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Bid On eBay To Speed Up Your Commute
malfunct writes "The traffic in the greater Seattle area is atrocious, and the State Government has been working hard to find a way to solve the issue. In the interim, they may use eBay as an innovative solution for estimating demand and raising funds. According to a MSNBC article, the plan is to use eBay to sell stickers that allow access for single driver vehicles to the car pool lane. The idea is to use eBay to find just how much a speedy commute is worth to drivers."
Most Impressive indeed! I like the ldea, and they have little over head (IE a new department) to go along with it.
Good work!
eBaying? Unless they let it go on for a LONG time so they can find a statistical mean, it's just going to represent the upper-echelon of prices paid. Judging the value of things by their auction price, unless you're talking about one-of-a-kinds, is going to result in hideous inflation. No matter how useless something is, there will be someone, somewhere, who's willing to shell out big money for it.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
The threat of an $X00 speeding ticket doesn't seem to deter them from dangerous driving...
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
If your commute doesn't improve by much, can you leave negative feedback?
Chris
I think this could work for the east coast and interstate 95 as well and force people to find the side roads. South Florida traffic is madness 24/7.
Laws are for people with no friends.
I'll ride in your car with you on the way to work, so you can go in the carpool lane.
I live in Canada and I feel like buying one!
I am a filthy pirate.
This could lead to some really bad economic decision. eBay is not a fair marketplace, especially in areas like this. We're operating in the extreme portion of the demand curve here. These extremely rare (unless they sell thousands of them) items might be very sought after by the $300k/year executive who hates his morning drive. If they price further sales based on a few eBay auctions, they might end up only catering to the very rich.
Not to mention they will be operating well above the point where they will make the largest (potential) profit.
Moderation: Put your hand inside the puppet head!
If everyone is able to buy their way into the carpool lane doesn't that defeat the purpose? Isn't the carpool lane supposed to reward drivers for reducing their fossil fuel emmissions?
Does it seem to anyone else that this will just end up with another crowded lane, especially if there are too many stickers sold? And isn't the whole point to keep that lane uncontested so people actually use it? This is just another example of government trying to get every dollar they can, and pandering to corporate interest.
I thought this was a joke. Why don't they just widen the roads? If traffic is that bad, and people are paying their taxes, why don't they just widen the road? If people end up bidding up those stickers to some insane amount of money, what does that mean in the end?
This is one of the most retarted things I have heard as of late.
You'll have that sometimes...
Doesn't that lessen the incentive to carpool? Why are going to carpool if you have to share the carpool with a bunch of rich wankers who can afford stickers? The carpool lane encourages the ecologically friendlier practice of carpooling and that should be its focus.
FoundNews.com - get paid to blog.,
Seller was awesome! Totally fast shipping! Great communication! I love my sticker and will buy again! A+++++++
So these carpool lanes exist outside of California? I found it quite odd that they had a whole lane dedicated to carpoolers when going from San Francisco to San Jose. It just seemed kind of silly because the traffic didn't seem to really justify it, although it was 1pm if that makes any difference. I guess I'm spoiled when my commute is 17 miles and takes 25 minutes.. never any traffic. :-)
This is like buying tickets for a sporting event or concert, or the domain-name speculation game.
Speculators will bid up to enormous prices for the stickers, then will resell them to desperate motorists, making a profit.
eBay is not necessarily a factor in determining how much something is really worth. For certain collector's items, the item may sell at a much lower price than book value if there is not a captive market (people may want to inspect a coin or medallion in person, for example). For other items that generate a huge buzz of publicity in advance, like concert tickets and now HOV-lane stickers, the price quickly rises far beyond what the market will bear.
For more information, click here.
bid while on the fast lane...
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
This provides an interesting opportunity to assess the "worth" of HOV lanes from an entirely new perspective. It would be interesting to see how such a market-based approach would value these high-speed lane projects, as opposed to the traditional multi-year study process that planning boards typically use today. What would be required is growth and maturation of the market in these stickers so one could get an estimate of the overall demand.
My guess is that the valuation would come in lower than today's standards, due to many parties who use the roads not participating (infrequent drivers, interstate drivers, etc.).
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Personally, I would pay for this. However, I would only pay up to about 3/4 of the price of the ticket I could receive if I was caught without the ticket. Second off, I think that if they implement this type of plan, they should look at making it into an electronic type device with a remote detector for installation into police vehicles. Maryland has a similar system which they use to asses tolls on bridges and tunnels.
I have no regrets, this is the only path.
My whole life has been "UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS"
This sounds like a good idea, but will it really be full-proof? I could see people running up the prices just for fun. Using an internet bidding system as a census to see what people will pay for something seems like a good idea in theory. But I hope they make it a private auction or use some kind of security to AT LEAST make sure the people bidding even live in the area. Also, should an available lane on a highway really be "given out" in accordance to what someone is willing to pay? The car-pool lane is there for a reason, not for the highest bidder.
...it's, the value of the right to drive sticker, not the same as kidneys or replica sputniks on ebay.
Serously, anything to reduce traffic is a great thing. I believe in London you have to pay to drive in the city at all.
I do not control the Sig, the Sig controls me.
The articles states that you would get a 3 inch square sticker on the right side of the windshield. Ok, lets say I win one for the month of July.... and now its August, I still hae the sticker. Now you could argue to put a date on it, but I defy a cop to spot the date on a 3 inch square while the car is traveling 65 mph. I suppose you could color code, it, but even that has its limits. I see this as a potential problem.
Great Linux Site
Come on, this is just a thinly veiled attempt at making an old-people-free lane. Since old people generally aren't heavy computer users, let alone heavy eBayers, this lane will be regulated to the young and fast! We've all dreamed of it, and now its here!
daed si luap
If someone is willing to pay a lot of money for something, why shouldn't they? eBay is a very fair marketplace. It allows sellers to obtain maximum value for their product. If someone wants to pay more for something, why not let them? With state budget crunches (although I beleive that cutting spending is the answer), this will only help, and not harm anyone.
Honestly, people get bent out of shape if someone is willing to pay for something that you aren't. Why is this?
Seriously... price increases are a normal part of market forces. I didn't accept that until I saw the devastation of Hurricane Andrew in 92. To make sure that supply runs smoothly and near-infinitely, price must match demand. With that in mind, they should have a two-tiered system to minimize the economic impact... premium, standard and free.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Ok, so if you have enough money from having a good job, you can get to work early or on time and keep that good job. If you don't have enough money from having a bad job then you'll arrive late and lose that bad job and never move up.
good thinking there..............
That's a great idea, but they'll probably need special permission from the Transportation Department to implement it, or risk losing some of their federal highway funds. The issue is that many urban highway construction projects are funded with conditions requiring HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lanes (or other specific things to encourage carpooling or mass transit).
Of course, with the current administration, such a waiver shouldn't be difficult to obtain.
Unless I am missing something, the point of high occupancy lanes is to reduce the number of cars on the road in the first place, helping with congestion as well as environmental issues.
Wouldn't these functions be better served by encouraging more ride share pickup areas and public information about ride sharing?
Oh, wait, that wouldn't produce new income past the already outrageous taxes involved and that means no new campaign kickbacks. How silly of me.
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
I think this idea is great. I give it an A++++++++++++. Oustanding thinking and clever idea!!!!! I would work with Government again, anytime!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here
Mod him up because:
a) he was using jargon that we are all familiar with
b) he applied said jargon in a very unlikely context
Keep it up, Karma whore!
Talk about law makers being blatently biased toward the upper class. If you have enough money, you can buy special priveleges.
I thought car-pool lanes were designed to encourage a reduction in pollution. So now if you have enough money, environmental concerns don't apply?
> "It's a lesson in economics," explains Mercer Island's state Rep. Fred Jarrett
Indeed it is. They're taking the corruption enjoyed by big business who's bottom line can't be bothered by the environment and applying to local laws.
I'm just thinking, what will be the difference in the cost of buying a pass, versus going into the carpool lane anyway and taking the chance of getting a traffic ticket? I see single-occupancy vehicles in the carpool lane all the time, so I don't see that this will change anything.
I can't say that I don't give a fuck. I've just run out of fuck to give.
Out east we have toll roads.. And bridges. They allow a "Pay for use" model for roads. You can go around them and pay no toll but it will probably take you longer.
I wonder how many people changed routes when they doubled the tolls on the eastern end of the mass pike?
I still don't get how toll roads can also be interstates..
Would you like tea with your tart?
Fake stickers to get you into the HOV lane. 1. Make fake stickers 2. Sell on ebay 3. Profit 4. Retire early
1. Bad signature
2. ?????
3. Profit
An auction is the wrong way to set the price for something like a car pool lane. The reason is that if too many slots are sold, the value of the car pool lane goes down. i.e. the carpool lane is jammed full of cars.
They need to figure out how many slots they need to sell, then figure out the demand curve for the product. The price should be figured from that curve, so that not too many are sold.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Now that the "non" carpool cars can drive on the "fast" lane. An say alot of people fork over the dough. Will the "fast" lane be fast or will they then have to pay McMonkey McBean aka the seller of the tickets, for the privledge of riding in the newest fastlane, the old ones.
Some states already have implemented this idea by creating special for-pay commuter lanes. They're called "Lexus lanes". It's bad enough to be excluding people who drive a long way but don't make much money -- but to give over a legitimate carpool lane to the fatcat drivers with more money than sense? The mind boggles.
The traffic IS atrocious. I just got back from a trip to Los Angeles and I LOVED it - fast traffic in LA! If you've never been to Seattle, YES, the traffic is much worse in Seattle, and the carpool lane is RARELY ever full. Maybe once a month if that.
This would be a good thing - if they do a dutch auction and not one a week. That would only be 52 a year...so a dutch auction makes more sense.
In Washington DC the community slugs their way into the HOV lanes.
In a nutshell, folks driving alone on common routes who want to drive in the HOV lane pick up (car-less) complete strangers who also travel the same route. The driver gets to work more quickly. The passenger gets a free ride. The community gets less pollution and less traffic. Everybody wins.
If only Seattle would pick up on the trend! T'would solve their problems without any additional govenrment intervention whatsoever... without destroying the benefit of the HOV lanes.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Seriously, eBay prices are WHACK. I sell a lot of CDs on there, mostly indie stuff. Not as a business really, just that I have thousands of CDs and the turnover is high as I get new ones.
Why do I bother? Because I *routinely* get more for CDs than I pay for them, and I end up breaking even on average. A lot of times, the CDs are *still available* from the label, and some schmuck will still pay $2-3 more than the retail price (shipping is about the same so that's not a factor).
I think they do this because they don't want to "let it go" after investing their time bidding on it and watching it, even though they could just head over to the label and buy a new copy cheaper.
The other day I had a nice double-CD (remix thingy by the orb) that sells for $30. I put it up for $15 starting bid and nobody bought it. I put it up again for $5 starting bid and it finished at $18.
So basically eBay buyers are IRRATIONAL. It's not a big economics experiment, it's more like a bunch of monkeys typing random numbers into the bid box.
If they have A LOT of data, maybe they can draw conclusions, but I think eBay reveals just how supply and demand and free markets are simply MODELS and do not reflect reality.
Should be an interesting study in economics. If they only put out a few, then only really rich people will buy them and pay lots of $$, but if they put out a few thousand, it will create a real marketplace. If they are smart, they will let people buy and sell them, or at least sell them back for a partial refund, that way there will always be a market for more.
The one downside I see is that people will start complaining that those that cannot afford to pay will be disadvantaged. I am not sure how best to answer them. Perhaps they should give away a few using a lottery system to people under a certain income level.
Up 'till now, the calculations to determine what the market will bear have been based mostly on speculation. Now marketing departments everywhere will have a reliable way to drive prices through the roof without worrying. Damn.
Never eat more than you can lift -- Miss Piggy
I live in seattle. The traffic is primarily due to the brain dead drivers here that either park in the hov lane or park in the the lane to right of the hov lane. The NW human suffers from SAD and other maladies that make them unable to understand the signs that say "Slower traffic keep right". The sheep all travel the same speed parked in the many lanes provided. I use the hov lane when driving alone and if I get cought I will pay the ticket as a toll.
The sheeple will call and report you as they watch you speed by..
If you live in Seattle MOVE OVER!
In Texas you would get shot for not letting faster traffic pass. Oh, to be back in civilization!
what about the people that don't have internet, the poor mexican worker that drives his pickup to the construction site in the morning? we're going to put him in a slower lane just because he can't afford to drive in a faster lane?
this is all a drive towards a 'if you have the money you can do anything' society that I dislike a lot.
Sig & Below
Yuck Fou
How is it going to be faster when you cram more cars into the carpool lane?
The non carpool lanes are like dsl with too many connections and the carpool lane is like a 56k modem.
You may get there quicker sometimes, but a little bandwidth on that baby, and its tooooo slow.
Seriously, I think it's quite obvious there's more than one person commuting from Kent to Seattle every morning and evening so you'd have no problem finding a carpool partner. If you need to run errands during the day, use the bus tunnel -- it's free.
obviously, you don't live in a metropolitan area. Road building is not the answer. Palm Beach County did a study 10 years ago before all the highway development and the conclusion was this: Build smarter, not more. If 95 was widened to accommodate people, it would be 45 lanes wide. That's not an exaggeration. That's a sober conclusion of government based on growth rates. Market forces can seriously help here.
Laws are for people with no friends.
Carpool lanes were a great experiment, but a failed experiment. Trying to force people to carpool by opening up carpool only lanes only works if people are willing to share their car in the first place. Many people are not and would rather spend hours in traffic than share what is likely their only time alone in the car with other people.
