Reasonable Transit Pitches

[Charlie_mta]

The Federal Highway Trust Fund is just about flat broke due to a low federal gas tax, energy efficient cars and reduced driving. The tolling of urban expressways is so right on so many levels. it would supplement the destitute Highway Trust Fund to fund needed transportation infrastructure improvements. Tolling would also encourage more people to use transit. Obviously the technology now eliminates the need for toll booths. Every expressway inside of Route 128 (I-95) should be tolled.

I would like to see a good part of the revenue from tolling go towards transit improvements, notably the Green Line extension to Somerville/Medford, the Red/Blue connector, and double-tracking commuter rail through the Savin Hill area and at other bottleneck locations.

 

[Matthew]

The Federal Highway Trust Fund has been broke for many, many years now. It has been receiving a transfusion of billions of dollars of general funds, every so often, authorized by Congress. Meanwhile, auto apologists continue falsely insisting that "highways pay for themselves" and refuse to consider tolls to pay for the infrastructure. Much like Cliven Bundy, in fact.

Call me when the politics of that changes.

 

[cozzyd]

At the very least, the central artery tunnel should be tolled.

 

[DominusNovus]

To be sure, tolls would be a better option to hiking up gas taxes.

 

[cozzyd]

This would take more coordination between agencies than is possible, but it would be interesting if transit passes could offer discounted tolls.

 

[davem]

Toll Storrow.

Carpocalypse, or would induced demand trips reduce and redistribute themselves?

 

[cozzyd]

Toll Storrow.

Carpocalypse, or would induced demand trips reduce and redistribute themselves?

Storrow isn't an interstate, so I don't know if there'd be any barriers to tolling it anyway.

 

[BostonUrbEx]

Toll Storrow.

Carpocalypse, or would induced demand trips reduce and redistribute themselves?

Why would it be a carpocalypse? They'd be electronic, I'd assume, as all tolls will be soon enough. So there'd be fewer trips, from people avoiding driving, and no back ups from cash tolling since there'd be none.

 

[Matthew]

Storrow is a "pleasure drive." Don't you know? Everyone driving it is doing it for pleasure. You can't toll pleasure.

 

[fattony]

You can't toll pleasure.

Tell that to the bouncer at the Slipper.

 

[davem]

Why would it be a carpocalypse? They'd be electronic, I'd assume, as all tolls will be soon enough. So there'd be fewer trips, from people avoiding driving, and no back ups from cash tolling since there'd be none.

I was thinking more Comm Ave and Mem Drive would see heavier loads with people using them instead of Storrow to skirt the tolls. Thinking about it more, only the section from the Hatch Shell to the BU Bridge should be tolled, as it's redundant. Even better would be reverse surge pricing, charge people a ton when the Pike is free flowing, less when there is legit traffic.

 

[Equilibria]

Toll Storrow.

Carpocalypse, or would induced demand trips reduce and redistribute themselves?

Really, they should be tolling all highways of note. The only constraint needs to be that all toll revenue is used for highways, and only for highways. Not local roads, not bike lanes, not transit.

Now, as a side measure, states which choose to toll highways should be seriously limited in the Federal funding they receive, freeing up Federal money to go toward subsidizing the construction of transit and alternative modes far more than is possible now.

The goal should be that for all transportation modes user fees are covering the maintenance and operations costs as much as possible, while government money primarily covers capital costs.

 

[fattony]

The only constraint needs to be that all toll revenue is used for highways, and only for highways. Not local roads, not bike lanes, not transit.

I have to strongly disagree with this idea. Certainly it makes sense to toll a highway to fund maintenance of said highway, but you might also toll a highway as a congestion reduction measure. The highway itself and the local roads that connect to it are scarce resources that benefit from a pricing mechanism to reduce tragedy-of-the-commons issues (i.e. excessive congestion, pollution, overbuilt parking). If the price to control congestion is higher than what is needed for maintenance, then the excess revenue should absolutely be directed to supporting alternative modes of transport or even capital investment in new infrastructure of other modes.

