Thursday, December 04, 2008

Solutions to Traffic

This Sunday my 3 hour trip home from Thanksgiving turned into a 6 1/2 hour crawl. While sitting in standstill traffic on the highway I began to wonder what the problem was. Well clearly more people want to travel over Thanksgiving and Sunday is the most popular day to come back home. But consider this, 20 percent of all turkeys consumed in 2007 were consumed at Thanksgiving, but if you want a turkey during the holidays you can get one quickly and cheaply. Why then do I have to wait in line to drive home? The solution is to allow the market (that is prices) to allocate the scare resources of the road. Here are some practical ways to do so:

1) Raise the gas tax. The United States has one of the lowest gas taxes in the industrialized world. Of all the taxes we pay, the gas tax is one of the most efficient. For one it makes drivers feel the cost of their driving on others (in traffic, pollution, road wear).

2) Use giant screens to keep rubberneckers from wasting our time.

3) Turn our freeways into fareways. Like Six Flags, let people pay extra to cut in line. Have a special toll lane and use that money to subsidize other government projects.

4) The final and best way is to use congestive pricing. This is charging drivers more to drive in times of heavy use. The fareway tag could be used for this too.

5) Wait until everyone has a GPS with traffic conditions. Or as this fantastically named blog suggests, maybe electronic signs can give us the information.

17 comments:

  1. I think my favorite would be the fareways. The fare could be increased during peak times. Do you think congestive pricing could get dangerous? For example, if someone chose to wait to drive home at 3 am because of the price of driving the risk of an auto accident would be greater as far as driving off the road. Congestion also leads to accidents, but typically those are fender benders and not people falling asleep at the wheel. Thoughts?

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  2. I agree driving at 3 am, you are less capable of responding quickly, but I doubt the price would ever be high enough to make people change their drive time to 3 am. It would probably just keep people off the road from 7-9am and 4-6pm.

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  3. 1, 2, and 5 - great ideas.

    3 and 4 - Won't this just make it so only rich people can get to work and visit their family during the holidays? Transportation to and from work is already a major problem for low-income families, with high gas prices and America's pitiful lack of public transportation.

    Which is why I think #1 on this list should be more public transportation. It helps the environment, the less fortunate, congestion, not to mention saving people money. If Atlanta had SF's public transportation, it would be a completely different city.

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  4. "3 and 4 - Won't this just make it so only rich people can get to work and visit their family during the holidays?"

    Well I don't think the price has to be much to change people's habits. If anything, it would allow for price discrimination for use of the roadways, which I bet would help the poor. But I guess if you are able to more efficiently allocate road resources which would lower overall taxes, that doesn't really help people who don't pay taxes.

    High gas prices are long gone my friend. Measured as a percent of monthly disposable income, gas is at its lowest point in history.

    As for public transportation, I think that is going to be a difference of ideologies. I assume that because there is no private mass transportation system in Atlanta, that it would not be profitable. Which simply means it would cost more than people want to pay. So to have one would mean the government would have to subsidize it. So it would actually cost Americans more money. However, that cost would fall on taxpayers, not the poorest of the poor.

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  5. Regarding number 2)
    Madeline and I got burned by rubberneckers the whole way back from Asheville. Unfortunately, I think that your giant screen solution would merely slow traffic down more, as people would try harder to see behind the screens. Also, it would create more wrecks, not fewer. Did you notice how many multiple car fender benders there were? We saw one about every 30 miles.

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  6. "I think that your giant screen solution would merely slow traffic down more, as people would try harder to see behind the screens."

    Ha, ha you might be right. I guess I assumed that once become regular people would get used to them. Also if you make it where the screen was a sure bet to hide everything, people would get the message and stop trying to look.

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  7. I support government-funded public transportation, just like I support government-funded roads. It may not be profitable enough for private business to go for it (uh, anywhere) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it - for all the reasons I already mentioned.

    "would allow for price discrimination for use of the roadways, which I bet would help the poor" - I think the opposite is true.

    Really - gas is cheap? I had no idea. Seriously - high gas prices will be back. It's only a matter of time before peak oil starts really hurting us.

    Seriously Harrison - you've got to come up with a better answer to everything than "it doesn't exist, so therefore the market has determined it should not exist, so therefore it should not exist." It's a "just so" argument that completely removes any room for progressive thought.

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  8. "It may not be profitable enough for private business to go for it (uh, anywhere) but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it"

    I'm sure there are some places where mass transit is profitable. Hong Kong I believe has a dense enough population that they support a somewhat private mass transit system.

    "'would allow for price discrimination for use of the roadways, which I bet would help the poor' - I think the opposite is true."

    There is little doubt in my mind that the rich would be willing to pay more to drive faster. Financially their time is worth more. You don't see the wealthy waiting in line for rush tickets for Broadway. They'd rather just pay to not wait in line. It would be the same for roads. The rich would pay extra to bypass the line, the poor would change their driving time slightly or continue to wait in traffic (which would go down). The extra money collected can pay for more government services (to which the poor benefit more). Everybody wins.

    "It's only a matter of time before peak oil starts really hurting us."

