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

Are people willing to pay for speed?

[twoallbeefpatties]

The threat of an $X00 speeding ticket doesn't seem to deter them from dangerous driving...

Defeat the purpose?

[pizen]

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?

Re:Defeat the purpose?

[Ride-My-Rocket]

Isn't the carpool lane supposed to reward drivers for reducing their fossil fuel emmissions?

I was just going to post about this very same thing. It's all well and good that people want to get to work faster, but if everybody is able to use the same High-Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes, its effectiveness in speeding up traffic is going to be greatly reduced.

I say that, if people want to get to work that much faster, they have to do something about it. Raise the bar a little bit -- make HOV participation low enough so that it doesn't become a perk only for the Richie Riches driving in their lumbering SUVs; but set it high enough that people can't simply plunk down for a $5 placard, which would flood the lane with commuters.

And what better to do that than making HOV lanes accessible to those who have invested in low-emissions vehicles? LEVs are still fairly expensive, although they do have a few things going for them: 1) prices are starting to fall in line with regular cars; 2) the bodies are starting to look more normal, rather than like something out of the Jetsons; 3) several states have tax rebates / credits for people who purchase LEVs, ranging from $1k - $3k. So why not make it even more attractive by adding another benefit to the list: lower commute times?

Re:Defeat the purpose?

[twifkak]

Carpool lanes can still work -- I know Virginia allows people with "Special Clean Fuel" cars (essentially hybrids) to ride in carpool lanes. That's the only reason my mom bought a Prius, so they saved at least that much of the ozone.

Re:Defeat the purpose?

[M-G]

Want to reduce rush hour traffic by 10%? Virtually eliminating jams? Find an alternate way to work twice a month.

Or work hours that allow you to avoid the peak traffic periods. Obviously not every job has that kind of option, but many companies could help a great deal if they'd set up their shift workers on an offset schedule.

Traffic, much like data, increases to fill the available space.

To some extent, yes. Various anti-car organizations are always against adding lanes or building new roads, with the argument that they'll simply encourage more traffic. But the fact is that we've stagnated on our highway capacity, yet the number of cars and miles driven continues to increase. Where I live, there is horrendous traffic from certain areas, yet those areas still continue to grow. In those places the need for extra capacity is already there. Not creating more roads isn't stopping the demand.

I don't like it either. Those lanes were put in with the admission proce being >1 person in the car.

Or they were simply redesignated at some point to be HOV lanes. Either way, it's still a pure money grab.

Re:So what?

[YomikoReadman]

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.

Separation of Classes?

[TheKubrix]

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..............

Great idea, but legal?

[crow]

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.

Oh, this is bright...

[JudasBlue]

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.

The problem is the carpool lane itself

[phathead296]

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.

Re:Bad idea...(so what?)

[indead]

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.

This is nothing new

[Clod9]

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!)

Re:Bad, bad, BAD idea

[Lumpy]

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.

What about fakes?

[JediTrainer]

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?

Forget expired stickers, what about fakes?

[MadCow42]

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.

Re:Makes me sick.

[The Vulture]

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

Re:Flawed...

[Rip!ey]

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.

Re:I drive in Seattle

[KoshClassic]

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?