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."

Comments

Re:Defeat the purpose?

[rcs1000]

Ummm.

I think you're missing the point. The state is trying to work out how much drivers will pay to get into the carpool lane. That is, this is an excercise.

So, they auction (say) 1,000 car pool stickers for a month in the fast lane (so to speak). By seeing what price is paid on eBay, they can calculate what pricing will allow new road building, public transport investment etc.

I live in Central London (in England). They recently imposed a congestion charge. Had they used eBay first, they might have discovered that the "correct" price was £3, not £5 to get traffic down to required levels.

Further, eBay is not a bad mechanism to rationing. Spaces in the car pool lane are a scarse resource (they won't sell more than they have room for... actually this government, scratch that) - why not work out what the right charge is using eBay, not by a fiat (or guess work).

What about Slugging?

[stomv]

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.

Re:Bad, bad, BAD idea

[Marc2k]

In Western Washington? HAH! You must not be from Seattle, my friend.

One would think that would be a viable solution..like the time the constituency voted against building a new Kingdome, but it was built anyway. Or the time there was a referendum to see if bridge parallel to the Tacoma Narrows bridge should be built, only won by 3%, and was built anyway, unchanged. Now, the ballpark was only an initial query, with no set location, but the new Tacoma Narrows will be plowing through neighborhoods and taking out houses. Surely, that should require a margin of voter hapiness greater than 3%. The area definitely has a history of shady tactics when it comes to gauging public interest.

Re:No passenger = No HOV privileges

[Omega]

4 other lanes? WTF are you talking about 4 other lanes?

I-5 south of the downtown and north of Northgate -- 4 unrestricted lanes, 1 lane of HOV. South of Northgate and north of Beacon Hill there are NO HOV lanes. There are "express lanes" but these are not restricted to high occupancy vehicles, they just offer limited exits.

Going through downtown Seattle there are 4 HOV lanes...

These are NOT HOV lanes, they are express lanes.

...and part of I-5 is constricted down to 2 lanes for a time.

Yes, "part of a time" = between 2 downtown exits (i.e. 1/10th of a mile). Why? Because Capitol Hill is already chopped off from Downtown. Do you want to tell the people in West Capitol Hill or in East Downtown that they have to give up there homes so you can go 5mph faster for 1/10th of a mile?

I for one am sure not happy about paying extra taxes so that other people can use their "elite" lanes...

Right, these lanes are so bourgeois. You need to drive with ONE other person in order to use them. Jeez, talk about high society. And unless you slept through referrendum 51 it's quite apparent that the transportation budget is only being used for widening. Not for 31337 drivers with their aristocratic carpooling.

The problem is our transit infrastructure is *atrocious*.

I love it when people criticize public transit because it's too poor to meet their needs while simultaneously crying foul when someone suggests increasing funding to improve the transit system. So many people in Seattle seem to chortle at the idea that a new, expanded monorail could be built; but then they turn around and vociferously oppose any initiatives to build one.

Carpooling is a poor answer as well. The timing issues are very difficult to work out. You have two people heading in to work, and say one person has to work late.

Are you familiar with King County's carpooling program at all? Do you know about "guaranteed ride home?" Or do you just dismiss the idea outright and not bother looking into it at all? Do you work with anyone else who happens to live in the same area? I work with at least 3 other people who live in my neighborhood -- and we all pretty much keep the same hours.

Of course, the REAL answer is - people should live near where they work.

On this, I agree. I live in Queen Anne and work in Downtown. I can take Metro or the monorail or I can bike. But this isn't an option for a lot of people, and car/vanpooling offers a real solution. I see too many cars on the freeway with just 1 person in them. And I guarantee that 90% of those people make the same trip at the same time and from similar origins and destinations as at least one other person on the road.

Re:I drive in Seattle

[squidfood]

I guess the real question (since I haven't seen downtown Seattle) is this: what does downtown Seattle look like?

One reason Seattle traffic is worse than L.A. is geography. The L.A. Basin has many interconnecting roads and you can make a profession of traffic-listening and choosing the best route.

In Seattle, there's a few routes to a compressed downtown, and being squeezed by hills and water means: if the traffic report says slow, your SOL.

OTOH, that means Seattle is the perfect candidate for mass transit as you have fewer routes to cover.