Let Them Pay Tolls
Yonah Freemark fears for the poor:
Considering that Ryan Avent and I share almost the same “hometown” (him: Raleigh, me: Durham), I find it hard to believe that he would advocate wide-scale tolling. To implement measures today that would require people to pay to drive on most roads in the North Carolina Triangle would be a significant affront to the poor and much of the middle class, who are currently provided with embarrassing transit options that don’t get most people where they need to go in any reasonable amount of time. A regional rail system in the area, which has been in planning for decades, has yet to find a funding source. Most of America’s metropolitan areas have similarly dismal alternative transportation options.
A huge percentage of the U.S. population pays far too much for transportation; to put it simply, most working adults have no choice other than to own a vehicle and often to drive it dozens of miles every day. Making driving more expensive is a great way to devastate the already impoverished.
It’s true, tolling highways would save “money, time, lives, and emissions.” But it would also sacrifice the mobility of a large segment of America, because the reduced congestion would be a result of the poor and the middle class choosing not to drive because of expense, not because of choices made by the wealthy.
I’ll say it before, and I’ll say it again: the fairest, most logical way to fund transportation investments is through the general fund, paid for through an expansion in the progressive income tax. We all benefit, so we all should pay.
Many of us fight for better public transportation because we see it as a tool to reduce inequality; it expands mobility for people across class lines and it orients growth around neighborhoods that are more accessible to everyone, including those who choose — or have no choice — not to drive. Before we can start charging people to drive in semi-urban areas like the Triangle, we have a responsibility to dramatically improve transit and land use patterns. The latter must come before the former.
This is the reaction a lot of people have to proposals to toll roads, which is one reason it’s so hard to toll roads. Problem is, it’s largely misguided. Several points to make.
One is that failing to price the congestion externality creates costs that will be eliminated by tolling; society saves money on net when congestion is priced.
Second, it may seem fair and logical to pay for transportation improvements through general revenues, but it is actually important to consider the negative effects of taxation. When you tax something you get less of it, so society is much better off taxing things it doesn’t want, like congestion, than things it does want, like income.
Third, it’s really, really easy to make tolling equitable; you just refund some of the revenue to lower income workers. It’s progressive, efficient, and probably the only way you get a plan like this passed in the first place.
And finally, it costs about $10,000 a year, on average to own and operate a car. The really struggling families out there aren’t driving, in other words; they’re taking the bus. But the buses in places like Raleigh really suck, because there’s no money to provide quality service, and because quality service is difficult on jammed roads. But a congestion toll makes better bus service possible by improving both variables — revenue and traffic. You can offer better bus service immediately based on toll revenue projections. Better service means higher ridership, which means more routes, shorter headways, and less congestion, which means a much more effective bus system for those who simply can’t afford to drive under any circumstances.
The bottom line is, it’s really easy to address equity concerns from tolling, and really hard to improve congestion and find money for transit without tolling. And so it’s a real tragedy that we have such a hard time adopting tolling.
July 9th, 2009 at 10:34 am
Wait wait wait. How do you identify low-income drivers and provide them with sufficient reimbursement? Are you saying everyone needs to get a transponder?
In this case, why not just impose VMT metering on all roads altogether?
July 9th, 2009 at 11:56 am
An affordable transit solution that gets people where they want to go in a reasonable amount of time.
See also.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
An affordable transit solution that gets people where they want to go in a reasonable amount of time.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:28 pm
And finally, it costs about $10,000 a year, on average to own and operate a car. The really struggling families out there aren’t driving, in other words; they’re taking the bus.
Waitwaitwait. Just because that’s the average cost of owning and operating a car, doesn’t mean that poorer families are paying anything near that.
I got through my poorer years by buying a succession of used cars that still had a few years’ life in them. If you spend, say, $2000 once every 3-4 years to buy an 8-9 year old car that gets 20 mpg, drive it 10K miles/year, maintain it until it needs a major repair (over $700, say), and don’t bother with collision insurance because why pay collision on a car that’s not worth very much, then your bill’s going to be more like 1/3 of that $10,000 figure: still expensive for a struggling family, but well below what you’re paying for rent or food.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
>You can offer better bus service immediately based on toll revenue projections.
This is an important point. You can buy buses and put them into service very quickly. It doesn’t take much planning, only money. You could expand bus service in Raleigh (or any city) by a factor of 10 in one year, if only you had the cash on hand.
