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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.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
If your commute doesn't improve by much, can you leave negative feedback?
Chris
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?
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.
Seller was awesome! Totally fast shipping! Great communication! I love my sticker and will buy again! A+++++++
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?
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.
I think this idea is great. I give it an A++++++++++++. Oustanding thinking and clever idea!!!!! I would work with Government again, anytime!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here
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.
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.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
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.
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.
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.)
Gates' Law: Every 18 months, the speed of software halves.
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.
imagine how much people would be willing to pay for a sticker that let them drive as fast as they want
and drink beers while doing so.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
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.
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.