Congestion toll in Boston?

omaja said:
I wouldn't bet on it for the foreseeable future. The FHWA pilot was for three slots and they are all reserved: 70 in MO, 95 in VA and 95 in SC.
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Yes, but the fact that there were any slots at all is a good sign in my opinion. I fully expect the Big Dig to be tolled eventually. It just might take a while.

Kahta said:
Including interest is not an honest way of calculating the cost of something, but it is an effective way for politicians to be dramatic.
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If you want to have a semantics argument over what parts of the sum total of every bill ever received in relation to the purchase of something count as the 'cost' of the purchase and which ones don't, we can have that conversation.

Personally, I don't think that's relevant to the issue at hand - the Big Dig should have been tolled, should be tolled, and eventually will be tolled.
 
massmotorist said:
I oppose eliminating cash lanes on tolls roads for the same reasons. I believe strongly that you should be able to get from "here" to "there" without having your travel logged, recorded, or written down.
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You know there are cameras on the Pike Tolls, right? Even at the cash lanes.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
You know there are cameras on the Pike Tolls, right? Even at the cash lanes.
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But they don't log your plate unless you're a violator. Sure, if someone wants to review film for 10 hours looking for plate numbers, they can, but the point is to create friction in the process. The tracking that can be done today certainly could be done 50 years ago, it just took a lot more money and manpower back then. And ensuring that tracking takes money and manpower is the most surefire way to ensure government resources aren't used to track people when they shouldn't.

Besides that, I'm for Pike toll elimination anyway.
 
massmotorist said:
But they don't log your plate unless you're a violator. Sure, if someone wants to review film for 10 hours looking for plate numbers, they can, but the point is to create friction in the process. The tracking that can be done today certainly could be done 50 years ago, it just took a lot more money and manpower back then. And ensuring that tracking takes money and manpower is the most surefire way to ensure government resources aren't used to track people when they shouldn't.
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Right, and the cameras are presumably on some finite loop (i.e., every 48 hours the camera tapes over itself). So, a reasonable solution would be for you to recommend that the transponder identifiers are erased periodically (i.e., after 48 hours the transponder becomes anonymous and only the revenue/traffic count is recorded). But you didn't suggest that because:

I'm for Pike toll elimination anyway.
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So instead, over the last week, you've laid out this laundry list of counterfeit arguments about why a congestion tax wouldn't work, when the reality is: YOU DON"T LIKE TOLLS. That's not a crime. You should have just said "I believe the gas tax is a sufficient revenue source and I don't want to be charged for congestion externalities." It's not a particularly controversial stance and we would have saved a lot of AB board space.
 
I think that a congestion charge for getting off the pike (and any other road) downtown would more than make up for abolishing the A/B tolls. 128 should stay however, as an intensive for taking it around the city instead of through. I am also a full supporter of adding tolls at 128 on both sides of 93 as well.

I hate paying tolls and go through great lengths to avoid them personally, but that's my prerogative. Come to think of it, I probably waste more net money in gas, wear and tear, and time then I do by skirting around toll booths anyway.
 
davem said:
I think that a congestion charge for getting off the pike (and any other road) downtown would more than make up for abolishing the A/B tolls. 128 should stay however, as an intensive for taking it around the city instead of through. I am also a full supporter of adding tolls at 128 on both sides of 93 as well.

I hate paying tolls and go through great lengths to avoid them personally, but that's my prerogative. Come to think of it, I probably waste more net money in gas, wear and tear, and time then I do by skirting around toll booths anyway.
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You may be technically right, but I'd bank on the revenue difference being minute enough that it's a wash - and besides, trading one toll for a different toll feels like opening a can of worms that really should stay closed. Nothing but trouble is going to come of that.

Re: tolls at either end of 128... I'd much rather see the tolls specifically targeted at the Big Dig itself - particularly if paired with a road diet for the Rose Kennedy Freeway. (Obviously, the exits onto those roads would be tolled as well.) There's no reason we can't have both, of course - as part of my ongoing desire to see as many future road infrastructure projects paid by tolls as we can possibly get, I'd be more than happy to see the 93/95 mess in Woburn fixed and paid for by tolling it.

And, for the record, I oppose a congestion toll on the basis that for the same amount of headache, legal/political concerns and assorted miscellaneous bullshit, we can get 5 times the revenue and a similar level of traffic reduction by making sure that street parking in the city of Boston is never cheaper than $6/hour. (And make the price go up if too many meters are active, and make the price go up if it's a peak demand time - if it's high noon and 80% of the city meters are being occupied, you ought to be gouged $25/hour or more to park on the street.)
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Right, and the cameras are presumably on some finite loop (i.e., every 48 hours the camera tapes over itself). So, a reasonable solution would be for you to recommend that the transponder identifiers are erased periodically (i.e., after 48 hours the transponder becomes anonymous and only the revenue/traffic count is recorded). But you didn't suggest that because:



So instead, over the last week, you've laid out this laundry list of counterfeit arguments about why a congestion tax wouldn't work, when the reality is: YOU DON"T LIKE TOLLS. That's not a crime. You should have just said "I believe the gas tax is a sufficient revenue source and I don't want to be charged for congestion externalities." It's not a particularly controversial stance and we would have saved a lot of AB board space.
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If I thought that I would say it. I said what I meant and I meant what I said.