Rail is different. It takes a long time to implement. Yes it is undeniably better, but you can’t do it as fast.
>An affordable transit solution that gets people where they want to go in a reasonable amount of time.
This is nonsense.
1) Cost estimates for PRT are always always much lower than actual costs. Elevated transit is expensive no matter how “light” your vehicles are.
2) If you think people will be happy seeing an elevated trackway above every street in their neighborhood, I’ve got a bridge to sell you. Meanwhile, there is no need to go to the outrageous expense to duplicate our entire infrastructure because we’ve already got perfectly good streets on which we can run vehicles.
3) PRT is a ridiculous concept from the get go. It combines the efficiency of private cars with the convenience of transit, which is to say it’s neither efficient nor convenient. It’s not the best of both worlds, but the worst.
4) Bicycles can do everything PRT can do, at about 1% of the cost. For a little extra $ you can even provide electric motor bikes or vespa-like scooters for those not strong enough to pedal on their own.
5) Despite the fact that people have been talking about it for half a century at least, the world has very few PRT systems because all seriously transportation planners know it’s a junk mode. The only people in the transportation industry who take PRT seriously are people who hate transit but want to appear like they have an alternative to cars.
July 9th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
In response to BeyondDC:
1) Even if actual cost for PRT is several times higher than estimated cost, it’s still cheaper than light rail for the same capacity. And PRT provides more convenient service for the same money.
2) Have you ever been to Brooklyn? Elevated tracks are a fact of life. Nobody likes them, but they’d rather have an elevated train track than have to take a slow-as-molasses bus when they need to get downtown. That said, PRT tracks will be tiny compared to elevated train tracks, and commensurately cheaper as well.
3) You’re exactly wrong. It combines the convenience of private cars with the efficiency of transit.
4) Can bicycles safely go 40mph? Can they make trips uninterrupted by cross traffic and without the threat of being hit by another moving vehicle? Can you carry your TV home from the store with you on a bicycle? Don’t get me wrong, I love bicycles. But they are not a panacea. Most of us aren’t able to bike to the airport, much as we would like to.
5) This is largely an attack on people rather than ideas. But in any case, it’s nonsense. That said, naysayers like you are in good company:
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.”
— Lord Kelvin
July 9th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
1. A large number of individual low-occupant cars that run on a large number of individually elevated tracks are not cheaper per passenger than one high-capacity, high-efficiency vehicle running on one ground level track. Any PRT proponents that claim otherwise are using fuzzy math. Much to PRT proponents chagrin, economies of scale *do* apply.
2. Smaller yes, but you’ll need them on just about every street in order to make the concept work (otherwise you’re not building PRT, but a mere circulator). That’s a far cry from the one el line per neighborhood in Brooklyn or Chicago.
3. If you say so. Although the fact that folks have been trying to make PRT work for decades now and have utterly failed to do so in any meaningful capacity suggests otherwise. Eventually somebody actually succeeded in building a workable airplane.
4. Nice list. I can think of just as many things bikes can do that PRT can’t (is PRT free? can PRT be carried with you on the Metro? etc). It is fair enough to say that bikes aren’t a panacea, but neither is any other single mode. Even if PRT were actually a workable concept and not a total red herring, to suggest that it will solve all our problems is patently false. Even if PRT can do some things bike can’t, bikes solve many of the same problems that PRT might solve, which reduces the potential value of PRT.
4b: By the way, alternate existing much cheaper “PRT” technology #2: Taxicabs.
5: It is not an ad hominem attack. It is a realization that we don’t have infinite resources and that diverting valuable and scarce energy away from completely proven technologies and towards absolutely unnecessary and probably unworkable ones is a price that we can’t afford to pay. To the extent that PRT solves any problems at all, they are problems that can be much less expensively solved with existing technologies.
Additionally, even accepting for the sake of argument that PRT can work, it is absolutely false that it could be deployed on a metropolitan-wide level in a reasonable amount of time. It would take years of planning, environmental review, and political buy-in just to get a decent size neighborhood/mixed-use pilot program going. Even if PRT can be shown to work as a mode of travel, it is absolutely positively impossible to get the service on the ground and operating in as quickly a manner as improved bus service. If the point of this discussion is to identify ways to make it possible for poor people to bypass more expensive driving with as short a painful transition period as possible, then the time necessary to design and build PRT disqualifies it from contention.
