Elon Musk Hates 405 Freeway Traffic, Pays Money To Speed Construction

S810 writes "Elon Musk, one of the main people behind PayPal, Space Exploration Technologies and Tesla Motors, has paid $50,000 to help Los Angeles speed up construction of the 405 Freeway, making it better and says that he will pay more if needed. From the article: 'Musk said he is open to pay the cost of adding workers to the widening project "as a contribution to the city and my own happiness. If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." — Musk quips that it's easier getting rockets into orbit than navigating his commute between home in Bel-Air and his Space Exploration Technologies factory in Hawthorne.' For those who aren't familiar with this issue, the 405 Freeway runs from the northern end of the San Fernando Valley all the way down to El Toro and runs by LAX. Residents are getting frustrated that this widening project is over budget and well over the anticipated time frame that it was supposed to completed by."

Comments

$50k enough?

[jimmyhat3939]

Does $50k remotely make any dent there? Aren't these projects tens of millions of dollars?

Re:$50k enough?

[ackthpt]

Does $50k remotely make any dent there? Aren't these projects tens of millions of dollars?

Probably pays the salary of 1 worker, without benefits, no overtime. A junior one at that.

Re:$50k enough?

[Trepidity]

This project was budgeted at $1 billion dollars, and is currently projected to cost $1.1 billion. So no, $50k is not significant. Also, he didn't even spend the $50k on construction: he paid it to a lobbying group, Angelinos Against Gridlock, whose goal is to speed construction. The group actually looks like one worth supporting (they have a vision that includes both roads and rail improvements and it seems reasonably thought out), so that $50k might be well spent. But it's spent on an advocacy organization, not on construction.

Re:$50k enough?

[Anonymous Coward]

becasue the people who design this type of work, and mange it are really good.

My head just exploded.

Re:$50k enough?

[Pseudonym Authority]

You seem to have no idea the scale of work the goes into turning virgin terrain into a proper road. It involves hundreds of men working hard labor, dozens of machines that cost $10M each (or about $15K a month, if you want to rent) and are backordered for two years and burn 100 gallons of diesel a day, and hauling thousands of tons of rocks across large distances to poor on the ground. Then you take the amount of time to do all that and quadrupal it if you actually want to drive on it faster than 35MPH and not have your transmission fall out. None of that pays attention to the cost of surveying the land and planning out what angle is needed on the banks, determining just how much you can safely slope the road so both compact cars and big trucks can safely drive on it, to securing right-of-way from landowners,....

But yeah, it's public money, so we can ignore all that and complain that they should work for free so no tax dollars are wasted while we still get roads that you don't need a horse to traverse.

Re:$50k enough?

[Electricity Likes Me]

Yes. The sad part is that not enough people ever asks WHY they cost tens of millions of dollars. Even you, in your own way - seem to have been programmed to just 'accept' the fact that simple things cost millions of $'s, when it's public money being 'spent'.

Do you know? Are you qualified to estimate the budget on such a project from your long history of public works and highway repair management experience? Have you bothered to Google search for some comparison information, taking into account size, scope, terrain and road state? Modern practice?

Or are you yet another person who'll bitch about waste without actually knowing what it is?

Re:$50k enough?

[Goody]

$50K will make the project be completed about four minutes earlier than projected.

Re:$50k enough?

[ChrisMaple]

It gets worse. Until the 405 gets into the mountains, it's solid city on each side. Widening means buying property, expensive property. It's an elevated freeway, so it's hideously more expensive to build than on the ground.

Sadly, it's not going to fix the problem. Twice as many lanes would still not be enough. There's a choke point where the 405 meets the 101 in the San Fernando Valley that backs at least 2 miles every workday, and has done so for at least 30 years.

It may get better, but it's not going to be fixed.

Re:$50k enough?

[rahvin112]

Don't think he's an exception, half the country thinks their experts on road design/construction, even when confronted by indisputable facts that run contrary to their initial thesis they will simply reformat their premise to reach the same conclusion.