Carpool lanes only serve to remove a viable lane for traffic and restrict it to 5-10% of drivers, much like special lanes in Soviet Moscow for the communist party leaders who were âoemore equalâ than their workers.
If Seattle were to just open all lanes to all traffic, traffic congestion would improve dramatically. It wouldnâ(TM)t completely disappear, the problem is to severe, but it would be a step in the right direction. Many of the roads with carpool lanes around Seattle are just 3-4 lanes in each direction to begin with. Cutting that down to 2-3 lanes causes severe problems and the obvious desparation illustrated by this scheme.
Possibly because the roads are public property, intended for use by everyone - not a consumer good.
Do you think you should be able to pay extra to have the police or fire department respond to your calls faster than they do to someone who cannot pay extra? Please also explain why or why not.
Now obviously, this isn't the same as preferred law enforcement priviledges, but it's still letting certain people pay to break the rules.
The BC government is going broke. Their new idea to raise road revenues in a public-private partnership is to sell a public highway to a private corporation, then allow the private corporation to charge usury tolls at a ridiculous profit. The public gets an initial cash windfall, then loses out horribly.
Also note that Vancouver is a silly place to visit if you want to check out highways: there is no highway into downtown.
Methinks they scored some of the high-quality BC bud, then they thought up this loser of an idea.
1. Scroll down to description of auction
2. Click on picture of sticker
3. Print out onto sticker paper
4. Profit!
--riney
Impressive? WTF? The whole point of the carpool lane is to get people to CARPOOL. As in, make a fucking friend at work and drive in with him so you reduce the emissions and cut down on the smog and make the air a little nicer to breathe for everyone. If you can't make a little effort to carpool, you don't deserve a speedy commute. No matter how much you pay.
So what, now it's not the carpool lane, it's the carpool/rich-lazy-bastard lane? Sickening.
c-hack.com |
What happened to building cities in this country, instead of urban sprawl and suburbs? I mean, when was the last time you saw a city block (a real one, not the suburb style one) built?
Cities with real subway systems and bus lines would alleviate a lot of this problem
Slightly offtopic, and I haven't examined the idea to see how realistic it really is, but...
...etc
;). On the other hand, this type of system assumes that the 'dollar voters' are wise enough, as a group, to not waste money on short-sighted stuff.
:)
Wouldn't it be userful to have an interface that let you choose what you spent your tax money on?
Like this, for local taxes:
- Local road maintenance 2%
- Open space 20%
- Homeless shelters 5%
- New rec center project 30%
See where I'm going with this? It's like Sim City, you choose which parts of the government get how much of your tax money. It would be wonderful for defeating stuff that corrupt politicians tried to waste money on (- Closed-source voting solution 0%
And on a national level...how many would have chosen to better fund the court in the Microsoft antitrust case? The war in Iraq? Funding for alternative power research? *shrug* The results of such a direct vote would be interesting at least...now tell me why it wouldn't work
"eBay is a very fair marketplace"
Any auction with a fixed time limit is inherently unfair... the optimal bidding strategy is not to bid until the very last minute so as not to increase the price. Thank god for uninformed bidders, if it weren't for them I would be broke. Oh, wait, I am.
Traditional auctions work differently than online ones. There's no set time limit and people have to keep bidding or the auction will close and the object awarded to the highest bidder. If people would make an auction site based on the existence or not of bidding activity, with a timeout after a set period of inactivity, perhaps bidding would be encouraged and prices would go higher.
Puhleese.
I still can't believe that people complain about the traffic in Seattle. Having commuted in both NYC and SEA, I can tell you that NC is FAR worse.
Pantiwaste Seattlites think a half hour commute is too long. geez.
"the difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad" -Salvadore Dali
my inflatable girlfriend or my realdoll.com doll.
its so hard to make them look normal in the passanger seat.
i guess i could go for it. though it still means i'll have to invest a small amount into my inflatable sheep...
I like it
There is actually a law of diminishing returns on building and widening roads. There are even cases where building new roads and adding lanes lead to more traffic conjestion. One rule is that more roads simply leads to more cars. I learned the promptly forgot many of the paradoxes that happen in road modeling.
There is now a number of companies that have programs to model traffic patterns, and cities have been able to speed things up by carefully studying their traffic and adding roads in the right places. However, as cities grow, there will always be a point where the gridlock starts occuring...no matter how smart they are about building roads.
Of course, once everyone has a Segway, we will be in paradise.
Before moving to Portland, OR, I lived in LA and marveled at the traffic jams in that place. They tried your strategy, and found out that: if you build it, they will come. I.e., wider roads, more cars. You really must experience LA during rush hour to experience a 6 LANE highway that is at a standstill. Furthermore, "paying taxes" complicates the question - I live downtown to shorten commute times. Why should I have to pay MORE taxes to widen a road, thus basically subsidizing both suburban workers and mega corporation who foolishly refuse to reside where the other is located?
I think, therefore I thought.
Too bad more people haven't heard about this.
That site makes a number of interesting points about the way people drive and how just one person can make a difference in traffic jams.
Not only does this idea gove the ability to drive in the HOV lanes to those that can pay the most for it, but those without any internet access have no chance to bid on one of these stickers. I live in Washington State, and am just disgusted that our politicians would think of these methods to raise funds over reaching some sort of fiscal accountibility. Lawmakers here recently refused a performance audit of state departments, stating that it would be just too expensive to do one.
Oddly enough, the rep that is proposing this bill is from a rather affluent island suburb of Seattle that has these HOV lanes go right through it. Go figure.
The guys at ArsTechnica wrote an awesome article last year, comparing the Honda Insight to the 2003 Honda Civic. I didn't come across it until a few days ago, and I have to admit that it really got me thinking about a hybrid, whenever I decide to purchase a new car. HTH.........
I was reading a book called "Complete Idiot's Guid to Time Management" and there was a section about this kind of stuff. Let me paraphrase.
... in the end more traffic congestion.
There is a "revenge effect" from nature in the sense that some remedy used to fix a problem in fact worsens the problem. Highways were given as an example. Wider highways were meant to improve the traffic conditions, but when roads become wider, people move away from the hustle and bustle, into suburbs, and there is longer drive and more cars, and
S
Deathmatch someone in Quake for it. Prefereably on e1m7 or dm4.
I can see the shill bidding now lol
v er(-1)4 05(1)
Bidding History (Highest bids first)
User ID
Jarrett405(1)
Route67 (0)
tollroadlover(-1)
Jarrett405(1)
tollroadlo
nopotholes(3)
tollroadlover(-1)
Jarrett
solodriver2003(0)
Jarrett405(1)
Bid amount protected until close of auction. Remember that earlier bids of the same amount take precedence.
Loomis
"The television is the retina of the mind's eye" - Videodrome
His first attempt at starting a business was to have computers monitor all traffic activity at stop lights in Seattle, and then they would be able to predict the ideal settings for red, yellow, and green light durations. Guess there were a few bugs in it.
The Big Yuan - tracking mainland China
Perhaps because if I run highly profitable businesses that benefit everyone in the country, and if I give millions or billions of taxes to the government every year, I should deserve a little bit more than a poor man who lives off of the welfare made possible by MY taxes.
Let the drunken bastard at the corner tavern burn to a crisp, see if anyone cares.
People already pay a premium for the use of interstates versus side roads - it is called a toll. Now they will just be paying a higher premium to take an even better road.
And your analogy with law enforcement is really, really weak. We aren't talking about life or death here. We are talking strictly about convenience. Think of it as a luxury tax.
Possibly because the roads are public property, intended for use by everyone - not a consumer good.
I guess you don't like driving on a toll-way either.
RaGe
We're all just noise on the wires..
Here come those suggesting that the HOV payment plans are racist, sexist and discriminatory, because lower income groups do not have equal ability to pay for the stickers.
Tax cuts will be fought over how they effect one's ability to buy stickers. Liberals will argue that Senior Citizens are choosing between HOV stickers and food. Jesse Jackson will find 20 words that rhyme with HOV. Democrats will say that they need to create Liberal freeways, because all the current freeways have gone right wing.
Yep, that's a fucking great idea.
I use the carpool lane by myself without a sticker anyway. Why would someone pay for this?
Dude, seriously? Maybe mountain trolls such as thineself have no troubles driving in the commuter lanes w/o a sticker. But in NJ, IRL I just got into the commuter lane to PASS someone and stayed in it for like a minute too long, and before you know it I was popped by a statie. Hook me up with your magic troll-dust connection and maybe next time it'll be different.
Where I used to live, the volunteer fire department did something like that. People had to pay the fire department either a low yearly fee to be a member, or $200 per truck that responded to their fire if they weren't a member. Plus, members received preference while dispatching, so if you were not a member, and were unlucky enough to have a fire the same time as a member did, you would have to wait until the member's fire was assessed to see how many trucks would be needed before a truck was dispatched to you (if there were any who weren't needed for the member's fire).
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Smooth start to London traffic tax
'No rise soon' in London traffic tax
So instead of freezing the price of the stickers, you freeze demand (we'll sell 500 to the top bidders) and let supply (i.e. rich drivers) fluctuate.
Practice Kind Randomness and Beautiful Acts of Nonsense.
It's not like it isn't already being done every single day. OJ bought his way out of jail. Bill Gates bought his way out of having his company split up. So let a few people drive in the HOV lane. what's the big deal? Jealous?
My journal has hot
Presently in washington... motorcycles already can use the HOV lane without any difficulty. Just buy a motorcycle for your morning commute, or a vehicel that would be equilivent.
I wonder if the state has the right to sell special passes to the HOV lane on MAJOR interstates, roads that do get some federal funding after all.
I'd sooner support a toll road then a paid HOV pass. That would make a hell of alot more sence to get transportation funding.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
We had a situation in Maryland with I-270 where they used state and federal tax revenue to add a lane to the highway. Once it was in place, the powers-that-be decided to make it HOV-only during rush hour periods.
Does anything else regret to see this happening? The original idea for carpool lanes was that a particular good (fast transportation) could be provided for people who are willing to cut down on unnecessary waste when driving to work. I.e., if people would show a little general social concern, then they would benefit.
Of course, the rich prats in their beemers sitting in the sidelines as four poor clerks in their Toyota Corolla when shooting by must have thought "Hey, this sucks! I'm RICH, why do I have to sit here?"
Congestion affects everyone. I hate the thought that I have to sacrifice time from my life and my projects to sit in a traffic jam while some rich SOB goes shooting by. I might not be rich, but my life *to me* is just as valuable as the rich SOB's life is *to him*.
Remember: all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.
Actually, I think this is a great idea if the money from the stickers is used to build appropriate light rail.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Note the key words here: "raising funds" and "interim." This is not the end of the world, concerned citizens.
In California, if you want to drive in the car pool lane it only costs you $271 (that's the fine). I have this theory that there are some people who have just decided that it is worth paying it -- there are plenty of cheaters people in the car pool lanes.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I'm a solo driver
:)-
If I am in a hurry I will speed
If Iou are in my way I will go around you
I will cut you off
I will use the Car Pool lane
Because MY needs come before yours
Someday I may get a ticket, but until then why would I pay to do what I do now for free
yes I am an ass on the road
Ave Molech Setting
"100 people bid at least $1,000 for these 100 stickers. There's no way the market would bear a price like that."
It's an AUCTION. By DEFINITION, the price is exactly what the (online auction) market will bear.
paintball
If the blow up doll costs $25, then the total sticker price will probably be slightly higher. (How much is it worth for you not to have to walk in somewhere and buy a pr0n doll?)
--PhinMak
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
...and all I got was Bullemia!
You're full of it!
HURRRRAGH!!
Yeah that is a great idea. I live near Manhattan and I hate the time it takes to go over the bridge or through the tunnel. To reduce traffic I think they should just pave over the Hudson, Hoboken, and Jersey City. If they have to knock down some houses then all the better.
I am guessing you live in Kansas or some other corn populated area.
As a taxpayer in the state of Washington, I'm not sure putting this up on eBay and paying eBay commisssions is the best use of our taxpayer dollar. Presumably there will be a large enough volume of sales and it's not like you need the discoverability that eBay offers you since you're targeting a very small geographic area and have the official government communication channels and all the news media to do your advertising for you. The government would be much better off running their own auction site for this.
Is anyone aware of any open source auction software they can start with?
Mmmm.. Donuts
... into the future where only rich l337 people have their own private tree-lined, traffic-free highways to/from home. The rest of the people idle in a virtual parking lot, looking at the weeds and garbage (thanks VTA and CalTrans!!!). Just get rid of these stupid carpool lanes.. because you know that getting Americans to use mass-transportation is alot like trying to get us to give up McDonalds (Look how fat we americans are!). The gov't big ideas either give unfair advantages to a small, minority of rich people and screw us all (pay to play); make the problems worse (carpool lanes); or does nothing at all but waste money (VTA Lightrail (san jose), VTA Paratrans). Try something like getting rid of all highways and replace them w/ speedy trains like in japan. Japan is so small relatively, that they couldn't build anymore highways/parking structures/airports etc. so it's faster to ride a train/shuttle/lightrail for most commuting. American towns/cities are wasting money on a polutting, inefficient, uneconomical means of transportation. It would be alot cheaper to have electric trains ran from hydrogen generated by the from fusion reactor. Note that hydrogen is not a primary power source, but a fuel and a good energy transmission carrier medium (for both the fusion reactor and fuel-cells, nuclear vs. chemical). We gotta invest gigabucks in making fusion a reality ASAP!!! These goddamn Bush/Cheney oilmongers want to keep us sucking on the petroleum teats perpetually.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
The idea is to use eBay to find just how much a speedy commute is worth to drivers
Everyman Translation: How much MORE can they get from you to pay for all the things they _should_ have payed for already?