    I'd love to see some data on that because I just don't think its true. Historically the price of energy drops over time. And for the short run here is an article of interest: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/12/gulf-oil-ceo-predicts-1-gas-20-oil-in.html

    "you've got to come up with a better answer to everything"

    I'm not trying to oversimplify things when I use the market argument. All I am saying is that if there isn't a current private industry willing to take the risk, I assume it's probably not profitable. Why isn't there a local bus system in Cowpens, SC? Because people are not willing to pay the cost it would take to produce the transit. To make a public (government) transit system would be to force them to pay it in taxes.

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  9. "I'm not trying to oversimplify things when I use the market argument. "

    But you are. You just put Cowpens, SC in the same category as Atlanta.

    The price of a non-renewable source of energy the world depends on (Iran uses it to produce clean drinking water) is going to keep dropping until we run out of it? Come on.

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  10. "But you are. You just put Cowpens, SC in the same category as Atlanta."

    I used Cowpens as an extreme example to prove a point. Sure it's ridiculous, but where do you draw the line? It is also ridiculous to have one in Anderson? In Greenville? In Atlanta? Well I don't know. But I would say the answer lies in the profitability. If a bus system would benefit you $5 worth, but you have to pay $10 for it then by definition it's not worth it. I would say the transportation industry knows much more than you or I about this data and if they haven't started a full-scale system in Greenville then I assume it costs too much.

    "The price of a non-renewable source of energy the world depends on (Iran uses it to produce clean drinking water) is going to keep dropping until we run out of it? Come on."

    No I didn't say the price of oil would drop in the long run. But I am confident that the price of all kinds of energy will drop. No one could have ever predicted nuclear energy, something you and I both love. Wind, wave, and solar are years away from being profitable, but who knows what advances will develop in the next couple decades. My prediction: barring any global catastrophe (war, plague, asteroid) I predict our children will pay even less (and we pay very little) for energy. Do you disagree?

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  11. You said high gas prices are long gone, and now you've moved to our children's cost of energy. I'm saying high as prices will be back - and they will. There will be no incentive for us to innovate new fuel technology until gas isn't a cheap alternative anymore. When that inevitably happens, there will be an interim period when gas prices are high and the technology is not readily available yet (in gas stations, etc). During this period, and before it, low-income people who drive themselves to work will be hit very hard. Public transportation can help them, as well as our dependence on oil.

    Your extreme example doesn't prove the point, it's a straw man which oversimplifies the argument. I said Atlanta needs more public transportation and you threw in Cowpens. We need to argue the real factors in the problem instead of extreme examples.

    Where do we draw the line? Well why not draw it based on more than just money? Sure the industry doesn't find it profitable enough. But why should they care about cleaning up Atlanta's air? Why should they care about helping rush hour? Why should they care about our dependence on oil? Why should they care about low-income people who need to get to work? They DON'T. But I do, the citizens of Atlanta do, and the Atlanta government does. We may not be as smart as the industry at making a buck - but there is a LOT MORE to it than that.

    Geez, every time I come here I feel like a bleeding heart liberal. Community service, cancer research, public transportation, health care - is there nothing that shouldn't be thrown in the trash if private business won't support it?

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  12. "saying high as prices will be back"

    should be

    "saying high gas prices will be back"

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  13. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

    Erin got into this one and sent me these:

    http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12564013

    http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/daily-news/081124-Gas-Prices-Under-2-Nationwide-But-Will-Rise-Again/

    http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2008/10/17/why-oil-prices-will-rise-again.aspx

    http://hubpages.com/hub/Oil-Prices-Will-Reach-250-In-2009

    http://suzieqq.wordpress.com/2008/11/29/opec-oil-prices-will-not-rise-until-mid-2009/

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  14. Although I don't rule out peak oil, I have not seen any conclusive evidence to make it something I regularly worry about. Mark Perry doesn't seem too worried either: http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/12/world-is-not-running-out-of-oil-fill-er.html

    I think the record high prices over the summer were kind of a "stars aligning" of several things: increased global demand (which I agree will continue), natural disaster around oil refineries (which the government should allow more of), extremely high summer driving season, summer blend gasoline, War in Iraq, etc. I don't think we'll see gasoline prices that high again. But I think you're right, new forms of energy will never be appealing until they are. This is why I would probably support some kind of carbon tax (to make people feel the full cost of their pollution).

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  15. Also worth mentioning: Gas is at its cheapest level in history as a % of income.

    http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2008/03/gas-prices-as-percent-of-income-are.html

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  16. I am very surprised to meet an economist who thinks demand for oil will cause prices to drop as we use up the earth's reserves. The day we use the last gallon of oil on planet earth, it won't cost more than $4? Maybe I slept through something I shouldn't have in econ.

    I agree about the conditions this summer which caused unusually high prices. I agree a carbon tax is a great idea. I agree high gas prices are not something to worry about.

    I brought high gas prices for one reason only: to support my original point - that it is extremely difficult for a low-income individual to own and operate a vehicle, and it will get harder. Public transportation can help.

    I'm not going to hold my breath for private business to help the poor get to work. This really needs to be its own GT post - thanks for the inspiration!

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  17. Here is a some research on pay-per-mile taxation: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-09-20-roads_N.htm?csp=34

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You are the reason why I do not write privately. I would love to hear your thoughts, whether you agree or not.