 

[Equilibria]

I have to strongly disagree with this idea. Certainly it makes sense to toll a highway to fund maintenance of said highway, but you might also toll a highway as a congestion reduction measure. The highway itself and the local roads that connect to it are scarce resources that benefit from a pricing mechanism to reduce tragedy-of-the-commons issues (i.e. excessive congestion, pollution, overbuilt parking). If the price to control congestion is higher than what is needed for maintenance, then the excess revenue should absolutely be directed to supporting alternative modes of transport or even capital investment in new infrastructure of other modes.

I know no one will agree with me on this here, but congestion pricing is based on a deeply flawed understanding of transportation cost distribution. When 1000 cars wait on a congested freeway, each incurs an incremental cost due to congestion, and each produces an incremental cost for all the other vehicles. Those are equal, and they cancel out. Congestion pricing exists on every road in the world - it's the time you waste in traffic.

If you're in a situation where there aren't any alternatives to driving on a single freeway (and thus you have an artificially constricted market), then I can see the logic in tolling extra, raising the cost in order to build alternatives and free up the system. That's not the case in Boston. Boston has a mature transit system which runs as well as any (or at least most) in the country, and it can't serve everyone in the region because no transit mode is really capable of doing so. Commuters on Route 128 will not ever have a beneficial alternative funded by their own toll revenue - the argument is that said revenue should be diverted into Boston (and Newton, Cambridge, Malden, Lynn, etc) to fund distant improvements which are, to the drivers who paid the tolls, irrelevant.

Those subsidies aren't aiding congestion, they're benefiting an entirely different subset of the population which already pays a far smaller portion of the costs of their transportation than drivers do. What you are advocating, and what many others have advocated, essentially amounts to a "suburban living tax." The people who live lifestyles we believe are bad should be taxed to subsidize the lifestyles we believe are good.

 

[fattony]

What you are advocating, and what many others have advocated, essentially amounts to a "suburban living tax."

I didn't intend to suggest that money collected from suburbanites who aren't entering the CBD needs to be redirected to CBD infrastructure. One of the primary roles of government in our democratic, capitalist-ish society is to create prices (in the form of taxes, fees, or in this case tolls) to help allocate resources which undergo market failures.

In essence, I don't care what the excess revenue is spent on. It could be spent on suburban parks. It could fund EBT cards for welfare queens. It could establish a scholarship fund. They could set the money on fire. It really doesn't matter. The purpose of congestion tolling is to artificially increase the cost to drivers so that they drive less.

Anecdote: This morning I took I-93 northbound at 9:30am. On the southbound side cars were at a near standstill from Boston all the way to 128. That is 8-10 miles of 3+ lanes of idling cars and there was nothing special about today. Its not always that bad and it is sometimes worse.

The "cost" these people are spending in time and gas is clearly not enough to make them behave rationally. Demand to use cars is outrageously high because the price is artificially low. The price paid by drivers is certainly not enough to cover the externalities like pollution and excessive defense spending that their daily commute causes.

So yes, I do advocate some amount of "suburban living tax" to counteract the "suburban living subsidy" that induced so many people to live in suburbs in the first place.

 

[George_Apley]

So yes, I do advocate some amount of "suburban living tax" to counteract the "suburban living subsidy" that induced so many people to live in suburbs in the first place.

I'm glad you brought this up. Suburban living as we know it in the post-WWII era is heavily subsidized.

 

[Equilibria]

I didn't intend to suggest that money collected from suburbanites who aren't entering the CBD needs to be redirected to CBD infrastructure. One of the primary roles of government in our democratic, capitalist-ish society is to create prices (in the form of taxes, fees, or in this case tolls) to help allocate resources which undergo market failures.

In essence, I don't care what the excess revenue is spent on. It could be spent on suburban parks. It could fund EBT cards for welfare queens. It could establish a scholarship fund. They could set the money on fire. It really doesn't matter. The purpose of congestion tolling is to artificially increase the cost to drivers so that they drive less.

