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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."
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.
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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.
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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 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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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?
Finally a government agency is publicly admitting that a free market economy has some value.
Now if they'd just do this with ALL of our taxes.
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.
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.
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.
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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.)
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4 other lanes? WTF are you talking about 4 other lanes? I think you may need to check again. Going through downtown Seattle there are 4 HOV lanes, and part of I-5 is constricted down to 2 lanes for a time. 3 of those HOV lanes are so-called "express lanes" (it may even be 4 lanes, I don't know. I'm rarely on 'em.)
I for one am sure not happy about paying extra taxes so that other people can use their "elite" lanes, when my car barely pollutes at all (in fact, it was getting zeros at the emissions places, and the last check was VERY close to zero).
The problem is our transit infrastructure is *atrocious*. If you're not within a mile from a transit center, you're going to be waiting 30-60 minutes for a bus (which may not even arrive; bad track record), so you can take a 45 minute ride in to town. Most peoplw will not put up with this.
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. They're completely screwed and have to take a taxi home (because they probably don't have bus service near their place, as most of the citizens in the region do not), which will cost $20-$50, at least.
Of course, the REAL answer is - people should live near where they work. The city should be designed so that this can be possible for the majority of workers. Nobody should ever be commuting from Kent to Seattle - it's a rediculous notion.
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.
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.
And it's people like you that make traffic much worse than it needs to be. Cutting people off, tailgating, causing traffic accidents... all of these things cause more traffic than it solves.
Think about it like math. If the average speed of the cars on the road is finite number whose upper bound is controlled by several factors, traffic density being the primary factor, then if one person attempts to go significantly over the average speed that the road can handle under those conditions then necessarily every other car must slow down a little bit just to accomodate.
Since many people believe that their needs are more important than the needs of the whole (as you have so clearly stated in your post) then everyone who believes that tries to go faster than the average.
Ordinarily this would raise the average speed. But clearly that isn't the case. Because as speed increases, safety demands that the space between cars needs to increase... this artificially inflates the traffic density numbers (because cars are treated as being "bigger" than they actually are) and so the whole road slows down.
It is because of this "me first" philosophy that traffic is as bad as it is in the world.
Its like everyone on the whole road missed the lesson in kintergarden about sharing.
Stop being an ass on the road, leave yourself enough time to get where you need to go and you won't stress quite so bad when traffic does suck because of the other greedy people on the road that think the way you say you do.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
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."
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