As one who drives Seattle's roads every day, I can tell you this is par for the course for our state government. They can't decide how to solve the problem (because they're too busy siphoning off transportation money to fill someone's pockets), so they look for hair-brained "solutions" to make it look like they're doing their job. There is no interest in emissions -- first and foremost, the carpool lanes here are designed to reduce congestion by reducing the number of cars on the road. By selling exemptions, they are reducing the incentive to get a modest increase in tax dollars, at a time when everyone is screaming about the budget deficit. (Mostly it's the politicians screaming, saying "how can we keep spending up when income is going down? How? How?") By using eBay, they're looking for a way to set the price, but it doesn't really matter. They could sell enough stickers to clog the carpool lane at $1000 a pop, and still make no dent at all in what it costs to build a single offramp (about $300 million dollars in Seattle!)
Maybe they have some mathematicians on board, and are going to analyze the data according to Zipf's law and try to fill in the gaps on a Zipf distribution. In that case the few sparse data points they are going to get would be a little help, though it sounds like an iffy exercise.
One difficult unknown is how much of their potential audience in the ultimate bidding price range has been reached? There are several filters -- awareness of the opportunity, interest, probably also need some awareness of Ebay, and having a personal assistant who can do this stuff would also help, for those busy people with ability to pay high dollars. Again sounds iffy, but maybe they have a good plan.
The point here is to use a free marketplace -- Ebay -- to determine the value of access to the carpool lane to single drivers. This is valuable information, cheaply derived, which can be used to direct transportation policy in the future. Seems like a good idea to me.
This is a simple case of desperate politicians trying to make up for sudden budget shortfalls, which are a consequence of increased spending during recent times-of-plenty. Politicians try to reduce spending last because it will inevitably hurt someone in some way; they focus first on means of increasing revenue that is provided by existing resources (taxes, tolls, etc.).
So long, michael. Don't let the door hit you...
Sorry, but here's a poorly worded personal experience with the outcome of where this is headed.
This has already been done in California. Recently, on a stretch of highway I had never travelled, and a Saturday, I was caught in severe bumber-to-bumper traffic (2-3mph)across 5-6 lanes. I noticed The carpool lanes(2) had been converted into express sticker lanes. i.e. having xx people in a car didn't qualify you. It required a monthly pass, and I estimated the cost around $7 a day. While the cars in the express lames zipped by at around 50mph this did absolutely nothing to alleviate the 6 lanes at a standstill. Just brought in revenue to the state.
Now 2 extra lanes that might have had an impact or a decent high speed commuter system.
My solution was to pull out a map, and terrorize side streets at 60mph. I prefer giving my money to a good radar detector than the state's non-solution.
I wonder how hard those stickers would be to counterfeit.
Any auction with a fixed time limit is inherently unfair... the optimal bidding strategy is not to bid until the very last minute so as not to increase the price.
You obviously do not understand eBay's proxy bidding system.
I believe that is the correct term for picking up complete strangers on the road. Wonder if they also abide by the Hitchhicker's book (read: Carlin in J&SBSB ;))
"Time is long and life is short, so begin to live while you still can." -EV
This is going to favor those who can afford it. The poor who can't afford the sticker (or even a computer to purchase it online) are going to continue to suffer while the rich(-er) can buy their way out of traffic.
Nosce te Ipsum
i agree with mr. greene that the most polluting passenger vehicles are likely to remain on the road this way.
however, i should point out that we don't know where these ebay auctions will cap out. certainly, the first few will get pretty out there, but i suspect that as they continue to auction them off, the prices are likely to flatten out a bit more.
i mean, the first "treat me as HOV" sticker will likely wind up being displayed on bill gates's car, but 52nd one? the 187th one? i'm sure that these will not sell for as much as the first one.
i'm very curious to see over what block of time they choose to do this.
ed
What about selling or renting some HOT lanes to companies that "really need" them?
Their employees would receive just a little bit less salary but would have a faster ride to work/back home (== more spare time).
The "public" should not complain - hey, better slow lanes than no lanes!
If you have the money, just buy what you wanna buy, even if it belongs to the public...
Did the fire dept. get sued into oblivion yet?
Regardless of the technicalities of using eBay to price these permits, from a pure economics point of view this is very interesting indeed.
The point is that as things stand, there's an economic cost to driving on a crowded highway, you just don't see it as clearly - cars move more slowly, with more hold-ups, taking greater time and using up more fuel. So everyone currently using a congested highway is already paying a price for it being crowded, although the cost is relatively hidden.
What this idea does is make a price explicit - in return for a certain cash charge you can avoid the "crowded costs" and travel faster, using less gas, and so on. Using an auction means that those people actually doing the driving can set the price they are willing to pay in order to avoid the (hidden) costs of congestion. (Yes it does favour those with more money, but then hey, so does society as a whole, for good or bad.)
Now, there is a seperate question about whether holding an auction on eBay is the right way to do it, but the theory is a good one.
The best way to reduce congestion, IMHO, would be VERY strict enforcement of a "Let people merge" law. Cars traveling on a highway should NEVER be less than 80ft behind others, and there should be signs 'suggesting' that people 'get to the left' when a major merge is coming on, and telling them to get into the right WELL BEFORE their exit.
We also need to start paying the cops partly on commission, I see too many cops sitting on their asses while I'm being tailgated by homicidal soccer-moms. Strict driver-courtesey laws, video-survelliance of roads, and stricter enforcement would solve congestion better than selling HOV tickets to the aforementioned soccer-moms.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Besides, HOV is a miserable failure. We might as well get those thousands of puffing, fuming vehicles off the road fifteen minutes sooner -- they're not using HOV. They've had the chance. They won't use it. HOVers are either carpoolers or cheaters, and from what I see, the cheaters outnumber the legitimate users.
I don't think you really understand the concept of taxes here - the amount you contribute in no way should influence the treatment you receive from the government. Until Government decides to impugn the inalienable equality of all men under the law (and win the revolution which would hopefully follow such a declaration) the money you give or take from the government can not influence the weight of your voice.
There are people who hire others to sit in their cars so they can drive in the HOV lanes.
I have no idea how carpool lanes work but how would a fella get caught .. So if I don't have a second person in the car is this done by camera , eagle eye citizens, or pulled over by cops??.
..and what ?? now all the camera's , citizens, cops will just forget about you . ..
.. what do I know
Now if you bid on one of these and you win, you place the sticker on your car
Seems as though if I were to get pulled over for driving in the lane , this would slow my commute time
But then again
Never mind that it is my taxes that paid for the dam lane that I can't use in the first place.
Don't even get me started about the Mercer Island carpool lane that residents of Mercer island get to use exclusively. For those who don't know Mercer Island is one of the high-end housing area's
I am glad that instead of building more dam lanes (which would fix the problem) we poor folk just get to suffer while they raise taxes (which they just did again for roads) and not do a thing. The Washington government and most of its citizens have no clue.
Let's talk about oversimplified supply and demand like you learned in high school.
When a consumer is willing to pay more than a producer is selling for, the consumer has an obvious benefit. The sum of these benefits (consumer valuation - price) over all the consumers is the consumer surplus. There is a similar concept for producer surplus that takes longer to explain.
Auctions (in theory) eliminate the consumer surplus. That's why people complain about them: they like their share of the consumer surplus.
That's also why companies don't like haggling or competitive bidding: it removes produce surplus. (Car dealerships in America are something of an exception. They're a well-refined system of manipulation to make you think you're getting a better deal by haggling even though they're still making sizeable profits from you.)
IANA economist
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
Does existing state law allow them to sell this from any other venue than the DMV? And, does ebay really meet the legal definition of being publically accessible? Does any Internet web site? And if so, why ebay? Why not make it available from some already existing state government web site?
The real question here being which are they more interested in doing: creating the special-use lane, or gouging people over it?
It sounds a lot to me like they're just trying to gauge how much more they can TAX US to give us more lanes on our freeways or increase bus service or whatever. If they find out how much money people are willing to shell out, they can apply those statistics to ANYTHING THEY WANT. I speak as a Washington state resident, and I know for a fact that the city government in Seattle is filled with corruption; people who don't listen to the public, who will go against what the public desires, and will of course raise our taxes at every fucking opportunity. The more we prove that we've got money to spare for something like this, the more they're going to take advantage of us. I don't like it.
Reinvent the wheel only at either a lower cost, greater effectiveness, or your own personal enrichment and satisfaction.
In Ukraine they had a system years back where many of the roads had 'government lanes'. The idea was that these lanes were reserved for emergency vehicles and vehicles transporting government officials on 'important business', and not for 'the public'.
The 'government vehicles' had a blue spinning light that they could put on the dashboard and turn on (just like the police ones, but blue). It wasn't long before people figured out that you could pick a light just like the official one up at their equivalent of a Radio Shack, and be able to use the lane yourself.
So what's going to prevent sticker forgeries? Is a cop going to be able to spot a 3-inch fake while it's moving?
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Auctioning off a rare resource like this is much better than forcing everyone to pay more taxes. It is a progressive tax in that it is a service that only the wealthiest will buy. Let's hope the stickers become a status symbol...then you would be able to charge more. It is essentially a tax on consumption...not production.
There is a lot to be said for moving away from high taxes on production to government fees.
I agree that there is a point where the government auctioning off services would turn into a negative thing...for example auctioning off police protection. But I don't see an absolute where auctioning services is always wrong.
The state has a rare resource. The probably want to move a small number of vehicles to the passenger lane. Here the auction makes sense.
Of course, no one mentioned the obvious. If you want to drive in the passenger lane without bidding on the ticket...well, just get one of those inflatable dolls...
This sort of reminds me of the book Snow Crash. In Snow Crash, the highways have all been privatized. You can purchase access to the highways from the companies that control them, and each company specializes in a different kind of highway. I can't remember the details, but I think one company specialized in nice, smooth, well-maintained highways, but didn't have many off-ramps. Another company had off-ramps all over the place, but their road surfaces were in poor shape.
that I could forsee with this, is, if their carpool lanes are like the DC carpool lanes, there is no enforcement (well very little) to keep people from abusing the HOV lanes to make it worthwhile.
Unless eBay can sort out the massive amount of fraud that's going on right now then I'm never using it again anyway.
There seems to be an absolutely massive problem at the moment with people hijacking eBay accounts and their associated e-mail addresses and eBay don't seem to want to anything about it.
Anyone who uses eBay and has a weak password on their e-mail account (or an obvious answer to their secret question) is vulnerable to having their eBay account taken over (complete with e-mail account and credit card details) and used by a Western Union scammer.
What's a Western Union scammer? Someone who asks to be paid though Western Union (who offer zero buyer protection or tracking of funds) and then simply never ships the item. Western Union seem happy to dish out funds to anyone so the fact that the account is in the wrong name doesn't seem to cause any problems.
eBay should make it so it's impossible to take over an account by changing the password/and/or e-mail address unless you know lots of personal information (D.O.B., mothers maiden name, etc etc).
I'm finding it very difficult to get eBay to reply or for any news agencies to give this any publicity.
Over the weekend I saw about 30 Sony plasma screens advertised (usually "pre-approved bidders only") - almost none of which were legitiate. When you contact the seller - you get a similar message every time - "The item will be shipped from and I would like you to pay though Western Union". They remove them eventually if you complain, but the point is, the fact that more are appearing means that they're still finding it very easy to hijack your account.
Nick...
If we've already decided it's kosher to sell private access to publicly-funded government services, why stop with HOV lanes? There's a lot we could sell to the highest bidder: the right to enroll in a certain school, garbage pickup at the date and time of your choosing, just-around-the-corner police and fire protection, head-of-line privilege at the emergency room, access to your elected representative ...
Oh, wait, we've already implemented that last one.
Usually, to use the carpool lane, you'd need to have more than 1 person in the car. Obviously, if you have enough money this isn't really that much of a restriction. But having the State sell stickers so you won't need an additional passenger is going to ruin a perfectly good working sector of the economy! "Grandpa," they'll ask you "hiring a bum to get to work faster, how did that work?". Remember, the homeless often have very few other means to earn money, whilst being a productive asset to the economy. Some are psychotic, most aren't educated, but most can sit still, and with the airco on full blast and a happy pine-scented air-freshner hanging from the rear-view mirror, you won't even notice the stench most of the time!
So, please, find a place in your heart for the homeless. Keep carpooling alive!
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
A while back I ran across what seems the logical conclusion of this line of reasoning. Lets just bid for the green light at each intersection... in real time. Isn't that the market driven solution to traffic? Why should we allow anything but market forces determine who gets the green as we approach an intersection?
You obviously do not understand eBay's proxy bidding system.
That's a mechanism, not behavior. There's lots of people on eBay who only bid at the last minute; if this wasn't such a popular approach, places like eSnipe wouldn't be around doing good business.
Why do people snipe bid? My wife claims that one of the reasons is that you don't want lots of early bids to get an item marked as "hot", therefore attracting more attention to the item's auction. There are also those who believe that sniping the auction may wind up giving you the item at a better price, as you stand a good chance of getting in a high bid as the auction closes before someone else can counter bid (of course, this strategy has its own risks).
Bottom line though is that while the proxy system might make things more "fair", people try to game the system and each other in various way.
...and that is demand-based pricing.
:)
Car lanes represent a fixed capital cost.
The price at any time period should reflect demand.
When demand is high, prices should rise.
When demand is low, prices should fall.
This can easily be managed by software.
It does not require an Ebay solution.
Instead, look at what EasyGroup do...