The primary cause of congestion on freeways (though not car trips in general) is commuting. If people live and/or work in a place where transit is not an option for them, then they have no choice but to pay. The only alternatives available are to move off the freeway onto local roads, which is onerous and imposes many externalities on communities, or to move one's home or work so that both are accessible via transit, bicycle, or pedestrian travel.

If you design an artificially-increased cost to people who have no alternatives to which to shift, that's not going to modify behavior. You aren't rationalizing the market unless you spend each dollar you take off the road to improve that road or its direct alternatives. That could be new lanes of highway, or improved shoulders. It could also be a non-road infrastructure project which parallels the road or serves the same corridor. An example that immediately comes to mind would be tolling Route 2 and sending the money toward a Red Line extension to Lexington, so okay, I guess I'd be fine with limited toll revenue to transit, in very specific cases.

The "cost" these people are spending in time and gas is clearly not enough to make them behave rationally. Demand to use cars is outrageously high because the price is artificially low.

So yes, I do advocate some amount of "suburban living tax" to counteract the "suburban living subsidy" that induced so many people to live in suburbs in the first place.

The only direct subsidy ever given to suburban development was mortgage assistance under the Federal Housing Act. That was morally problematic for many reasons, but it doesn't directly benefit drivers in their driving, nor does it affect the costs of driving. If you're referring to the "ninety cents on the dollar" Federal funding for Interstates, that system was partially designed to benefit motorists, but it was primarily intended to transport freight, as well as soldiers and materiel in wartime.

As for the externalities, other than global warming those are matters of opinion and dogma. You can call out all the nasty things you want and say that something you don't like is to blame somehow. You might be right or wrong, but it's impossible to debate because the arguments are so cosmically nebulous.

All I'll say on that is: in 20 years the citizen fleet will be all-electric. The writing is on the wall with Tesla. When cars are no longer using gas, will you keep arguing for the congestion tax, and if so, why?

 

[fattony]

... or to move one's home or work so that both are accessible via transit, bicycle, or pedestrian travel.

Yes, the ultimate goal is to reduce demand for transportation by helping people feel the full cost of their transportation choices. There is no reason for so many people to waste so much energy travelling such large distances every day. Commuting in cars from bedroom communities to CBDs is not somehow essential to our economy. It is one of many ways to organize land-use and commuting patterns. It just so happens to be wildly inefficient. When the car was new and the externalities weren't well understood it seemed perfectly reasonable to encourage these commuting patterns. Doctors used to advocate smoking cigarettes. We know better now and our public policies should reflect that.

... Interstates, that system was partially designed to benefit motorists, but it was primarily intended to transport freight, as well as soldiers and materiel in wartime.

This was one of the key enablers for the system to become as unbalanced and irrational as it is. The commuters are really free-riders on a military investment. The national security aspect justified spreading out the costs rather than making individual motorists pay for using the system. I'm not suggesting this was some devious conspiracy. It made sense at the time.

All I'll say on that is: in 20 years the citizen fleet will be all-electric. The writing is on the wall with Tesla. When cars are no longer using gas, will you keep arguing for the congestion tax, and if so, why?

We, as a society, need to be more rational and realistic with energy use regardless of the source. Even in a carbon-free energy economy (which is impossible to imagine in my lifetime) human beings need to figure out how to use less energy in our daily lives. Economic growth is tightly coupled with energy consumption growth. We want economic activity to grow exponentially in perpetuity, but if energy consumption (regardless of source) grows exponentially we will literally be heating the planet due to basic thermodynamics.

Heat engines and electric motors have theoretical limits on their efficiency. At some point we will need to choose to travel smaller distances less often.

 

[Equilibria]

There is no reason for so many people to waste so much energy travelling such large distances every day. Commuting in cars from bedroom communities to CBDs is not somehow essential to our economy. It is one of many ways to organize land-use and commuting patterns. It just so happens to be wildly inefficient. When the car was new and the externalities weren't well understood it seemed perfectly reasonable to encourage these commuting patterns. Doctors used to advocate smoking cigarettes. We know better now and our public policies should reflect that.

