-dollar Braintree Split-Southampton St. widening project that adds no lane capacity whatsoever but merely buffs out full Interstate-spec left and right shoulders through every bridge and overpass like vastly more resilient 128 now has. With the Pike, it already gets banged up daily by its lack of continuous breakdown lane inside of 128, though the road itself is much straighter than 93 so disablements don't yet bite traffic flow as hard as they do on the SE Expressway. But I can only imagine how awful it would be if you took what little shoulder remained and made a zippah out of it.

In Boston the only way a managed lane add is going to work completely trouble-free is if the pavement space allowances are akin to the sprawling I-84/I-91 carriageways east and north of Hartford: everything having full-width shoulders, including the HOV reservation. That's not construction we have any space to do in this region, certainly not for the dubious overall benefits of HOV's.
Click to expand...

Double liked. The commute time in from even as close as Quincy is absurd, and the zipper punishes you for moving your commute out of rush hour.
 
TallIsGood said:
Money is fungible, right?
Click to expand...

Union pensions are a totally separate budget, like operating costs. Most don't understand this.

The problem with capital projects at the MTA is that there is often graft between the public workers and private contractors. The contractor (or straight up mob member) will ask that a certain truck with certain material be "lost" and the union worker will look the other way when it's driven off the lot. The IG has been cracking down on this so it usually isn't as bad as, say, Goodfellas. So with the congestion pricing money there does need to be more accountability. This is certainly tough with any bureaucracy but with Cuomo's MTA it more likely means it will allow him to build what he wants with the contractors he chooses. Supposedly there is a restructuring going to happen so that capital projects are more transparent. We will have to wait and see on this.
 
The point of the lockbox is to directly answer the reflex assertion that "they" will not spend it to improve work commutes for people who work in the zone but live outside it. Whether any metro area can effectively spend $ to improve transit is a separate question.

If there's no lockbox, the odds of improving transit are negative (it gets more crowded), and opponents can charge that the money will be "wasted" and "not help the people"

With a lockbox, you've done everything from a revenue side to ensure that the money is spent where "fairness" demands. Then it is a separate question of will the unions/contractors rip it off.

For NYC the answer is that they get about 1/4th the amount of mobility per capital dollar versus other high cost cities around the world (Paris, London), ripped off by the union-contractor-political syndicate.

For Boston the answer is more hopeful: We'd hope that Baker's intervention on the GLX--which stopped what was essentially $1b worth of contractor ripoff--says that Boston will spend its $ about as well as London has.
 
NYC's success will be a model for Boston.

Of a total 51.5b plan (including LIRR) essentially a third of it is made possible by a projected $15b from congestion tolling

Or you could say that the plan for the NYC subway is 37% bigger than it would have been without a congestion toll.

The promise in Boston will be: "Just as in NYC, the congestion toll will both speed downtown traffic *and* fund alternatives that make it easier to not drive"

www.cnbc.com

MTA Board Unanimously Approves Historic $51.5 Billion Capital Spending Plan

The MTA has approved its historic $51.5 billion capital spending proposal for 2020-2024. Board members in attendance Wednesday voted unanimously, NBC 4 New York reports.
www.cnbc.com www.cnbc.com
 
Arlington said:
Haven’t talked about congestion tolling (rebranded as mobility pricing)
Since the pandemic, but it is back as an idea for a commission to study

www.boston.com

'Congestion pricing' and other traffic mitigation options are back on the table. And this time they could actually pass.

Average Boston drivers lost $2,270 and 134 hours to congestion in 2022. A proposed mobility pricing commission could fix Mass. traffic.
www.boston.com
Click to expand...

Is there any chance the gas tax could potentially be increased? I know it was a proposal pre-pandemic, but it didn't end up passing as the pandemic took full scope and attention.
 
Delvin4519 said:
Is there any chance the gas tax could potentially be increased? I know it was a proposal pre-pandemic, but it didn't end up passing as the pandemic took full scope and attention.
Click to expand...
There's the Federal gas tax and the State gas tax. I'd say the Federal gas tax has very little chance of an increase because Congress will likely be of a conservative bent for the next few years. The state gas tax stands a higher chance of being increased.
 
Charlie_mta said:
There's the Federal gas tax and the State gas tax. I'd say the Federal gas tax has very little chance of an increase because Congress will likely be of a conservative bent for the next few years. The state gas tax stands a higher chance of being increased.
Click to expand...

Yea. I was mainly referring the state gas tax, not the federal one. The pre-pandemic proposal was from Massachusetts. It was passed on March 4, 2020, and would had raised the gas tax across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The gas tax would increase from 24 cents/gallon to 29 cents, and increase state revenues by hundreds of millions.
 
An increase in the gas tax would be useful, but on its own it's not likely to solve much. With new ICE vehicles being increasingly unlikely by 2035, what with CAs and others ban on new sales we're going to need to rethink how we fund roadways generally.

Even modern ICE vehicles pay less in on a absolute-per-vehicle-mile basis compared to 20 years ago thanks to significantly better fuel economy across almost all segments - I think the projection was that gas-tax revenue declined about 1 percent each year as a result.

OR, UT, VA are piloting per-mile (VMT -Vehicle Miles Travelled) charges, supported by IRA funding. CA and other states are also probably launching something soon, and the Feds are looking at doing this as well. The IIJA included funding for a voluntary pilot for participants to replace the Federal Gas Tax (note that Treasury hasn't promulgated anything yet about how it's going to work.) For now, all of these are opt-in, but I think they'll probably go mandatory at some point in the near future. They also entirely replace the gas tax, rather than be an "on top of" - I believe that Treasury is establishing different rates for different categories of vehicles, but it would probably have the effect where they don't quite capture the full impact of gas-guzzlers.
 
It will take a while to move through the State House and then to be implemented, but I really think they need to get the T in much better shape before implementing.

It's really not a viable alternative right now and think this could choke the city's economic growth if alternative transportation options are not improved/ phased in ahead of the implementation.

I know there will be arguments about needing this revenue to support that future state of improved transit infrastructure, but I think we'd wind up in a "chick vs egg" scenario. The state should consider frontloading further investment be it through issuing bonds that could then in part be repaid through added revenue later.
 
Does anybody know if there's been any movement on the potential HOV to High Occupancy + Tolling (HOT) lanes conversion? Or any movement toward HOT lanes, sometimes referred to as 'managed lanes.' I know MassDOT looked at it back in 2020. I made the mistake of getting stuck in the tunnel yesterday afternoon for nearly an hour, and it seems like express/HOT lanes might help reduce peak hour congestion.

It seems like there are a fair amount of innovative things we could do or at least consider, short of expanding highway capacity, to help address congestion during the peak hours. You see some of the Western states embracing things like reversible/flexible lanes (where certain lanes can change directions based on traffic flows) and ramp metering/other technologies to better regulate flows from highway on-ramps, but they are slower to catch on in these parts. I realize these things are easier to do when you have a lot more space to work within, but our approach still seems a bit conservative.

'Flex lanes' aid traffic flow - and are proving safe
archive.sltrib.com

'Flex lanes' aid traffic flow and are proving safe

New reversible
archive.sltrib.com archive.sltrib.com

Ramp metering, a proven, effective strategy
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top