With some tuning it could be the perfect
solution for pricing any products with
fixed capital costs. There are probably
excellent mathematical models that can
calculate the optimal pricing to arrive
at a 99% utilization rate.
This would make a valuable OSS project.
Now, all that remains to be found is a
client willing to pay for such work.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Excellent point.
The point is that we're moving away from a world where the state could come close to guarenteeing *SOME* basic things - water, safe usable streets, fire protection, nature in public, reliable electricity, basic healthcare, etc.
We're moving towards a world where everything is uncertain - the water might be poisoned, even the healthcare you pay for might be loosey, the insurance you have could double at any point, you might suddenly be forced to pay for your commute, etc. This is cast as an improvement but it's a step backwards. When California couldn't guarentee that the lights would be, it's hard to argue this helped the entrepreneurial spirit of the state.
Why can't you fuck-muffins learn how to take a fucking bus.
As a student who takes the bus to college I am wholly fucking pissed off that everyone drives everywhere instead of taking the bus.
If people actually used the buses they wouldn't be so half-assed and actually have good routes.
Reasons for taking busses
1. Better on the environment
2. If you pay for parking its cheaper to bus it
3. If there are more buses less cars then more people can places faster [e.g. divide area of car by amount of people, compare that to area of bus vs. people]
4. I wouldn't have to spend 40 minutes going to and fro when it only takes 10 mins by car.
So I say to all you ass-raping monkey shit eaters who drive in the car pool lane because you have to move your land yacht faster, go fuck yourself!
Take a fucking bus!
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
The reason that the HOV lanes appear not to be working, i.e. traffic is getting worse, is that people are moving further and further out from where they work, and then expecting 'government' to magically come up with money and other resources to provide them with the infrastructure they deserve. Of course some of these people moved out of the city specifically so they would not have to pay for such services. In many places extraordinary amounts of money is being spent providing services for people who think they shouldn't have to pay for them.
In any cases, the main concern should be the present users of the lanes. If the HOV lanes become too crowded, then some drivers may stop using them and we end up with the original pollution and fuel consumption problems.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
So, what you're suggesting is to allow /require the gov't agency responsible for bad traffic to handle the traffic to the HOV auction site?
/.'d.
Hate to see that traffic jam, especially after it gets
I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
Possibly because the roads are public property
Exactly, and the money is going to the public.
it's still letting certain people pay to break the rules.
You mean just like our speeding ticket system? If a MS exec making $200K+/year get's caught speeding the $180 ticket was more than worth the experience for him. However, if a UW college student get's the same ticket, it's going to cost him $300+ to pay it off because it'll go on a high-interest credit card.
So, unless you advocate a progressive tax and progressive fine system (as I do), than you can't complain about the government ebaying the HOV lanes.
There is no longer anything that can be done with computers that is nontrivial and clearly legal. -- Paul Phillips
I would rather invest into :)
one or two of these and put them in my car
You can't handle the truth.
I remember some of my own carpool experiences as a young man (those of us old enough remember the Energy Crisis and the Oil Embargo... carpooling was popular for a while there).
Ever ride with any of these people?
The Pen clicker?
The Knuckle cracker?
The Coffee Slurper?
Riding with your own family was bad enough (those of you with a brother or sister know what I'm talking about here)... how well are people going to tolerate complete strangers? Think of the bloodshed over radio stations alone.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
A toll road is a fixed cost. What we are talking about here, is not. Its basically auctioning the "priveledge" to drive in the carpool lane. I wouldn't particularly care to drive in Seattle's carpool lanes unless seattle made their carpool lanes look like the ones in LA, where the carpool lane is either completely isolated from the freeway, or there are double yellow lines, to prevent people from pulling into the carpool lane whenever they feel like it. (granted, I know I-5 in seattle has an "express-way" such as this, mostly talking about 520 :)
I wish most that seattle had Carpool-Interchanges. In LA, no matter what carpool lane you are in, you can pretty much get on any freeway, without having to cross 10 lanes of traffic. There are also marked carpool entrances/exits for each exit, so you don't have people frantically crossing 10 lanes of traffic, because they don't know when to leave the carpool lane.
Besides, this is about West Coast roads, where toll roads are almost unheard of... The only toll road I know off hand, is the converted toll lane on the 91 freeway in LA. I think there is another one off the 405 near Costa Mesa. But I don't know of any other toll roads on the west coast, except for a handfull of bridges.
It's way overdue that we get some market economy on the roads. The current Soviet style system and it's Soviet style lines and shortages has got to go.
Producing goods by tax money and handing it out for free to everyone doesn't work any better for roads than for any other good or service. I guess the reason people don't see that is that "we've always done roads this way".
Yes, I'm shamelessly pushing my political agenda here. Is that so wrong?
Because Widening Roads Worsens Traffic Congestion.
Seriously.
Read here and here and here
and see some primary sources here and here and these:
Phil Goodwin, "Empirical Evidence on Induced Traffic," Transportation, Vol. 23, No. 1, Feb. 1996, pp. 35-54. This is in a special issue of the journal Transportation devoted to induced travel. It has several very good articles.
Robert Noland, Relationships Between Highway Capacity and Induced Vehicle Travel, Transportation Research Board Annual Meeting Paper 991069 (www.epa.gov/tp/trb-rn.pdf), January 1999.
Harry Cohen, "Review of Empirical Studies of Induced Traffic," Expanding Metropolitan Highways: Implications for Air Quality and Energy Use, Transportation Research Board, Special Report #345, National Academy Press (Washington DC), 1995, Appendix B, pp. 295-309.
Cairns, Hass-Klau and Goodwin, Traffic Impacts of Highway Capacity Reductions: Assessment of the Evidence, London Transport Planning (London; www.ucl.ac.uk/transport-studies/sc1.htm), 1998.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I don't live in an area with enough traffic problems to warrent car pool only lanes, and even if I did, I would just go buy a few crash test dummies and wigs and have myself a silent entourage of "coworkers"....
What I would bid on, is a permit that allows me to ignore speed limits in fair weather, while driving on the expressway. I would pay 2-300 dollars for such a permit, as I could easily make up for it in the number of speeding tickets I would avoid, as I blasted past speed traps immune to prosecution. And imagine the time I would save if I didn't have to straggle behind the old lady going 60 in a 65 mph zone just because she has a cop in front of her, and passing her at any pace will induce a 30 dollar speeding ticket, and possable higher insurance rates.
Damn this country and their speed laws, when I was in germany, the speed bug bit me, and its never leaving. I like to get where I am going, screw the rest of you!
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
Obviously someone didn't read his Supreme Court rulings this morning.
...when I'd be perfectly happy to pay for a police escort (blue lights, sirens, etc.) to push the peons out of the way on GA 400.
Bring it on, I say.
668: Neighbour of the Beast
Houston planned it's HOV's this way and (I hope) learned the hard way why this sucks.
Once you have a highway, the land around the highway goes up in value if it is commercial. The result is you have the standard strips of shops and gas stations spring up along side. This pushes Residential out (no one wantes to live next to a highway anyway).
The result is that when the HOV is converted into rail stops, the stops are now so far from the actual residential neighborhoods that people have to at least drive to the stops. There is no place to park at a stop in the middle of the highway surrounded by strip malls, and the commercial value is so high that the cost of buying out the land by the govt for parking is impassibly huge.
The best solution IMHO is to define population centers and have a dedicated elivated (or subway) rail system independent of the current ground system. Time lost to excessive stopping can be made up for with straight(er) line paths to destinations.
- Sig
It's not like it isn't already being done every single day. OJ bought his way out of jail. Bill Gates bought his way out of having his company split up.
I'm not so sure that I disagree with you, but I certainly disagree with how you got there. Your argument is another variation of the "two wrongs make a right" argument, and it's a non sequitur on top of that. Simply because some wealthy person did something wrong does not excuse that wrong; wrong is still wrong.
And the connection between hiring expensive lawyers and paying to use a fast lane is at best a torturous one.
If the gov't really wanted to try something new, they'd auction off the entire extra bit of road and let the new owners charge what the market could bear. The tax payers would get the $$ back for the road and the local taxing authority could collect nice franchise fees. The new owner would have strong incentives not to oversell, because customers could easily switch to the "free" road the next trip in.
And no griping about how "rich" people benefit, class envy does nothing but make you bitter.
Um... they are most certainly not the same, albeit related ideas.
Read the link I provided. Hitchhikers choose their starting point, but have an infinite set of ending points. There is no structure.
Sluggers, on the other hand, are dealing with a finite (less than 25 I think) possible destinations -- and these destinations are precise. Furthermore, the method of finding a ride is organized, and the rules and ettiquite of riding in another car (or giving a ride) are very clear.
Think of slugging as hitchhiking with grey poupon. Or, just read the link.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I bet people would pay to drive in a lane with higher speed limits. Even if it required obtaining a more rigorous drivers license, car certification, etc. After all, it sucks getting trapped behind some self-righteous bastard driving the speed limit in the fast lane!
And explain something else to me.. why do people get all upset over SUVs? Why not go after older cars instead? I bet most modern SUVs produce less emissions than your average 20-30yr old car.
Learn about market forces and capitalism!
I don't think most people would bother with bidding on eBay, so the only people who will use this will be a small group who can be bothered to invest the time and money.
Because of this, all statistics gained will be flawed.
MoJo
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
An auction on Ebay to bid on who get's to work from home?
It's a lesson in economics, explains Mercer Island's state Rep. Fred Jarrett, No. 2 Republican on the House transportation committee.
Auctioning off a small number of stickers on eBay will tell them nothing about what most people are willing to pay for these kinds of stickers. He can look up in the literature why. Jarrett should have received his economics education in college, not "on the job", playing around with billions of dollars of taxpayer money.
Without a plan for new transportation funding, the default is ``apocalypse,'' Jarrett said. ``The system collapses and we have to rebuild it from scratch.''
That's exactly what they should do: housing density in Seattle and surroundings is high enough that it needs a dense system of public transportation. If they want to lead the nation in new ideas, personal rapid transit deployed along existing highways would combine the convenience of the automobile with the speed of unobstructed highways and it would not require any new land.
Building more highways just won't work, and letting people buy preferential access to existing highways does absolutely nothing to improve transportation.
What "mercer island exclusive" lanes? The carpool lanes go all the way through mercer island, and can be used by people crossing over lake washington as well as to/from mercer island. However they do "switch direction" to match the peak travel direction... Did I miss something?
To find out, put it on eBay -- even if ``it'' is a 3 year old Poodle named "Trixie". That's the theory behind one totally pissed-off Washington resident's pitch to hold eBay auctions for state legislators to bid on the safe return of thier canine friends. It's a lesson in economics, explains Peter Q Public, a motorcycle commuter fed up with crap from the House transportation committee. The state will someday have to find a real solution to the gridlock on the freeways. The most likely targets are state legislators who happen to be pet owners. Auctions on eBay would be an easy first step toward fair legislation, Peter thinks. And eBay is a good way to find out how much that dog is worth, Peter said, for lawmakers, . ``We can allow the market to establish what the value is,'' Peter told the state Transportation Commission last week. ``It's the kind of idea we'd like to put up for the next Legislature. ``If we use the eBay bid process,'' Peter said later, ``we'll find legislators are willing to pay a significant amount of money to get their pets back alive and unharmed.'' The lawmakers themselves would set the ``significant amount,'' instead of the commuters picking a price. ``I hope the eBay auction calculates the price low enough, and there aren't any $10,000,000 bids,'' said Ed Barnes, a corrupt state transportation commissioner from Vancouver, Wash. Peter answered: ``If the (winning) bid is over $10,000,000 we've learned an awful lot about what value our pets have.'' Peter envisions night time abduction of random numbers of pets per month. The first month's winning bids would likely be low until the lawmakers catch on, Peter said. Auctions on eBay are just one of several ideas before an angry mob willing to stop at nothing to find clever ways of getting the state to stop bullshitting everyone and fix the transportation problems.
It's called a Tollway. HOV is supposed to reduce congestion and toll roads generate revenue on exclusive routes.
Sounds like Wash state needs to choose their priority - revenue versus clean air. I wonder what they'll pick?
This can turn ugly quick... why stop at finding out how much it is worth for a single driver to drive in the HOV lane. How about find out how much people are willing to pay just to drive on the highways? Don't buy the right sticker... too bad, you only get to use surface streets... oh, but you still need another sticker for even that, here's the cost...
Income Tax, Sales Tax, Luxury Tax, Ad Velorum tax (how dare you be able to afford a car, we must not be taxing you enough), property tax, registration, license fees, tag fees, driving laws created for revenue (not safety).... Sure, why not pull another way out of the hat to suck the American wallet dry.
i used to live in new jersey, HOV lanes were turned into normal lanes after a few years because only less than 2% of drivers were using them (according to the star ledger) but enforcement was high. After the lanes were opened up, traffic was much reduced.
Now i live in metro DC, and it is the opposite, in many cases the hov lanes are slower than the normal lanes, and there is very little to no enforcement. HOV cheaters are rampant on both the HOV lane and the HOV only sections of the road. The worst thing is that local politicians are proposing HOT (high occupancy tolls as indicated by the article) to allow single passenger vehicles in the allready congested lanes!
I believe the best solution is to build a carpool lane simultaniously with an additonal lane or to have a carpool lane inbetween the outter lanes which heads into the city HOV in the morning and out at night (we have this on 395 in virginia), this cuts down on cheating and provides an easier way of enforcement, and doesnt cause the problem of HOV people trying to get all the way over to a right lane exit from the left lane.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Heh. I was in a flippant mood when I wrote that... :) The post was reductio ad absurdum as was my other post in the parent thread.