I always get a kick out of people that like the OP claim there is no basis for the cost but it's designed by registered professional engineers to standards dictated by the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO is a committee of experts in the field from state and federal government and private business). Those plans are then built by low bid contractors (often with 3+ bidders and prices that are frequently with 1-2%) operating under strict quality control guidelines with engineers supervising the installation, inspection, testing and quality assurance. And in the end the entire project is audited by both State and Federal auditors to ensure that no tax payer money was diverted or used contrary to law.

Yet, according to the OP the whole thing is horseshit and you could build roads for half the cost. That is of course if you didn't care if they lasted more than a week, nor cared at all about safety such as whether the bridges will fall down in a strong wind. That's because the OP is an absolute expert in examining his rectum visually up close and personal.

Yes roads cost a lot, and it's because they are designed to last anywhere from 20-40 years depending on pavement type. Considering the interstates were originally built in the 60's they've more than proved that the standards are adequate. But with truck weights more than 10 times larger than when the interstates were originally built it means complete reconstruction with much thicker pavements than the interstates used in the 60's. A typical interstate pavement section is over 3' thick with a foot of granular borrow, a foot of road base and a foot of concrete you aren't going to get any of that cheap.

Re:$50k enough?

[MachineShedFred]

In a study from the University of Southern California, they say that LA Freeway construction costs are roughly $20M per mile.

So his $50k buys him 13 feet of roadway.

Re:$50k enough?

[MachineShedFred]

Wait... did someone just say that CalTrans is... good?

Does. Not. Compute.

Re:$50k enough?

[Archangel Michael]

My questions is, why not have a 10 mile length of a double deck freeway that has no exits. That way, you get into the express deck, and you don't have to worry about asshats who swoop across 4 lanes of traffic to catch their off ramp at the last second.

Idiot doesn't understand

[erroneus]

If you want to throw money at the problem of highway construction, you offer a large payout contingent on how quickly it gets done while still within project specifications.

The workers get paid by the hour and so do the contractor managers most of the time. So to give them money with the promise of "more if needed" will result in pleas of "hey! we need more!!!"

These people seriously don't understand how it works when highways are constructed with public money -- the recipients never want the money to run out.

Re:Idiot doesn't understand

[ackthpt]

If you want to throw money at the problem of highway construction, you offer a large payout contingent on how quickly it gets done while still within project specifications.

The workers get paid by the hour and so do the contractor managers most of the time. So to give them money with the promise of "more if needed" will result in pleas of "hey! we need more!!!"

These people seriously don't understand how it works when highways are constructed with public money -- the recipients never want the money to run out.

You know nothing about these construction contracts, which are handled by private firms. There are incentives to get the work done fast. But there are somethings you just can't rush, like having that sandy soil properly settled so new roadbed doesn't continue to settle and end up with cracks and holes. Then there's the matter of having the equipment necessary at various stages there on time, much of it coming from other worksites. There's hundreds of miles of freeways alone in the LA area. I see the same thing where I live. It looks simple enough, until you are in charge of the logistics and find how much more expensive it can be to try rushing things. Maybe if Musk threw several million dollars at the contractors, so they had more equipment they could get some things done faster. Sometimes private industry isn't faster than a good ol' bloated public department with lots of taxpayer dollar funded extra equipment available.

Re:Idiot doesn't understand

[rahvin112]

Settlement is easy to deal with (at a cost, there was a project with projected settlement times of around 5 years that was completed in 60 days through available mitigation measures), the project delays are often driven by the uncontrollable externals that sink every project, those being, required federal environmental documents, utility relocation and ROW acquisition. You simply can't force the electric company to relocate a power line that serves the entire LA valley in the middle of the summer. Nor can you speed up a condemnation process when there are specific time frames required by law to condemn the property of an unwilling seller. Though you hope for a smooth process, in the real world the process is often anything but smooth with no end to headaches. It also doesn't help that construction workers in California have been issued bulletproof vests in the past due to "road rage incidents".

Re:Idiot doesn't understand

[erroneus]

I am in total agreement. Coming from the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, I have seen a small highway project take decades until a new leader stepped in and said "okay. No more money. This is where it ends. If you can't do it for this amount of time and money, we are getting someone else." The project was completed in under a year. FACT.