If I were benevolent dictator and I could be certain that things would be set up precisely according to my specifications and that it would remain that way into perpetuity, I would be for congestion pricing. But we live in the real world, not anyone's fantasy world. When you open up a can of worms, you can never be sure where it will go.

So looking at a program as if your perfect legislation will be passed, your ideal executive branch will implement it, and it will be set in stone forever is pointless and silly. The sensible thing to do is to look at a program's benefits and costs under the most likely scenario in terms of legislation and implementation, and also assign due weight to the worst case and best case scenarios.

In this particular case, I could go through all the obvious logistical issues of why this information would need to be retained (billing and billing disputes?), the simple fact that laws limiting retention are easily changed, etc, but it seems you're only interested in finding angles to question my motives.
 
mass88 said:
I will believe it when I see it. On the Herald, some people who commented were thinking this could lead the state to start charging people drive on several different roads not currently tolled.
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The SE Expressway should be tolled.
 
datadyne007 said:
The SE Expressway should be tolled.
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People will flip out if that were to happen. You would talking about tolling the two main expressways into the city.

As of now, I am going to assume the plan is to use transponder in car vehicles to go through the tolls and those without to pay cash still. I am basing this off of what I have seen in other states.

If that's the case for Mass, they would have to make some upgrades to the SE expressway to make room for the tolls, increasing the cost and the ire of some drivers.
 
In Florida, they've just about gotten rid of toll booths from the FL Turnpike system (or will be rid of them soon). Something like 80% of the cars in South Florida have a Sun Pass transponder on their windshield--it's the size of a credit card--and the others that use the turnpike/tolled roads without Sun Pass get sent a bill in the mail. There are cameras at paypoints that read the car's license plate and then send a bill to their house after a month for the number of trips they made along the toll road without a transponder.

So aside from the open-road tolling overhead infrastructure they'd need to build above the highway in a couple places, the SE expressway wouldn't need any additional land to accommodate such a system.

Also in Miami/Fort Lauderdale, they've turned the HOV lanes on I-95 into open-road tolls with adjustable pricing during rush hour. They do this to maintain at least one or two lanes that move at least 50 mph at all times. Something MA could try along I-93 within the 128-loop.
 
I've been thinking about this a lot since my last post:

In my head the ideal solution would have two toll barriers. One at 128 to discourage through traffic from passing through the city, as well as encourage people coming in to park and take the train/subway/bus. The fee would be minimal, a couple bucks, and would be open road to alleviate any traffic concerns. Still eliminate the A/B tolls, as once people are inside the city we want them to take the highway vs clog local streets or storrow.

Then a congestion charge at the city center. This would be very high during peak hours ($5 or higher) to strongly encourage alternate transportation. Off peak it would be the same price as the T, and when the T is closed it would cease to exist. Delivery trucks would either be exempt, or pay a small flat fee. Livery would be exempt. Through traffic on 90 and 93 would be exempt as well. I think the argument about surveillance / tracking could be alleviated by having the cameras pointed so that they can only see licence plates not drivers, as well as software that encodes the licence plates to they can not be used for any purpose other then billing. There is no reason to have the cameras even record anything, the entire process could be automated.

The 128 tolls would fund road improvements, the congestion charge would go straight to the T. I would propose toll bonds to fund a drastic overhaul of the subway to be able to handle a third more traffic with much better efficiency. Once the bonds are paid back the funds should be used for aggressive expansion.

I don't like the idea of tolling the central artery directly, as I believe people would opt for traffic and local streets vs paying them (a la taking storrow vs the pike).

Essentially, this is forcing people to pay for the connivance of sitting in their cars when there is already an existing mode, and then paying more as the level of duplicate service increases. The fact that the T is currently a disaster is irrelevant, as the bonds would fix this issue before the tolls went into effect.


I also strongly support replacing all meters (and installing more) with variable price systems. I would imagine if the meters were networked they could track in real time which are occupied and therefore update prices instantly.
 
Sounds interesting. One quibble I have is that I would separate "small" delivery trucks from "large" delivery trucks as a class of vehicle. The larger ones cause so much damage and danger to the city that their use should definitely not be exempt from fees (or at least, not during waking hours). Small trucks, on the other hand, should pay less. I think the city has a big interest in encouraging the use of city-street-appropriate trucks for deliveries. Such properly-scaled commercial vehicles should even be prioritized in some ways over private cars, in the name of promoting commerce.

The exact details of the separation or scale, of course, left to be worked out.
 
massmotorist said:
*Sigh*

You can't toll existing interstate highways.

The prohibition is statutory and the only exemptions were for a pilot program whose slots are filled. Politically, the prospects of this changing any time soon are between zero and nil.
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Revenue maximization, my friend.

Once the pilot program turns out to be a resounding success, the odds in favor of more pilot slots being created go from slim and none to pretty good.
 
On FOX25 they just said that Patrick is "considering" tolling 93.

Of course they just freaked out about Psy performing at the White House, so I'm not sure their "reporting" is worth a damn.
 
^ Adding an entirely new toll facility is not the same as tolling existing routes. This would only work if they added lanes to 93, for example.
 
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