That said, I don't think it's evil or even a bad idea to cater to the rich as matter of general principles and I don't think that this is entirely a bad idea to begin with, other than the fact that if they do it wrong, it will defeat the purpose of the HOV lane.
Furthermore, my state doesn't have such lanes, and it's inconceivable that it could *ever* have such lanes, particularly not in the Detroit area. It's a cultural thing, you'd have to be a Detroiter to understand completely why, but it boils down the fact that Detroiters LOVE their cars, so much so that what scarcely exists of a mass transit system is barely used at all.
My journal has hot
I have a hard time understanding how the Washington Legislature think they can allow single riders when AZ was just threatened by the Feds to have their highway funding pulled for allowing Alternative Fuel vehicles to use their HOV lanes.
The following article was posted in the Arizona Republic back in Jan '03:
Bifuel vehicles seen as illegally hogging HOV lanes in Phoenix.
Source: Arizona Republic [Jan 28, 2003]
As you crawl along at 5 mph in rush-hour traffic, a few drivers zip by in the car-pool lane -
despite having no passengers
You know why: They have the "clean air" license plate, blue with puffy white clouds, identifying vehicles that don't spew out polluting fumes. Under federal law, states may allow alternative-fuel vehicles to use the HOV lane. The idea is that you can cut air pollution, one of the goals of HOV lanes, with clean-running cars, as well as by reducing the number of vehicles on the road. What you don't know is that most of those vehicles shouldn't be there.
Yup.
The state wrongly gives HOV access to cars and trucks that can run on either propane gas or gasoline. (Can we guess which fuel they're really using?) A quick trip to the Federal Highway Administration Web site shows that only vehicles that run exclusively on electricity or natural gas can use the HOV lanes.
Talk about adding insult to injury.
The injury: Arizona shelled out millions of dollars in rebates for buying vehicles equipped or retrofitted to run on natural gas. The deal, which gave buyers as much as 50 percent of the sticker price, including extras, was on the way to bankrupting the state before the plug was pulled.
The insult: Even the most conscientious alt-fuel owners have trouble refilling their natural gas because there's such a tiny network of suppliers.
And thanks to the rebate, people could afford huge trucks and oversized SUVs. So drivers are tooling along in the HOV lane while spewing out even more gunk than the average car. Arizona goofed. To follow federal rules, the state should yank those license plates. To play fair, we should at least require the owners to prove that they're using alternative fuel virtually all the time.
Meanwhile, the feds are denying HOV access to the new breed of hybrid electric cars, like the Prius, that produce so little pollution that they're called "super-ultra low-emissions vehicles." The hybrids don't meet federal requirements because they use electricity only part of the time.
Nine-tenths of a loaf is better than none, especially when fuel access and battery life are discouraging the sales of vehicles that don't run on gasoline.
Federal regulations must be expanded to include the lowest-polluting hybrid vehicles.
It would also make sense to include alt-fuel vehicles - if the owners can prove they're actually using alt fuel.
Otherwise, pull those plates.
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Stopping distance of a skidding car is directly proportional to the square of the speed of the car!
A car traveling 10 mi/hr may require 4 feet to skid to an abrupt halt; but a car going twice as fast -- 20 mi/hr -- will require four times the distance , a total of 16 feet to skid to a stop. A doubling of the speed results in a quadrupling of the stopping distance; a tripling of the speed would increase the stopping distance by a factor of nine; and a quadrupling of the speed would increase the stopping distance by a factor of 16.
The stopping distance is proportional to the square of the speed of the vehicle! If you're doing 90 in a 60 lane, you'd better have a following distance that's reasonable. Since all people who speed are impatient, that's unlikely.
Speeding merely endagers everyone's lives because you reduce the window of reaction time you have as well as increasing the distance you need to stop. Saying speed isn't dangerous is a joke -- maybe in Sega GT or Gran Turismo!
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Heh. I was in a flippant mood when I wrote that...
On Slashdot? GASP!
http://use.perl.org
a 3x3" sticker could easily be photocopied even if you DO change the color every month. Try spotting a fake at 70MPH when the fake is almost perfect to begin with.
Even if a sticker was $100/mo (or more), make 8-10 photocopies for your "friends" and it's suddenly only $10/month.
MadCow.
I used to have a sig, but I set it free and it never came back.
The traffic in the greater Seattle area is atrocious, and the State Government has been working hard to find a way to solve the issue.
That is not true at all. The only thing that one might be able to say they work hard on is finding ways to convince everyone to ride the bus. Nevermind that almost every bus I see is near empty and that a single city bus pollutes more than 15 SUVs.
In the interim, they may use eBay as an innovative solution for estimating demand and raising funds.
This will never happen.
How does a sticker help you, anyways? You get pulled over for driving in the HOV lane, the cop sees your sticker, and says "ok, sorry, go on your way". Very convenient!
If you're not familiar with Seattle-area HOV lanes... the sticker will also not be all too helpful because all HOV lanes in the area are incomplete runs. For example, the HOV lane on southbound I-5 ends at Northgate, long before you even reach downtown Seattle. Same thing on I-405, same thing on northbound I-5 in Everett. Same thing on 520. So the sticker would allow you to pass a short run of cars before becoming part of the lane-merge bottleneck problem which is what is really slowing everyone down.
No more buses, no HOV lanes. Just more lanes. Thank you.
They can mess around with carpools, whatever... some day people are going to realize that mass transit is really the only viable long-term solution. And I don't mean busses, I mean subways/rail/monorail, something that runs every 10 minutes and doesn't get bogged down in traffic with all the other vehicles.
But people don't realize that until all the companies have left because congestion was too bad, and then there isn't any funding, so... rinse and repeat.
As a resident of the Seattle metro area, I can say that officials around here are notoriously short-sighted, but I think that could also be said of most American government and business -- especially when it comes to our beloved auto-mobiles.
"only won by 3% [wa.gov], and was built anyway, unchanged"
Ummm, yeah, about that...
Uh, no, it should NOT require a vote with a greater outcome than 53-47.
At what point whould you set the acceptable public policy margin to be then? 60-40? 80-20? 99-1?
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
If you apply Homer's logic you can drive legally in any car pool lane.
Marge: Do you ever drink alone?
Homer: Does the Lord count as a person?
Everything from inflatable people to mannequins were used just to get in that left (yes the left!) carpool lane, reffered to years ago when they were in use as "Diamond Lanes". All it did was force more cars into already-jammed right-most lanes, and when traffic was really bad that diamond lane jammed up like all the others. It was un-enforcable, impractical, and outright dangerously lethal in many cases.
To make people scramble and pay(!) to use a free road as if its going to save time or something, these people either a) havent thought this out thoroughly, or b) just dont have as bad of traffic as they think they do.
Even our NJ Turnpike has a seperate "express" lane thats free, and that backs up. Minimum speed is about 85mph on those. Toll roads are worse, because when you have this much traffic, the tolls are jammed, the express lanes are jammed, EZ-Pass lanes are jammed, there is just no where for the cars to go so why try to sell them that? :(
If you follow this to it's logical conclusion, we can just set up different roadway systems. One for carpoolers/rich people and one for Everyone Else.
It's great! Those important people with the $$$ can now get to work faster (important people have much more important jobs, obviously).
Which, BTW, is perfectly in line with the whole American ideal of the Golden Rule. "Those with the Gold make the rules."
But why stop there? Why not have special lines at restaurants where people with stickers could skip everyone else and be first in line? And hospitals! Why risk a valuable person's life? Just give them a sticker and put them first in line.
And of course the State will just rake in the extra cash.
Just to get back on topic, the carpool lanes will undoubtably get more crowded now. The solution is easy... make ANOTHER set of roads, but only allow vehicles with > 8 people on them (i.e. only buses and big-assed SUVs), but of course there will be another sticker that can be sold, which will undoubtably go for a higher price.
The possibilities are endless! Can't wait.
You obviously do not understand eBay's proxy bidding system.
Speaking as someone who both buys and sells, the poster completely understands the system. But what is left out is that if there is more than one "sniper", the one with the highest total bid wins. So you still had better put in a rationally valued bid.
What the sniping strategy does is prevent the nibblers from slowly raising your price, because there is no cost for bidding as long as you aren't the high bidder. For any particular item, it doesn't warn competitors of interest, but with a commodity (such as this), you can be fairly certain that the losers will probably be bidding at least that amount for the next available item.
Every bidding system can be analyzed as a game system, and every system has both its advantages and flaws. Usually the people who criticize the ebay style system are the ones who don't like the "sniping" because they haven't or are unwilling or are unable to figure out the proper gaming strategy. They suggest another system they tout as being better, which of course is one the with which they are most familiar, or which they believe would confer upon themselves an advantage. But they will probably still lose out, because they have loser attitute.
Before Nashville, Tennessee became Metropolitan Davidson County, there was a conflict about fire protection. People outside of the Nashville city limits received fire coverage from Nashville Fire Department, but none of their taxes went to fire protection. The NFD needed a new truck, so it needed to cut costs. They realized a large portion of their work was for non-paying customers. They brought this to the attention of the county government, who said they couldn't afford a fire department or funding the NFD without raising roperty taxes significantly. Raising taxes in an election year is bad, right?
The Nashville Fire Department came up with a great fundraiser. People who donated $50 or more (I'd have to check the amount to be sure) to the NFD outside of the city limits got a sticker to put in their window or on their mailbox, and had their name on a list. The NFD would no longer fight fires outside of its "jurisdiction" unless they were a paying customer. To make a point, they actually responded to several house fires, making sure the media was there. They just watched the houses burn, because they didn't have their stickers.
Sadly, most of those politicians were also re-elected.
When you are poor, you use the public health service.
When you are middle-class, you use private health care.
When you are really rich, you treat the public health service as your private health service. For example IIRC Kerry Packer (AUS) paid to have all the ambulances in his state equipped with a machine that would save his life (after one did and he found out that not all vehicles carried them).
If he wanted, Bill Gates could afford to have everyone in the US vaccinated against TB just so they didn't cough on him.
Maybe in some circumstances that philosophy could be a good thing :-)
While the hybrid car dealers will tell you that normal hybrids are allowed in the HOV lanes, the DMV will not give you the little required stickers. They insist on pure-electric, *NO* emissions, only.
There was a long line of disappointed (and angry) people at the DMV because of this, last time I was there.
In fact, you can sell anything on eBay. Really.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
Those of use with bikes get to use the HOV lane free of charge. Plus we spent less on our faster, better handling vehicles. ;p
They don't have any toll-ways where I live - that I know of, anyway.
However, a toll-way is not the same at all. It is open to all who wish to use it, at a fixed cost.
That is A LOT different then offering a limited number of waivers to a law for auction.
...but the city keeps dragging its feet.
www.monorail.org
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
the money you give or take from the government can not influence the weight of your voice.
H HA HAhAhHAhahAHAHAHahHAHAhHAAHHAhaHAhAHahhAHAhahahaha hahHAHAhahahHAHAHAhahah.m n, that was funny.
AhahahahAHhahHAhHAHAHAHAhahahhahahAHAHAHAHAHahA
Hah..ha..hoo..hee....da
Uh, 53-47% looks like a 6% margin to me.
it's still letting certain people pay to break the rules.
You mean just like our speeding ticket system? If a MS exec making $200K+/year get's caught speeding the $180 ticket was more than worth the experience for him. However, if a UW college student get's the same ticket, it's going to cost him $300+ to pay it off because it'll go on a high-interest credit card.
How is that an example of "letting certain people pay to break the rules"? It is an example of how people with more money can more easily pay a fine than people with less money, but what does that have to do with what we are talking about?
So, unless you advocate a progressive tax and progressive fine system (as I do), than you can't complain about the government ebaying the HOV lanes.
No, I still can. I think public goods should be made available at a fixed, public price. I don't think you should have to bid on the right to have a driver's license, nor should you have to bid on the right to drive in a certain lane. There should be a set fee, if any.
Ideally, our taxes should be used efficiently so that we don't have to pay extra to use any roads - but that's probably a pipe dream.
Did the fire dept. get sued into oblivion yet?
I doubt it. It's a volunteer dept. Believe me, any town that has a volunteer fire dept. is small enough that everyone knows everyone else's business...and suing a local vfd is not smart, because then when your house is on fire, you're on your own. VFDs are great, and work well, and you have to pay for them *somehow*.
http://xkcd.com/386/
Even if only the top 10-15% of rush-hour traffic can afford these permits, everyone else can afford the bus (the parking fees and fees for riding could be covered by a small annual fee, and I'm sure there is some kind of tax write-off they could get for using public transit) or can car pool, which takes that many more drivers off of the LESS direct routes (not indirect way the heck out of the way, just not the very best route). By keeping the permit-routes in good shape, and free of most conjestion, the value of the permit remains high and can be used to pay off the initial loans as well as to subsidize the bussing system.
It's not like it isn't already being done every single day. OJ bought his way out of jail. Bill Gates bought his way out of having his company split up.
I don't see much of a connection between the justice system and the ability to hire better lawyers than state auctioning of priviledges.
So let a few people drive in the HOV lane. what's the big deal? Jealous?
My commute is about 15 minutes, so this wouldn't impact me, especially since I reverse-commute.
What WOULD impact me if they started taking this further, for example, auctioning off on-street parking permits, drivers licenses, etc. I like the fact if I want such things, I can just buy them for a set price, instead of having to futz around with an auction.
I also could see this turning into the disaster that cabaret and liquor licences are in many cities. There are only a limited number available, so in the end, you virtually can't buy one no matter how much money you have. With liquor licences, you could at least buy a bar or nightclub that already has a licence, but I doubt that would be the case with these special permits.
