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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."
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 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?
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"
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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!)
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.
The coolest part could be the sticker costs are directly coupled to the physical size and weight of the vehicle + efficency.. A honda insight's sticker should cost $5.00 while a Hummer - H2 should cost $500.00... and I'd give the cops the right to revoke the sticker for any traffic violation in those lanes... stop the idiot soccer mom screaming along at 95mph on the bumper of a VW bug.
rewarding those that look for efficency and safety while punishing the dangerous glutton just might be a radical enough idea to get someone's attention.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
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.
While carpooling is a nice idea, try actually making it work in the Bay Area.
A lot of different companies have different work schedules for employees. Even though my ex-roommate and I worked within a few miles of each other, carpooling was impractical.
It seemed that on the days that I got to leave early, I had to leave late. On the days that he got to leave early, I had to leave late. And part of being friends with a person means that you don't subject them to that kind of crap ("Hey dude, I have to work late tonight, can you get somebody else to drive you home? You can't? Sorry, I have to stay another three hours, keep yourself busy.")
As for people that I worked with (to try to keep the same hours), well, I was the only person that lived in San Jose. Every one of my co-workers who was remotely close to me was easily 15 miles out of the way. That defeats the purpose, since I'm expelling more emissions just to drive the extra milage to pick him up, than driving directly to work.
Call this a flame if you will, but I'm sure that there are many people who feel the same way.
Interestingly enough, the DMV of California has a little hidden clause (advertised on some freeways) that DMV approved cars (i.e. low-emissions) with stickers can use the carpool lane with only one occupant. Unfortunately, the only cars that qualify are full electric cars, the hybrids apparently don't quality, from what I've heard.
-- Joe
Apart from the obvious colour coding already mentioned, how about an embedded RFID tag in the sticker, and some strategically placed monitoring stations. That way, they don't even need the cops. Maybe they could go and do something useful instead, like fighting crime or something. Continue using the lane when your sticker expires and your fine could be waiting in your inbox when you reach your home/office.
I agree here - if they won't abolish HOV lanes they ought to darn well enforce it much better than they do. In LA, the only people who don't get to use the carpool lanes are those who drive alone and who obey the law. Maybe driving alone is a 'bad' thing, but when I see others in the carpool lane who are also alone and willing to take the (very minimal) risk of getting a ticket it ticks me off to no end. Why (for example) can we enforce traffic lights with cameras and not make a better effort to enforce carpool lanes either with manpower or technology? I mean, not only do people abuse them by riding in them when there is only one person in the car, but the designated areas for entering and leaving the lanes are ignored by a lot of these people too.
Why we use taxpayer dollars to build these lanes and then only "allow" certain people to use them is beyond me. If we then sold access to the lanes, I'd say that would amount to a publicly funded toll road, which if not illegal or unconstitutional certainly ought to be. As far as I'm concerned, build the lanes and then let everyone use them. Figure out another way to encourage people to ride together.
I'd also point out that, IMHO, these lanes are unsafe. Usually they are sandwhiched between a concrete barrier on one side and, often, a solid wall of unmoving cars on the other. When the carpool lane is flowing at 50 or 60 mph in such a situation, how does one even have the possibility of swerving safely to avoid an accident?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5