July 9th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
First of all, I was going to say what LTC said about the average cost. That’s a bad mistake for an economist to make.
Second, so what that Brooklyn has els? The only way they got those built was a different legal and economic world. People couldn’t object to projects the way they can now. There is no way in hell they’d be built nowadays.
July 9th, 2009 at 8:15 pm
“A large number of individual low-occupant cars that run on a large number of individually elevated tracks are not cheaper per passenger than one high-capacity, high-efficiency vehicle running on one ground level track.”
They can be. First, since the smaller vehicles are small and are all identical, they can be mass produced easily and more cheaply than can most conventional transit vehicles, which reduces total cost for the fleet for a given total capacity. Second, while conventional transit vehicles can be very high capacity, they are not well suited to off-peak transit service because it becomes necessary to run vehicles at a small fraction of their overall capacity. To prevent such capacity waste transit providers generally cut back service during off-peak times, which results in longer station waits and thus further drives away potential passengers who may wish to use the service at off-peak times. Third, conventional transit is generally human-operated, which is costly, and makes frequent stops, each of which waste time and energy and thus both reduce desirability of the service and increase the cost of operation. Fourth, conventional transit is characterized by large headways between vehicles, for safety and other reasons. PRT vehicles are small and computer-controlled and so can react much more quickly to a track obstruction than can a human driver or operator, and can stop faster and on shorter notice than a larger transit vehicle. This allows for the ability to run vehicles safely at much shorter headways, on the order of one second, which results in higher capacity and efficiency. As a result of these characteristics, both capital and operating costs for PRT tend to be much lower than for comparable conventional transit service.
For another comparison, consider the road system and automobile fleet we have now. PRT vehicles are smaller, lighter and more energy efficient than personal automobiles, and there need to be fewer of them because not all of them will be in use at the same time (PRT is really just an automated taxi system on elevated guideways). Elevated guideways are more expensive per mile than regular roadways, but since the guideways will have higher capacity, there can be fewer guideway-miles than roadway-miles to achieve the same capacity, and so the cost should even out. And an elevated transit system like PRT eliminates costs from accidents and traffic congestion and reduces law enforcement costs. Thus PRT presents an improvement over the already omnipresent road system and private automobile fleet in cost effectiveness.
“Smaller yes, but you’ll need them on just about every street in order to make the concept work (otherwise you’re not building PRT, but a mere circulator). That’s a far cry from the one el line per neighborhood in Brooklyn or Chicago.”
Actually, no. PRT guideways have higher capacity than streets because of higher average speeds and lack of congestion and cross-traffic. That means one PRT guideway can do the work of several lanes of roadway–in fact, PRT can replace three lanes of highway with just one elevated guideway. So you don’t need as many guideways as streets.
All these concerns and more have already been carefully considered before. Technical documents describing these considerations can be found at this website.
“If you say so. Although the fact that folks have been trying to make PRT work for decades now and have utterly failed to do so in any meaningful capacity suggests otherwise.”
Here’s a little video for you.
“Nice list. I can think of just as many things bikes can do that PRT can’t”
Oh really? Well I can think of lots of things that a skateboard can do that a bullet train can’t.
“(is PRT free? can PRT be carried with you on the Metro? etc).”
Bikes aren’t free. Bikes cost money, and they need maintenance too if they are used often. If you live in an urban area you likely also need to spend some money buying locks to secure your investment, and even then you are likely to lose a lot of seatposts and even a few bikes over the course of time. Secure bike parking costs money too, even if you’re not the one paying for it directly.
And no, you can’t take your PRT on the metro, but you can take your bike on the PRT! Even during rush-hour, when most conventional transit systems ban bicycles. And you don’t have to move or get off if there are too many bicycles in one car or train, because you have your own personal car.
“By the way, alternate existing much cheaper “PRT” technology #2: Taxicabs.”
Yes, you’re quite right. Taxicabs are a rudimentary form of PRT. Of course, taxicabs are subject to traffic congestion and traffic accidents, and since they have human drivers they’re also expensive. But they also reduce the total vehicle fleet necessary and thus the amount of parking necessary.
If you look closely you’ll see that PRT is just an hybrid of existing transit technologies, optimized to result in optimum efficiency and convenience. PRT is an express train for everyone, that’s all.