Ideally, something like this would be at a set price and they wouldn't limit the number of people who could buy them. Of course, that would destroy the whole point of the HOV lane, but perhaps the concept is flawed.
Neither do about 90% of the other morons on the planet, it would seem. eBay has a great thing going in preying on human stupidity. The *logical* thing to do in this system is decide what an item is worth to you, put up a proxy bid for that, and wait and see, but the emotional thing most people apparently do is "Ooh! Ooh! Someone outbid me! They're AHEAD of me! I'll show THEM!"
So the end sale price on a lot of things ends up being actually higher than you could buy the same thing brand new for. eBay makes more profit on their commissions, the seller gets more cash. I doubt this was originally intended. Foolproof systems are always exceeded by fools.
To compare this back to the topic at hand (roads), I think the psychology behind this is similar to the idiots that just simply MUST pass you on the freeway, and then as soon as they get ahead of you they slow back down, forcing you to either slow down or pass them(so that they can then pass you again; repeat every 6 miles or so). It's some kind of retarded power trip for them to "be first". Sheesh. Decide your speed, set the cruise. *shrug*
We turn to the Simpsons for guidance. Become a stonecutter, then you get your own private highway!
On the notion of fresh ideas, I've always wondered if the most economical solution was just to pay people not to commute. When I lived in the Portland, OR area, they expanded their light rail system to cover the 'burbs on the west side. IIRC the construction cost was ~$1.5 billion. With that kind of money, you could pay 15,000 commuters $100,000 each to buy a house closer to where they work or move to somewhere else.
I seriously think that having one of these stickers on your car would make it unsafe to park anywhere except inside of your fortified Mercer Island garage (prolly what the Republican rep. has in mind anyway).
Let's just rename the HOV lane to the
"Citizenship Plus lane," and be done with it...
Why don't they just put a frikkin' toll on I-5, I-90, 405, 520. Make it $1.50.
1. I-5's road surface is terrible. Particularly between Tacoma and Seatac. Maybe with that they can afford to maintain the damn road.
2. Pricing it at $1.50 makes it competitive in price with the bus system. Ergo it minimizes the advantage of Single Occupancy vehicles.
3. Might even solve WA State's Budget deficit. Not like anyone here pays state income tax or anything.
"the difference between myself and a madman is that I am not mad" -Salvadore Dali
While I agree with you that it is public property and all should be allowed to use it, but we do not live in a perfect world. There is a serious traffic problem in the US. And not much is being done about it.
In Phoenix, the environMENTALists are continually preventing sane expansion projects. The state was finally allowed to expand but only if HOV lanes are included. There was a compromise made with the HOV lanes. They are only HOV lanes during rush hour times. The rest of the time it is available to everyone else.
When you use your cellular phone you may have noticed that there is a 'peak time' and 'off-peak time' and there is usually a significantly higher rate when using it on 'peak time' If there was no peak time rate, it you most likely be as difficult to place a call as it is to commute to work.
I really like the idea of having the same type of system for the roads. The free market comes up with ideas and solutions that work in the real world. The rates can be adjusted to whatever is neccasary to keep traffic flowing. Moving cars mean less polution, plus the economics make it more desireable to hitch a ride with a buddy to work.
Something has to be done.
If you think it is unfair, then too bad. This is life, this is the real world. Grow up and get used to it.
No, I am not making this up.
Instead of expanding roads one might instead consider encouraging more people to use public transportation. More and more cities in Europe are creating tollrings around them. This helps reduce commute time. A flexible toll charge depending on the time of the day might work even better.
Something I always find suprising is the lack of public transportation in the States. So if the capacity or accesspoints are not sufficient then expand it. This includes subways, trains and busses. Less people using their cars means shorter commute time. Not to forget that less people using cars means less pollutions which is and added bonus. This is a process that must happen over time and requires serious commitment from the authorities.
Again, what does this have to do with auctioning a limited number of excemptions?
Sure, limit HOV lanes to certain times, make them normal lanes, or build a toll road or special permit lane that has a fixed, public price. But don't make people who are ALREADY paying taxes to use the roads bid on a limited number of special permits. That's excessively complicated as well as chiseling.
I don't want to have to compulsively check an auction to see if I get to use a public road, or have my bid 'sniped' at the last moment - that's moronic. Set a rate, charge that to whoever wants to use it. That's fair.
Lets see which fat rich asshole driving an SUV is going to pass me on the freeway today. If they really want to do something they should look at the cost of an additional lane, and split the cost between everybody.
This has been tried in a number of cities without success. You can move the employment into the suburbs, but then you just wind up with suburb-to-suburb commutes which are even worse than suburb-to-city commutes. Google for "suburb commute" and "suburb-to-suburb commute" for some good articles on the subject.
Consider the simple case of going to work for Bob's Hardware in ThisSuburb. Nice place, great job, I buy a house. But then I get a very nice job offer from Mary's Hardware in ThatSuburb on the other side of TheCity. Do you expect me to sell my house and move to ThatSuburb? Or should I turn down the new job offer? Roll those dice about a million times for everyone in the region and you quickly having everyone commuting all over the place and all your planning is shot.
The unfortunate fact of the matter is that almost nothing will fix this problem except for higher population densities. People have to be willing to live very close to each other and not have any land. Then mass transit works pretty well. The American dream is an acre and your own house, so what do you do?
Personally I vote for more money for mass transit every time it comes up on the ballot and I always vote against any road measure that doesn't include more funding for mass transit. But it's just because of a vague feeling that "mass transit is good." I can't myself come up with any way they could possibly deploy it that it would work for me or anyone who lives near me. We're just too spread out on our nice big wooded lots that we love so much. I just would rather throw money away trying to solve the problem than to give up on it. I have this weird fantasy that it bleeds over to a greener attitude from our elected officals, but I'm probably just kidding myself.
You aren't letting people pay to break the rules - you're changing the rules to something that makes sense.
The fact is that roads are a limited resource. A road of a given size can handle x cars per hour. If 10x people want to drive at the same time you end up with what Seattle is apparently facing. You can say 10x people would be allowed to drive all at once, but that isn't going to change the physics involved. You could build 10 times as many roads, but local homeowners probably won't like that.
One solution when dealing with limited resources is to institute a charge to use it. Then folks will decide whether it is worth their while to drive. When I drive to work I notice that there are a lot of folks driving during rush hour that could easily defer their trip an hour or two. For that matter, I'd like to change the hours I work, but the political reality at work is that you are viewed as a lower performer if you do that. If there were a charge to drive during busy hours, folks who didn't have to use the roads at that exact moment wouldn't, and the boss would get a lot more pressure from employees to let them have flex-time.
One debate in this sub-thread seems to be over whether the ticket price should be fixed or auctioned. Or whether the tickets should be limited in number. The fact is that you have to limit the tickets one way or another or they are meaningless except as a revenue source. If you sell 10x tickets the roads are no different except you are collecting cash for not fixing the problem. Now, you could keep upping the price every month until you hit the magic price that reduces demand, but then you have the politics involved in any tax increase. The price would end up being capped too low to do any good. The Ebay solution is a simple one - offer x tickets and sell them to the highest bidders. An express delivery service which can make back the ticket cost through premium prices for 8AM delivery might be willing to pay for the ticket. Joe's freight services who get paid 3cents/mile flat might think twice about sending 50 tractor-trailers onto the road during rush hour. You could even offer two classes of tickets - commercial and non-commercial if you wanted to regulate the balance somewhat.
Ultimately the revenue gained in tickets can be used to defer tax increases, so the public benefits.
This is no different from what an amusement park would do. If everybody complained that the lines were 8 hours long and you could only get on two rides a day, then they would just up the price until the crowd size is more manageable, and at the right price their profits are maximized. Same thing goes for gas - they could sell it for 10 cents a gallon but there isn't enough gas in the ground to meet that kind of demand. The standard way to deal with any scarce resource is to put a price on it.
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I am from the Seattle area. Yes there traffic sucks, but whose fault is that? They allowed unchecked rampant development all over the city and the surrounding towns. I moved away, I couldnt stand it anymore. My little town became nothing but a traffic jam of annoying people. The hillsides are nothing but houses and wait theres more going in daily!
I say FUCK YOU to all the people who moved in, I hope your traffic gets WORSE! And just go figure that a Mercer Island rep is the one who is suggesting this! (Mercer Island = previously high status who thinks they still are rich bastards. Dont ever drive less then a $20,000 car there or the cops are all over your ass)....
I have friends in the Dept of Trans and we are doing are best to screw you assholes who moved here. You came liking the open space, the clean air, the friendly people, and you complained about the weather. Then you fucked our traffic, ours towns, and became bitter. FUCK YOU
But do you have the right to accept the risk for everyone else on the road?
As I mentioned, stopping distance increases as the square of the speed. Did you know about P = M * V? The energy imparted by a moving vehicle increases with the square of its speed; so a car travelling at 40 mph will dissipate four times more energy in an impact than one travelling at 20 mph.
So not only are you increasing stopping distance and decreasing the reaction time threshold, you are increasing the force you'll impart when you hit something.
Maybe you haven't realized it, but saying "speed doesn't kill" is as useful as saying "guns don't kill people, people do." Whenever you exceed the posted speed limit on a section of road, you are increasing the risk for everone who may be using that road. You're increasing the possibility that you'll be killing cyclists, jay walkers, pedestrians, other vehicles, etc.
To argue that a behaviour which increases the force and stopping distance while decreasing your safe reaction time on a road is not insane, is equivalent to arguing that it's the ground's fault that people who jump off of tall buildings die.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Heh-heh. Heh-heh. He said "asses." Heh-heh. Heh-heh.
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Auctions are not fair because goods go to who ever is willing pay the most money! That's just not right, people should sell me something based on what I estimate it's value is, not what some joker is willing to spend.
You need to visit eBay's Bidding Board.
You really don't know what is going on I think.
Why slashdot? Why not?
Just as dangerous, you mean.
P = M * V means that truckers should be even more careful about not speeding, etc. By and large, they are. As drivers go, they are the ones with the least to lose in an accident since the other car will likely be pate. Yet you'll see little kids thinking they're in Fast and the Furious zipping past them. It's stupid.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Simple solution: If you win, when you claim the sticker you give the state the plate number of the vehicle the sticker will be on... If you don't know that number, you've wasted your money.
Not everywhere. Most states, especially most northern states west of the Mississippi don't have toll roads. Washington State doesn't have any that I know of, although some are proposed and 20 years ago there was a toll on one of the bridges. But toll roads are extremely rare in the Northwest states.
i'm the fellow who lives in seattle and gave up a car, and now uses a segway ht and a bicycle to get around. one of my city council persons is looking to limit the use of segway hts in the city now, all 4 of them. there are around 4 people who own them and have replaced cars / car trips, but the ht is a controversial mode of transport for some. while i think i'll always be able to use it on the streets, motorist will complain that these slow moving "things" delay them, and then i'll just get a car again.
Hey, you're pretty good! Yeah, we have that situation here in Seattle too. Some of the fire stations are being shut down to try to save costs. Which ones? You guessed it... those in the poorer and less influential neighborhoods. It's only supposed to add 5-7 minutes response time for those neighborhoods though. Maybe just a little longer if the fire trucks can't get through the HOV lanes 'cause they're full of rich folk's SUVs. If I had the cash, I'd move to an upscale neighborhood with a fire/medic station 'cause I'm not too confident in my ability to do a good job of keeping up chest compressions for 5-7 minutes.
Ah, a one-liner gets modded up insightful. Such is the greatness of slashdot cens... uh, moderation, which has recently forced me into posting anonymously to escape abusive moderation.
In response to your cute remark, and as others have mentioned, I DO understand the proxy bidding system, you idiot, but proxy bids in no way invalidate what I have said. The sanest strategy from the buyers' perspective is to not bid at all until the auction is near an end, so as not to unnecessarily raise the price for them.
You aren't letting people pay to break the rules - you're changing the rules to something that makes sense.
Having to bid for one of these "limited edition, rare" licenses on eBay makes sense? I don't think so. A set price would make sense. Removing the HOV lanes would make sense. Setting up some sort of toll would make sense. Having an auction for an artificially limited permit does NOT make sense. Having to lose your chance at a permit because someone is using a pirece of eBay 'sniping' software does not make sense.
If the HOV system doesn't work, ditch it.
This is no different from what an amusement park would do.
The difference being that my tax money is not spent to build and maintain an amusement park (at least not to my knowledge).
I will be gone from Seattle in a week. I have lived here for four years and am moving back to Michigan.
The ineptitude of Washington State and Seattle's government boggles the mind..
Case in point..
The $129M Opera an ballet house. $29M from taxpayer money. Now there is a funding shortfall and the ballet and opera groups are refusing to pay the difference despite a letter in 1999 to the mayor where they promised to do so. Now they're saying that the letter was vague and they aren't paying. That leaves taxpayers on the hook for tens of millions. Ballet and opera? An event for the rich.
The $21M spent to build a ramp to the bio techs at pier 91. The biotech was bought and now the operation will be very limited. The ramp gets very little use.
They just completed a new ramp to I-90 near Safeco field. But, whoops, the ramp near Safeco is expected to impact traffic. So it will instead be a useless local connector - it will take you a few blocks to nowhere. And now they're tearing down the main ramps to I-90 and diverting traffic miles away through some of the worst neighborhoods in Seattle. I guess Seattle doesn't want people to get downtown easily.. They burned $45M on the ramp to nowhere and are paying millions to tear down the excellent existing ramps.
It gets worse..
And now they want to charge for using the roads? Fuck'em.
