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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.
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!
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.
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.
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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.
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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.).
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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.
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.
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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?
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.
If everyone is able to buy their way into the carpool lane doesn't that defeat the purpose?
To some extent. But carpool lanes have been around for a long time, and basically don't work. Think about all the tasks you frequently do on your way to and from work, or on your lunch break, etc. It's tough to stop and pick up your dry cleaning when you're riding in someone else's car.
So the carpool lanes are a lane that could be used for traffic, but is instead sitting there underutilized. If you remove the restriction from it and ease overall congestion, you're now creating a benefit in terms of pollution.
Of course, the idea of selling access to the lane is rather stupid, IMO. The taxpayers paid for the lane to be contructed and maintained, so selling limited access to it is a sneaky way for the state to generate extra revenue.
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.
Funny thing is..
Dangerous driving doesn't get a ticket. Police typicaly are not allowed to engage in high speed pursutes without either authorization, or unless it's in relation to a felony.
Only the +5 to +15 mph speeders typicaly get tickets. They are so easier to catch, and quotas get made much more quickly.
"They'll probally kill them selves" is that I hear regarding super speeders, atleast among police at starbucks. Or "I wish I could have pursued that guy I clocked at 100+, but I hadn't made my quota yet".
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
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.
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 |
It would if police departments had enough officers to aggressively enforce speed limits and other safety-motivated traffic laws. But when police departments hire officers specifically to do that, people complain that the police are just doing it for the money, because people like to break traffic laws. (Another issue is that--at least in Houston--the police are often the worst drivers on the road, so even judges are hesitant to take them too seriously in traffic cases.)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
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..
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.
Speed != Dangerous Driving
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
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
... 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.
How about replacing the HOV lanes with real high occupancy vehicles - rail. That'd solve a number of problems. The land is already purchased. It's already in the most occupied areas. It would handle far more people than busses and 2 person cars.
The key to it would be frequent runs. What we have now, with the Sounder rail, is absolutely laughable. It's what, two runs per direction per day? What a joke.
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.
Think about all the tasks you frequently do on your way to and from work, or on your lunch break, etc. It's tough to stop and pick up your dry cleaning when you're riding in someone else's car.
Yeah, but you're not doing those things every day.
Want to reduce rush hour traffic by 10%? Virtually eliminating jams? Find an alternate way to work twice a month. Every other Wednesday, for instance. Ride with your buddy, bus, bike, whatever.
If we could average that, the problem would mostly go away.
Sadly, this will never happen. The American public is far to self-centered.
So the carpool lanes are a lane that could be used for traffic, but is instead sitting there underutilized. If you remove the restriction from it and ease overall congestion, you're now creating a benefit in terms of pollution.
Building more roads to combat congestion is like buying a bigger belt to combat obesity.
Traffic, much like data, increases to fill the available space. Not until a certain road becomes too much of a hassle or takes too long do people look at alternative routes to work.
so selling limited access to it is a sneaky way for the state to generate extra revenue.
I don't like it either. Those lanes were put in with the admission proce being >1 person in the car. Changing the rules to allow pay to play is simply wrong, IMHO.
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
You aren't required to drive anywhere. We already have toll-roads so this is no different.
I actually prefere almost EVERY kind of use-based taxation to the system in place. Some services (police and MAYBE fire) wouldn't work but everything else makes sense. It's the only fair tax because it's the only one you can control.
Don't feel like paying X in road taxes? You don't have to. Just don't use the road. Roads are a money-pit for governments. They suffer insane wear and tear as the tax base grows and yet a still have to vote on a tax initiative to pay for fixing the roads that I thought my taxes took care of?!?
Each tax should be earmarked for that project ONLY. None of this pulling from the coffers shit.
Road taxes are in an account for road work and maintenance. Don't you dare pool it with the other taxes and then take a percentage for road work.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
And that's cool, if it's only a temporary thing. But I have a feeling that once they get a revenue stream going from this, they're not gonna say "okay, now we have our information, let's change it back to an only-carpool lane."
c-hack.com |
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.
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.
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? :(
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*
an alternate way to work twice a month. Every other Wednesday, for instance.
Who regulates this? Who makes sure that enough people take unpopular days? How would a ~15% reduction virtually eliminate traffic?
Building more roads to combat congestion is like buying a bigger belt to combat obesity.
Traffic, much like data, increases to fill the available space. Not until a certain road becomes too much of a hassle or takes too long do people look at alternative routes to work.
Um. Your analogy is seriously flawed. Belts do not combat obesity. You do not buy a belt to combat obesity. 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)
If you think traffic magically grows to fill available roadways, build a 6-lane highway between two sub-10,000 person towns in west texas. See how much traffic 'grows to fill the available space.' Having more roads is not going to magically make more cars appear. If the country were 80% roads, there would not be traffic filling them.
People with nonsensical ideas like yours are the reason traffic in my beloved Austin went from not too bad to horrific in just 10 years. The population increased by about 35-40% but the road system barely increased at all. In fact, several times bypass/mass transit solutions were introduced to the city council, but were never approved for 'environmental' reasons. So, in order to save the environment, the average time I spent on the highways trying to get to work and back home went from about 10-15 min to over an hour. Thanks, guys. I'm sure that's doing *wonders* for the environment. Get a clue, man, people don't look for alternate routes because you give up too much control. You can't rush home in the middle of the day if your kid is sick...you can't decide to take in a movie right after work....you can't run errands until you drop off all your ride partners/get off the bus/get dropped off...you can't pick your music, you can't adjust the air....if you're on a bus, you run the risk of being pickpocketed or vomited upon (both of which have happened to me more than once on austin's award-winning capital metro system)...
these are things that aren't factors when you're driving your own car. People will put up with an hour longer commute if they can control it.
http://xkcd.com/386/
They used my tax dollars to build the space shuttle, yet they won't let me take a trip on it.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
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