“It is not an ad hominem attack. It is a realization that we don’t have infinite resources and that diverting valuable and scarce energy away from completely proven technologies and towards absolutely unnecessary and probably unworkable ones is a price that we can’t afford to pay.”
A half-mile test track can be built for $15 million. That’s one thirteenth of what a single mile of light rail cost in Newark, NJ. $15 million is not a lot of money in the transit world.
“If the point of this discussion is to identify ways to make it possible for poor people to bypass more expensive driving with as short a painful transition period as possible, then the time necessary to design and build PRT disqualifies it from contention.”
Well, some of us have a more long-term outlook than that. But in any case, what is it that you propose as an immediate solution?
July 10th, 2009 at 1:19 am
Ryan
I think you should stress more potential benefit from taxing highways and roads.
“The really struggling families out there aren’t driving, in other words; they’re taking the bus. But the buses in places like Raleigh really suck, because there’s no money to provide quality service, and because quality service is difficult on jammed roads.”
The quality service part is key because if you have a really good bus (nice, comfortable, clean) that doesn’t get to stops punctually and frequently it’s still a bad bus. If you have one that’s kind of old and dirty but is very punctual and frequent and isn’t held up by traffic, it’s a good bus because it’s very much fulfilling its primary purpose.
July 10th, 2009 at 8:06 am
The point about the average cost of automobiles isn’t that the poor are paying $10k to drive, it’s that driving is really expensive. Even if you buy an old beater, the annual cost of maintenance, insurance, and gas is a significant proportion of the income of someone at or below the poverty line. And if you buy an old beater, it’s very likely to break down at some point, which is an enormous blow to a low income family that can’t easily pay for major repairs or a new set of wheels. Which is why, in the city of Raleigh, lots of people end up taking the CAT buses despite the fact that they don’t go many places and get there slowly.
July 10th, 2009 at 10:21 am
In the public mind there’s a difference between tolling and bus service, and deservedly so. No matter who initiates tolling, a different gang will be in office eventually, and if we’ve learned nothing else from our current problems, we should have learned that dedicating a revenue source may appear to solve a problem while actually creating another. Either you dedicate your revenues to buses or watch some future county commissioners spend the money elsewhere- two bad choices.
For example, why not use tolling revenues to build neighborhood schools, clinics, and social facilities? Why use a bus to carry people all over town when you can build smaller facilities close to them? Or, build a light rail line and the facilities will build themselves close to the stations.
Tolling may be a good idea, but the most likely use of the revenues at the present time is to improve the roads- not something I’m very interested in doing.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:24 pm
>All these concerns and more have already been carefully considered before.
By PRT proponents with an agenda using figures they made up themselves. Forgive me if I am not impressed.
You can write long treatises all you want. Until PRT succeeds in solving some problem that can’t be solved more easily and cheaply with existing technologies, nobody in the transportation industry will take it seriously. Like it or not.
>Well, some of us have a more long-term outlook than that
Long term outlook was not the topic of this thread. By inserting PRT into a discussion in which it is clearly not appropriate (since it can’t meet the “do it now” threshold), you make it abundantly obvious that you are more interested in dogmatically pushing your one pet concept than in actually solving any problems objectively. This is another reason why most in the transportation industry don’t take PRT seriously; why should we, when its boosters are so committed to reiterating obviously untrue claims?
By the way, it’s not like I’m inherently anti-PRT. Make it work and I’ll support you all the way. But PRT has had a lot of opportunities over the years to prove itself, and it has failed every time. The big problem is that you’re trying to reinvent the wheel, except that my existing set of wheels is perfectly good already, and your new set is never as good as you promise. If PRT proponents want to succeed, you have to show that PRT can work *so well* that in order to build it we should stop funding and maintaining the infrastructure that we already have. That’s an incredibly tall order. Good luck.
>But in any case, what is it that you propose as an immediate solution?
Sorry, I thought this was already clear. The very first thing I said in this thread was to agree with Ryan’s statement that “You can offer better bus service immediately based on toll revenue projections.” I went on to say that “You can buy buses and put them into service very quickly. It doesn’t take much planning, only money. You could expand bus service in Raleigh (or any city) by a factor of 10 in one year, if only you had the cash on hand.”
If you will point out which part was unclear, I will be happy to explain my position.
July 10th, 2009 at 5:25 pm
Sorry, I didn’t correctly close that first [i] tag.