I hate cars. They suck, and I mean that literally. They continually suck money out of your pocket for a variety of things.
Actual cost of car
Fuel
Parking fees
Insurance and liscence fees
Maintinence
And all of the costs except the first are pretty much continual.
Sure, there are times and places where owning a car is unavoidable, but in any decent sized city, given the choice, I would prefer to use transit. It may be inconvenient to have to wait for a bus or subway. And they may be crowded. But simply having that extra cash on hand, in my opinion, more then makes up for it. The only time I would prefer a Car to Transit is if I have an unweildly purchase, like a new TV, or a large load of groceries.
What would the obstacles to using mass transit be in Seattle?
END COMMUNICATION
1) The highway infrastructure in the Greater Seattle Area reached it's maximum capacity 10 years ago.
2) The Washington State government has been balking on working on a real solution for at least 10 years now. This problem has finally come to a head and because this issue has been blown off for years now, the price tag for these projects are going to be astronomical.
3) Light Rail - This was supposed to help with this problem but a) no one wanted to take on the costs of building new rails so b) the current light rail system has to work around Burlington Northern Rail Road's freight schedules.
4) I-5 heading to Seattle from the North and South can't be expanded any further. The original roads that are now I-5 were meant for cars to serve as a road to go TO Seattle only. The Road was not designed to go through Seattle to another town. Because of this and the fact that a City has been built around it, the Roads cannot be widened.
End of Line.
Dolemite
_________________
Save the World! Use a Quote!
the carpool lane is unconstitutional.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I really don't want to have to ride with other people. If I can put my own train on the rail, build it.
London commuters now have to pay to drive in London during the week... Maybe Seattle would benefit from investment in mass transportation that makes it economical for commuters to get to work. Well, the traffic problems should subside when M$FT outsources all its coders to India when it finishes its $100M+ "research" complex there and does bid'ness process outsourcn'. ;)
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
In areas where traffic is a problem, lets ELIMINATE THE STUPID CAR POOL LANES, (since nobody uses 'em anyway), open 'em to general use, and effectively increase the carrying capacity of the road. duh.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
One of the things I love about America is the ease that one can get around -- if you can afford a car. What scares me is anything that makes care ownership more expensive.
-- $G
The reason the oceans are over-fished and polluted is because nobody owns them. So there is no incentive to use it efficiently. The same is for highways. if it were used efficiently by charging then there would never be traffic. The money that is charged could go to building new highways, mass transit, etc. Those that cannot afford it will take mass transit, carpool, or move closer to work. This would also reduce sprawl. I think it's a great idea.
We have HOV lanes here in Minnesota, and they've been a collosal failure.
Part of the failure was in the way they were implemented, as they are simply a third or forth lane with a sign overhead. The result is that when traffic goes to a standstill in the right lanes, the left lane initially keeps flowing at HIGH SPEED. So now you have traffic moving 55-65 in the left lane, and 15-25 in the right lane... and then someone decides they have to be over in the HOV lane and pull out and BAM! Now traffic is really messed up. They did build one section of HOV in the new I-394 stretch that is seperated by barricades from the other highway, which works until someone has an accident there and now emergency vehicles can't get to the accident because of the walls on both sides.
So they create a safety problem.
Furthermore, the lane is underutilized, but people don't understand that because...
The majority of people using the lane shouldn't be in the lane. A good 25% of the people are over there illegally, i.e. single person in car alone. But nearly half the cars driving in the HOV lane are parents with a child in the backseat.
Since when is taking a child to daycare carpooling? Little Joey isn't going to be driving himself.
And finally, not everybody is able to carpool for a wide variety of reasons. We have dynamic schedules, don't know people who live nearby who work at same place, etc.
At least in the case of HOV lanes, Govt trying to change social behavior has been a failure. The money would have been better spent building a train system, which is less costly than adding a lane of traffic but harder to justify politically.
At least with a train I could come and go as I pleased, plus I could save a tremendous amount of money by not driving my car as much, risking accidents, etc.
I believe they're putting the right effort into the wrong solutions. This area is in desperate need of a proper transit system, not pie in the sky monorail projects or a commuter rail train that only runs twice in the morning and twice in the evening.
If they were really serious about solving traffic problems, they should instead sell stocks or free ride cards, so that they may develop a true rail transit system (instead of expecting bus service alone to cover everything from Tacoma to Everett).
This area really isn't geologically suited for road commutes. Floating bridges over lakes which have to be closed in stormy weather, hillsides prone to mudslides, and uphill roads that make San Francisco's hills pale in comparison.
One problem too, is the NIMBY factor. To be blunt, if the NIMBYs had been around at the turn of the 20th century, there would have been no real development. These people have no real cause to block it, except for maintaining their class status (they don't want crime or people of the wrong color showing up in their neighborhoods).
And honestly, the one time rail transit worked, was when it was built by corporations and then eventually conglomerated under the local government. The true reason why it worked, was that they said "Screw you, we'll build this bridge/rail/skyscraper, and there's nothing you can do about it.". And it got DONE. And the gov't here needs to do that to develop a proper transit system.
All Washington state does currently, is waste millions upon millions on studied, whose sole results are why more and more millions need to be spent on new studies.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Did you read what it was about? In my opinion, the margin by which a vote must be won should be variable depending on the circumstances.
In this case, we're not talking about, "Should we spend some money on building a stadium at an undisclosed location?", we're talking about building a giant road (yes, the road is to be diverted to allow parallel bridges) through the middle of a community, and force people out of their homes because some people outside of King County want to commute a little faster. Now granted, I've sat through Tacoma Narrows traffic coming out of Seattle at 5pm, and no, I didn't like it. But I've stared straight at where the road is to pass, and it's straight through homes that I think are being needlessly wasted for want of a better solution, which I think is out there.
Regardless of this scenario, my point is that in terms of public works, the government works for the people, and if 47% of the people are against something...there is something wrong with the proposition. I'm not saying outright ditch the idea, but if you can't please more than 53% of the people, some reform is necessary by any measure of logic.
--- What
I used to work at a tollway, and I think it's a bad idea. It involves creating a new bureacracy and employing hundreds of toll collectors, etc, which end up costing more than building a freeway.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
May sound draconian but it will solve the problem and make a shit load more money than some stupid ebay cheaters pass.
This is hideous beyond belief. If you ARE RICH ENOUGH you get a special deal on traffic? No one here remembers the moscow elite lanes then the peasants had the other lanes? Knock knock, hello. This is the US of A or used to be.
That's it, I am convinced that we are too far gone, daily I see CRAP pushed as cool, obviously by people who have never even ever been remotely free, clueless, no frame of reference, no idea what the US is about. They want an elite versus everyone else society? BRING IT ON, LET'S ROCK! They want their microchip implant, swell, but don't be surprised when other people don't and they think you are a demon for taking it and fight your ass, and I mean fight. They want to GPS track you with RFID tags and force you out of cash and inject your kids and force drug them and WHAT THE FUG IS GOING ON? IS EVERYONE BLIND OR WHAT? Screw the elite and elitism, time for this stuff to just STOP, or we need to start over. If they can't deal with their traffic without making the rich guy elite lane, they need to wholesale fire their traffic planners and maybe VOTE IN A DIFFERENT SET OF PEOPLE, AND NO, I DON'T MEAN SOME WATERMELON PARTY, GREEN ON THE OUTSIDE AND RED IN THE MIDDLE.
Dis freeking gusting. Heinous. Screw the "elites" and their opposites, the "more than elites". I'm starting a rumor to the illegal aliens, the elites taste just like pollo, just greasier, but easier to spot and catch.
Why do you declare that just because someone wants to go faster than you, that they are being the ass?
That is some ingenius logic. Lets see if I follow it: By driving 100 MPH, we are making it so traffic only goes 50 MPH. But then, how are we driving 100 MPH? Is traffic psychic and can tell how fast we want to be driving?I just came back from England, and once again I was impressed by how much better a road system works when the drivers truly share the road, and slower traffic moves out of the fast lane.
If a faster car is coming up behind you, they are driving faster than you! (This seems obvious, but people don't seem to understand it...) If you switch to the slower lane and let them pass you, it won't slow you down, because you can get back in right behind them, and they will disappear since THEY ARE FASTER THAN YOU. Now, for you to change lanes requires a MUCH smaller gap than for them to pass you on the right. Plus, them passing on the right would involve them driving MUCH faster in order to pass you as the gap moves, and probably entail them getting closer to your car and the car in the right lane than everyone would prefer.
So share the road? Yeah, please. If someone wants to pass you, share the fast lane with them and get out of their way. That way they won't be tailgating you or cutting you off or passing you on the right at high speeds. You can still drive as slow as you want to. Just don't get upset at us because we disagree with your "5MPH over the limit is as fast as is safe".
You should be used to that concept by now! Your tax dollars paid for the streets and curbs downtown, too, but you still have to feed the meter to leave your car there. Your tax dollars keep the USPS going, but you still have to buy stamps. Tax dollars regularly go towards building huge, obnoxious stadiums for huge, obnoxious adults to play children's games so that you can pay $50-$200 to see them (another topic altogether).
The only fair tax is a use tax. Until that happens, get used to complaining about paying twice for things and/or paying for things that you don't personally use.
1% of accidents are reported as having been caused by speeding -- and the few that are caused by such driving are usually caused by people doing positively insane speeds (like 220 km/h on a 50 km/h road).
Data. (BTW: "Driving too fast for conditions" in Ontario means doing 40 km/h on a 60 km/h road when the entire road is iced over, it does NOT indicate driving above the speed limit).
I'm sure someone can find me some statistics that show that speeding has been used to avoid over 1% of all accidents. I'm pretty sure Young Drivers even mentioned that once...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
This just goes to show that if it's about the environment, or about starving children, it is always, _always_ about money.
I wonder if you could make a living by offering yourself as a passenger for hire.
Probably not, since traffic usually is concentrated in one direction and the rush hour. You couldn't make the trip back in time.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
The problem is that the roads indeed are a "public good" much like having clean air and water. They are, in economic terms, an "externality" or that which lies outside our capitalistic market economy because it has no pricetag attached to using the resource. Laws of supply and demand do not apply. Price does not rise to demand because it just isnt feasible (in simplified example) to collect $5 from every person who is willing to pay exactly $5 more to have exactly $5-per-person-worth less traffic on the roads. So you can toss those neat theoretical supply/demand graphs right out the window in the case of public goods.
Without a pricetag attached to any "good" people are left to act in their own self interest. Now, dont get me wrong, self interest does not mean self centered. In fact, some people do choose to ride a bike to work just because its better for the environment. But even though most people will agree that public goods are just that, a good thing to have that we should preserve, the fact remains that people need incentives on an individual basis that promote them to act more in accordance with the overall good than they would otherwise. To put it simply, without individual incentives most of us feel like "why should I inconvenience myself if the other 90 thousand people wont?"
I'll argue that carpool lanes are a correct attempt at providing incentives (decreased commute time, decreased costs if you split the cost with your carpool partner, etc) for doing the right thing which is reducing the number of cars on the road, emmissions into the air etc. However, carpool lanes are quite obviously not good enough. Perhaps they work in theory, but not in implementation because they arent enforced well enough, or the fine isnt high enough (or both) to eliminate the incentive to cheat. Carpool lanes also do not encompass the entire spectrum of situations. They do not differentiate between the SUV drivers and the Prius drivers, there are not sufficient carpool lanes to get anyone ALL the way from one place to another, and they dont help the guy who doesnt take the bus because the bus doesnt run where he needs to go, when he needs to go. If you want people to do the right thing with respect to public goods the ONLY way to do it is find a way to attach a pricetag to doing the "bad" thing in direct relation to doing the bad thing and then let people make their own choices based on that incentive.
Seriously, Ebaying a few carpool passes isnt going to have much impact on the lane usage OR the budget. It is a curious study at best, a stab in the dark by clue-free politicians, but nothing drastic enough to get one's panties in a bunch about. I believe the correct answers to the traffic problems in every American city, are to increase the gas taxes til our gas per gallon is as much as Europe or higher, increase parking fees downtown until half of them are empty and the lot owner still makes the same revenue as before, and increase the carpool lane violation fines. Then use those revenues to fund the good things... the mass transit projects, the extra policemen to catch carpool violators, alternative fuel research, tax reduction on purchase of fuel efficient cars etc.
Before anyone gets on the soapbox of "you will hurt the lower income folks that must commute 40 miles one-way to their job," first think of driving a car not as a right, but as an environment-harming convenience. I would also suggest that this not be done overnight, but be a publically announced plan so people have time to adjust. Say, for example raise the gas tax 5 cents per gallon every month over the next 5 years, total raise $3/gallon. People WILL adjust. Some people will move closer to work. Some people will decide its time to trade in that SUV. Some people will keep their SUV but triple their efforts to find carpool partners. Some people will take the bus or perhaps the new light rail more often. Some people will buy a Segway or Prius or Motorcycle... Some people wont adju
There is a distinction between basic and limited resources.
When the government is providing a basic resource, there should be an effort to spread the resource evenly. When you have a limited resource, it is better for the government to get the best price for the resource.
For example, the permit to run a concession in National Parks often goes to the highest bidder. This gives the park more money for infrastructure improvements.
Russia sold seats on its space missions to millionaires. It turned out to be both a good way to raise funds for the program and it raised publicity.
Of course, I should note that we already auction off public education: the government gives scholarships to the best students. Isn't this horribly unfair? Many of the students who got Cs in biology probably would be good doctors, yet we only let the top students in to medical school. UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! UNFAIR! The top public colleges only accept the top students. UNFAIR!
