Posted on 09/08/2006 9:17:03 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
In a few places around the world--such as downtown London--drivers pay higher tolls for entering city centers at peak rush hour. The idea of "congestion pricing" is to reduce traffic and pollution by giving drivers an incentive to travel at off-peak times.
Now a professor at the University of Texas at Austin has shown how a complex extension of this idea could greatly speed up rush-hour traffic flow throughout an entire network of highways and secondary roads in a U.S. metropolitan region. Using a computer model of driver behavior on the freeway system around the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas, University of Texas civil engineer Kara Kockelman showed that imposing highway tolls wirelessly--and increasing those tolls sharply on heavily traveled roads during peak times--would induce enough people to change their plans to increase average travel speeds by 25 miles per hour during rush hours on many key stretches of highway. The computer model takes into account everything from the frequency of trips to the value that drivers place on saving time.
Under the scheme, cars would be monitored with radio-frequency identification (RFID) or global positioning system (GPS) technologies that would track where and when they are driven. Drivers would pay mileage-based and location-based tolls on a sliding scale: up to 20 cents per mile for driving through bottleneck stretches at the busiest times.
Kockelman says such simple market mechanisms can solve traffic problems without requiring the construction of new roadways. "Meeting travel needs is largely a function of sending appropriate pricing signals to travelers," she says. "We can allow them to make their own decisions, rather than having to expand capacity in our nation's already extensive roadway networks."
And it doesn't have to cost drivers much or hit low-income drivers hard. That's because drivers would get a fixed monthly toll "credit" and pay out of pocket only when they exceed the monthly allotment. She calls it "credit-based congestion pricing." The idea is that those who must use the highways frequently at peak times will pay the most, while others will pay little or nothing. The model results suggest that most of the region's population would benefit, because the value of their saved time would exceed the toll costs, she says.
The work is early-stage research. To be sure, wide adoption would require drivers to accept having their travel habits electronically tracked. But similar concerns accompanied the installation of RFID tags at today's tollbooths. Millions of drivers soon forgot about privacy worries when they began speeding past the coin-tossers at tollbooths. And privacy concerns could be addressed if third-party companies handled account information.
If Kockelman's model is right, the expanded adoption of such technology could provide substantial traffic relief for millions of drivers around U.S. metropolitan areas. "I think most residents of congested regions will feel it's worth a shot," Kockelman says. "Congestion is the number-one concern cited by residents of most urban regions in the U.S."
PING!
It would be interesting to see the effects of a toll that was in place only during a portion of the normal rush hour to see if it would cause some people to shift their commute time ahead or behind in order to avoid the toll.
I always thought we would be equal on the road but it seems the future for driving will belong to the rich if we aren't careful.
In San Diego we built a commuter lane which I thought was fine to help with traffic, then sometime later the government opened up the lane to drivers that could pay a special fee, that struck me as a terrible road to start down.
So the pursuit of of market-based solutions is "a terrible road to start down?" Tell me, which other allocation strategy appeals to you? Do you prefer the "problem of the commons" in which everyone tries to use the resource, imposing costs (in time, stress, and new road construction) on everyone? Or perhaps you like the statist approach, in which the government would allocate usage - maybe even-numbered license plates on even numbered dates, and odd-numbered plates on odd numbered dates?
After a hundred years of auto freedom, and road building, and taxes etc, I do not want driving to become a privilege only for the rich, no market forces or no amount of gas tax will bother the rich at all, in fact it only makes their driving more pleasurable by getting other people off the road.
I guarantee you the left is driving these ideas, putting GPS in our cars so that they can tax us by how far we drive doesn't affect Barbara Streisand, but it sure affects the rest of us.
I think it would have an effect. Look at Orlando FL. The place is surrounded by mostly empty toll roads, yet traffic on I-4 is very, very heavy. People would rather sit in traffic for an hour just to save a buck on tolls.
I'm so happy I no longer live in a major city. I don't miss spending 100 hours a year stuck in traffic just getting places.
To get the transponder, expect to get a very lengthy background check. This is because they see this transponder as an anti-terror tool.
Eventually, all cars will be required to carry one of these gizmos (if the liberal wackos get their way)
Tell this idiot to go away with this rediculas idea. Anyone that drives the freeways can see where the bottlenecks are and what is causing the problem.
The problem is, the engineers that design the roads can't see how their work slows traffic.
Has anyone not seen how to speed traffic and asked themselves, how could the be so stupid to design this road like they have?
In many areas, there is a need for high capacity highway systems to evacuate people from hurricanes. How about weekend and holiday travel?
Geeze, you really know how to tick me off. The left's solution to every problem is to take more money from the citizens. The idea that people have to work in centralized locations in a service type economy is just 19th Century thinking. The idea of building thpurple line or widening the beltway here in Montgomery County Maryland is plain stupid. Sooner or later corporations and individuals will figure out how to commute to work or schools electronically. A little imagination on how to measure results and a lot of problems will be resolved.
This is veiled taxation. If a person needs to get to downtown by 9am, they need to get downtown by 9am, no matter the toll. The only people that will decide not to go are people who have a choice in the matter, which is tourists and shoppers.
All social engineers and politicians should be fitted with permanent shock collars.
All proposals would be voted on over the internet.
The intensity and frequency of the shock would determined by the total number of votes and differance.
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