It is not essential to our economy. It is, however, far faster, more flexible, and more comfortable than taking transit, biking or walking unless you are a devotee of one of those modes. I walk and take the T to work daily. If I am traveling from there to my parents' house, a trip entirely possible on MBTA trains, I will spend 90 minutes crushed in a smelly mass of people with no room to shift my feet, and G-d help me when I have a bag of any kind. In a car, the trip takes, in the worst traffic, half that time, and I get my own space with my own music and my own climate control.

What do I gain for using this far worse mode of transportation known as transit? I can live in Cambridge without having to worry about parking, and I save heaps and heaps of money. a heavily subsidized transit pass costs me (once my company pays for most of it) ten bucks a month. That's my transportation cost. Without my company subsidy, it would be seventy.

A modest car would cost me somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 per month in payments, insurance, gas, parking and tolls. That doesn't count the income, property and sales tax money I'm paying in to maintain infrastructure.

A car is a far more luxurious mode of transportation, for which I would be (if I owned one) paying luxuriously. I would also paying far more of the cost of my transportation than I am, since I would be paying my vehicle cost and there's no way in hell it costs the MBTA $60 per month to move me.

If you want to talk about "paying what it costs," fine. Then advocate that T fares be $8 each way for those able to pay. I get that we disagree on this, but the Government simply can and should not value certain lifestyle choices above others. If your argument is that people should pay to move about, great. I support tolls for that reason. Just be consistent and make everyone pay so the system can function, and don't keep insisting that the sub-population actually paying their costs should keep getting hit up for money just because "their way of life is evil."

This was one of the key enablers for the system to become as unbalanced and irrational as it is. The commuters are really free-riders on a military investment. The national security aspect justified spreading out the costs rather than making individual motorists pay for using the system. I'm not suggesting this was some devious conspiracy. It made sense at the time.

You're conflating two things which have nothing to do with each other. Commuters may be riding on a military investment, but that in no way means that they are on the hook to pay off that investment. Now, maintaining that investment today should be on the users. Again, I support tolling the interstates for that reason.

We, as a society, need to be more rational and realistic with energy use regardless of the source. Even in a carbon-free energy economy (which is impossible to imagine in my lifetime) human beings need to figure out how to use less energy in our daily lives. Economic growth is tightly coupled with energy consumption growth. We want economic activity to grow exponentially in perpetuity, but if energy consumption (regardless of source) grows exponentially we will literally be heating the planet due to basic thermodynamics.

Heat engines and electric motors have theoretical limits on their efficiency. At some point we will need to choose to travel smaller distances less often.

Economizing one's life and habits a good thing, in all respects. People will, by virtue of existing in a modern society, use energy. The balance you have to draw is how much modernity and comfort you're willing to demand that people sacrifice for less energy consumption. Since you present no data with which to analyze that and I can't take the time to find any, I'll have to leave it at that.

 

[Matthew]

The problem with keeping toll money only for highway improvements is that there aren't really any road-only improvements that can "solve congestion". It's a problem of geometry, not of money.

You want to use that money to create alternatives, both for equity reasons and for efficiency reasons. So, sure, you use some of the money to fix the highways. But you also use some of it to create new transit services and maintain the existing ones. If you raise the tolls on I-90, then you use that money to enhance express bus service, and to boost service on the Worcester line. This gives an alternative to people who cannot afford the market-clearing toll price. Presumably, someone like that is only able to afford car commuting in the first place because of a long history of government subsidies towards cars (and that goes way beyond the FHA, btw). It will take time for patterns to readjust, so we need to be flexible, and consider all kinds of options to make sure that the change is not too harsh on the most vulnerable. But in the long term we do need to shift the costs of driving onto the people who are receiving the most benefit from driving, and away from being a general burden.