But, guess what? There is not a one size fits all policy that fits all areas of government activity. When the government has a scarce resource, it should and does define what social objectives it wants to achieve in distributing the goods. Often that goal should be to get as much cash as possible...to use on other things or lower taxes.
I hope the bidding price on the auction is extremely high and that the money went to something worthwhile...like providing free linux boxes to schools.
in Washington, Microsoft rhetoric being spouted by government officials...this is sad.
Commissioner Barnes agreed.
``I think we need to get in the mindset that tolls and user fees are the way of the future,'' Barnes said. ``There's no way we're getting by without everybody statewide helping to pay for it.''
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The government is simply trying to put it in the free market as a guage to find out what people will actually pay.
eBay is a great place to find the current actual value of something in less than a week. I'm sure once a price range is determined it can be offered directly.
I really don't care that the tax payers paid for it. Taxes pay for lots of things we can't use. I can't go setup an office in the state capitol or other state building for free because my taxes paid for it. I can't take a fire engine out for a joy ride either.
The environmental lobby is shutting down freeway expansion projects everywhere. Unless we have 16 lanes in both directions there will always be traffic problems. The environmental lobby worsens what they are trying to protect. A car sitting idle is getting 0MPG. Even if it is an SUV or Neon it will get 0MPG when stuck in traffic. Accellerating from 0 to 10 MPH every 2 minutes is probably 2MPG. The idea is to get these cars moving at highway speeds which they were designed to run most effeciently.
I applaud this move. I think it is a great idea. I think they should charge for the entire road. It would upset enough people to put pressure on their governments to expand.
would pay for something. Mostly suckers and idiots over-bid for crap on ebay. I wouldn't want public policy based on the hysteria of ebay bidders.
I guess a speedy commute isn't worth enough to actually car-pool.
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley
You do, however, increase the number of roads to relieve congestion. (I know you were trying to say that increasing roads is as wrong for relieving traffic as buying a belt would be to fight obesity. I'm simply correcting you. More roads = less congestion. Belt != less obesity)
There's a simple reason why increasing the number of roads rarely decreases congestion. The traffic grid can't be abstracted into a single pipe with a certain load bearing capacity -- becausee it's a network of pipes, and with each connection in that network, you have to do proper queuing and traffic management to get optimal flow. We're already pretty bad at that, but the complexity of that problem gets worse: in order to be useful, those roads have to intersect other roads, and the more
the more intersections/nodes you have in a given system.... well, you get the picture.
It's somewhat accurate to say that congestion along a given corridor tends to decrease (or at least hold steady) if its carrying capacity is increased relative to other corridors and no new nodes are added.
IIRC, Portland put this theory to the test sometime in the last decade or two, and actually ripped out a few large thoroughfares running through downtown... and the traffic in that area got better....
Tweet, tweet.
I wonder how those firefighters, then and now, would feel if they refused to go into a "deadbeat" house and found out some old person or child had perished in there while they fiddled.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I certainly agree that speed limits are abused to provide easy revenue. My dad once got a speeding ticket in Lousiana while sitting at a red light - the trooper noticed the out of state tag and wrote him a ticket "because you must have been speeding somewhere."
Sure, the ticket can be fought - but who really expects to win and come out cheaper than the fine?
Maybe the key is to take away the incentive: rule that fines do NOT go to the ticket issuing entity - and that all identifying info is stripped from the revenue. Ok, so heck if I know where the money should go - and legitimate damages should certianly still go to the injured party; but fines are punitive in nature. Theoretically this means they are most important as a punishment on the wrongdoer - where the cash GOES isn't as important as taking it away from the convict.
And am I the only one who thinks that the sort of thinking engendered from punishing your constituents (erratically and irrationally) for revenue is toxic to good governance?
Heck, if they were serious about enforcing the speed limits they would just use cameras - and mail you the ticket; this might let the Highway Patrol get back to their actual job of searching for shipments of contraband, stopping flagrantly reckless / drunk drivers, helping distressed motorists, and generally making use of the roads safer for all of us.
Just my two cents.
I have no Sig.
Carpoolers get to use the same lane free. If solo drivers are paying a high price, then it may become more readily apparent to carpoolers that they're getting something of significant value as their reward, encouraging more people to do it.
You don't have to catch everyone. If the penalties are high enough, most people will play by the rules instead.
Remember, making and dealing in fake stickers (as with fake credit cards and other "access devices") are probably counterfeiting and get the secret service after you. Not worth it.
Great idea. They might as well make a special lane for those who are too lazy to find carpool buddies and are willing to shell out cash to pay for a lane with less traffic instead.
Having to bid for one of these "limited edition, rare" licenses on eBay makes sense? I don't think so. A set price would make sense.
What should the price be? If it were a dollar it wouldn't fix the problem. If it were $100k the roads would be empty of cars.
Sniping tends to be a problem because of the way Ebay often works. If I want a $90 walkman chances are there are 25 separate listings for it. If I were willing to pay $80 there is no way to tell the proxy bidder that you want one of thoes walkmans for up to $80, and which one doesn't matter. You have to bid on one of them. If there are 25 items under a single listing this is possible. Sniping software is used to accomplish what the user interface does not permit - looking for an underpriced item without commiting to one in particular. If there were one of an item you'd just bid $80 on it and either get it or not. If you were really willing to pay $82 then bid $82. The reason folks complain about sniping is often that they don't want to bid what they really want to spend. You also have potential abuse by sellers bidding on their own items under separate accounts.
None of these problems would apply to auctioning off the tickets. The state would create a single listing for the next month with 50,000 items available. You would just type in the most you would be willing to pay for one.
Why are you opposed to bidding for items but not paying a fixed rate for them? The fixed price would be about the same as what you'd pay on Ebay if it were set correctly. My guess is that it would probably be over $100 per month. You could go the toll route instead and charge $5 per day or so during busy hours, but this adds costs to operate the roll booths and creates congestion around those booths. I think what you really want is the tickets to be available for $5 a month to anyone who wants one. That will make money for the state, but won't fix the real problem (too many cars on the road).
Somebody pointed out that the real problem is that people live too far from work. Why is this? Simple - the housing near work is probably too expensive, or the one-time cost of moving is much higher than the slight savings on gas. By charging for use of the roads during peak hours you let the taxpayer decide whether it is really worth taking a job 40 minutes further away for a $1/hour raise. You also give the commuter incentive to move closer.
I'm not dead-set on Ebay as being the ultimate solution - there are other systems that could work. But ultimately the cost of tickets would have to be perceived as painful by the average commuter for it to do any good. Ebay de-politicizes the price-setting process. Commuters upset about cost would have to argue that more permits should be issued - but if the roads are visibly busy but not quite congested then that will be a difficult argument to make. If you fix the price commuters will just argue the tickets should be "just a little cheaper" until the roads are once again jammed...
I wonder how those firefighters, then and now, would feel if they refused to go into a "deadbeat" house and found out some old person or child had perished in there while they fiddled
I wonder how you'd feel if your house burned down because the FD couldn't afford to maintain its equipment.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Why are you opposed to bidding for items but not paying a fixed rate for them? The fixed price would be about the same as what you'd pay on Ebay if it were set correctly.
Because if I want to buy it, I want to just buy it. If I have to bid on it, I have to keep checking back to make sure I have the winning bid, and I have to worry about getting sniped - the same reasons I, and most people I know, only do "Buy it Now" auctions on eBay.
I actually don't care if I'd have to pay MORE than I would with an auction - it's stupid to make someone use an eBay auction to buy something like a civic permit, and I hope it doesn't start to become the norm.
I really don't care that the tax payers paid for it. Taxes pay for lots of things we can't use. I can't go setup an office in the state capitol or other state building for free because my taxes paid for it. I can't take a fire engine out for a joy ride either.
That's a moronic arguement.
A. "the tax payers" includes you, unless you are unemployed.
B. You wouldn't want to take a fire truck for a joyride, since it would hamper their ability to do their job. which brings me to my next point:
C. You ARE using the fire department. Every day that they prevent the fires in your city from burning out of control, destroying businesses, hurting the economy, hurting tourism, you are using their services.
I applaud this move. I think it is a great idea. I think they should charge for the entire road.
Uh, they do. They are called TAXES. I don't know about you, but the government already takes about 50% of my paycheck, after social security and state taxes. Why do you want to pay MORE?
If you don't want to worry about getting sniped just bid $1000 for the ticket and wait for it to be delivered with a bill. Ebay will proxy bid for you until you win - unless there are 10k other people willing to pay so much.
The idea on Ebay is you bid what you're willing to spend. If you're only willing to spend $100 why should you care if somebody snipes you for $101? You already decided that you're willing to spend $100 and not a penny more. If you're upset about the $101 bid that is because you were willing to spend over $100 in the first place. Most likely your limit was $120 or something like that.
When you set price controls you end up with shortages. If you sell 100k tickets for $5 each you'll find the ticket owners are the ones who don't have jobs to commute to in the first place - since they're the ones who can afford to spend 48 hours camped out in front of the ticket office before they go on sale.
Perhaps a best of both worlds would be to put tickets up for bid with a "buy-it-now" price of last month's average bid + 10%. Include tickets sold at this price in the following month's averages (so that if due to some mishap all the tickets get sold at this price the price automatically increases 10% a month until the auction regains dominance). I wouldn't implement it as a reserve as EBay does - if for some reason the demand for roads starts falling you want the prices to drop as well in reaction.
The thing you are not getting is that that is overly inconvienent and complex. I just want to be able to just BUY something. I don't want to have to wait to find out if I got it or not, I don't want to think I got it only to lose it at the last second, then have to start over. That's a pain in the ass.
You state that "you should just bid what you are willing to pay", and that's true, but sniping works by adding a small sum to what someone bid at the last second, which is very annoying. I mean, if I put in $100 and the other guy snipes it for $100.05, I wouldn't have cared about the extra $0.05, but I do care that now I have to start the process again.
Then there are the times when I _know_ people bid up auctions when they have no intention of buying. I had a friend who would find all the auctions bid on by people who outbid him on something, and bid them up. He did it SOLELY so they would have to pay more of their money, as a "punishment" for outbidding him on something he wanted. If he became high bidder, he'd cancel his bid or just not pay for the auction. But he was good at figuring out what people's high bids were (especially since he would focus on the same people who were shopping for the same things as he would) and usually he managed to get away with it.
That is really annoying, and I have no faith in eBay's ability to keep either random people or sellers from artificially bidding up prices.
I also don't want to not know how much my budget is, which is why I don't do auctions in general. I'd rather just BUY something and know how much it's going to cost me than have to wait around to know how much I'm spending.
All in all, I just think an eBay auction is a pain-in-the-ass way to sell something like this. The buy it now option you mention would be fine - I'd do _that_. I think there are many people who just wouldn't want to deal with auctions in general. This must be true, since eBay is pushing fixed price and buy it now listings really heavily lately.
You don't have to worry about sellers bidding up the tickets - the state is the seller and shouldn't care how much they sell for.
You don't have to worry about an online enemy outbidding you - there would be 10's of thousands of these for sale, so to outdo your 100 bid he'd have to bid to buy all 50k of them at $101 apiece. If you're worried about getting outbid by 5 cents then raise your bid 5 cents higher. You should place your bid at the most you can possibly tollerate - one penny more should be too much. Surely you must have some limit? If we were negotiating the sale of a car and I said how about one cent more you'd probably not argue over it, but if I kept saying that until the price had raised by $5000 you'd probably back out.
The whole sniping thing only happens because ebay has 25 identical listings with one item each. In this case they would have one listing with 50,000 items. Your bid has to be beaten by 50,000 other individuals for you to lose.
And if there is some distrust of Ebay itself, there is no rule which says you have to hold the auction on the Ebay site...
That being said, I think it's glib and childish to dismiss efforts like this one as "pandering to corporate influence". Assuming hidden motives is a lazy, stupid argument.
You should place your bid at the most you can possibly tollerate - one penny more should be too much. Surely you must have some limit? If we were negotiating the sale of a car and I said how about one cent more you'd probably not argue over it, but if I kept saying that until the price had raised by $5000 you'd probably back out.
The problem is that if I say my maximum price is $5000, it's worth another "one more cent" to not have to go through the whole process again.
Honestly, I'd rather pay a bit more than they expect to get from an auction to not have to deal with the inconvienence. But that annoys me, because if this becomes a standard for other permits, I'll be paying more to get the same thing, with the alternative being sacrificing time and stress to deal with myriad auctions.
What the whole market will pay doesn't matter.
It's the price at which you can sell the supply you have to maximize your profits that matter. If you've got one item, and someone is willing to pay 1 million dollars for it - the market just bore a price of $1 million.
If you have 1000 of them, and you can sell all 1000 for $100 each, but you can sell 900 at $1000, the market will bear a price of $1000.
What people who are not buying the product are willing to pay is irrelevant - only the price at which the product can be SOLD matters.
You can't say people won't pay $1000 for something if people are paying $1000 for something.
paintball
It's funny how the "slower" people always clammor that the "faster" people should "think of others". When I'm driving, I'm constantly being forced to think of others... The "others" being people who are blocking the left lane, and who are not thinking of the people behind them...
I let people merge all the time. I wouldn't tailgate or pass on the right if the person in front of me, slower than me, would move right (oh, and 99% of the time, they are speeding too, so don't give me the "they are obeying the law and you are breaking it" crap; they just feel that they know the fastest safe speed and should enforce it themselves...). And I definitely don't pretend to be the most important person on the road. I feel everybody should drive as fast as they want to, and allow everyone else to drive as fast as they want to. This requires lane discipline to achieve, and people need to pick lanes appropriate to their speed and to traffic density.