SD Freeway isn't the problem

[ackthpt]

it's all the cars on it.

if they built the sort of light rail which the region desperately needs it could cut down on the traffic hugely.

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[MrEricSir]

Do you really think a guy who runs a car company would want to see public transit improved?

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[MichaelSmith]

Its the only thing which will make life easier for drivers. Widening this road will just encourage more people to drive, increasing congestion everywhere.

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[csumpi]

Right. Except that LA's broke. The bills are paid from giving out chicken shit parking and traffic tickets.

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[k6mfw]

Imagine a super highway, six lanes wide, will never again be a traffic jam, and it will be beautiful!

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[sconeu]

There's a reason nobody uses mass transit in LA. All mass transit in LA is based on a faulty assumption -- that everyone wants to go downtown.

There's no real north/south transit: To get from the Valley to the Westside, you have to go downtown and then back to the Westside.

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[MichaelSmith]

The automated rail system in Kuala Lumpur is very impressive. It doesn't have drivers and ticketing is obviously automatic, so it scales very well. Services are very frequent and more faster in tight locations because of the automatic trains. The trains can be kept small, and frequent because you don't have to pay for a driver for each vehicle.

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[dr2chase]

Never mind that some of us have seen it in our own lifetimes? When you add freeway capacity, you create the (temporary) ability to live a little further from where you work, either to find a better job without moving, or to live in a somewhat cheaper house. In the case of a place like NYC or Boston where many people already take mass transit, making the freeway more attractive will pull people off of mass transit and onto the roads.

Similarly, when the roads get screwed up you see a reduction in auto traffic and a surge in mass transit use (for example, by an earthquake, as happened in the SF area after the Loma Prieta quake -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake#Effects_on_transportation ) .

Perhaps "induced demand" would make a bit more sense if you looked that it the other way around. Do congestion and traffic jams make people more likely to drive, or less? I assume you would say "less" -- stuck in traffic sucks, and dinking around on surface streets (which jam up pretty quickly as soon as "everyone does it") is no fun, either. So why wouldn't adding capacity cause people to decide to drive more often?

Re:SD Freeway isn't the problem

[tlhIngan]

I've never bought into the induced demand argument.

There is a finite amount of cars, and a finite amount of trips being made. Just because more freeway capacity opens up, it doesn't mean that people start randomly driving to places they don't need to go - they were still going to be going there regardless of if the freeway was built / expanded. They were just doing it on unmetered neighborhood streets before.

Wouldn't we rather have those cars on the freeway, rather than clogging up neighborhoods?

Problem is, every empirical study done has shown that widening roads does not work - traffic is alleviated for a short while then builds right back to where it was before.

There are essentially an infinite number of cars on the road - you'll find that a car is really only used 1% or so of the time - the other 99%, it's parked. And the big problem is rush hour - once a road backs up, it cascades and forms "brake waves" (it's actually counter-intuitive, but sometimes *adding* a traffic light can smooth traffic because it curtails the brake wave - the wave terminates before traffic catches up).

Improving a freeway also has the habit of getting people to move to the suburbs and further from work - whether it's the picket fence lifestyle, or cheaper costs, or whatever - if people were commuting 1 hour before, and now its reduced to 45 minutes, they'd go and find a house 15 minutes down the road (of course, in a couple of years that added distance and traffic jam means it becomes a 1h15 or 1h30 commute).

In fact, without public transit (light rail), the best alternative would be cars that are autonomous or semi autonomous with communications. This way when a traffic light turns green, all cars can begin moving simultaneously. And brake waves would be reduced because it likely won't cascade (if you're getting too close, you can always communicate that to other cars and have them reduce speed to the right amount rather than overshooting).

pays money to "study" speeding construction

[Trepidity]

He didn't pay money to speed construction. He spent $50,000 on a consulting organization that would look into how to speed up construction. They did not find a way to do so. But hey, he's learning how these things work: spending $50k to "study" something with no results is exactly how many real projects happen too. ;-)

A better question might be why L.A. is spending $1.1 billion on widening a freeway, instead of improving its damn transit. Adding another lane is going to be a stop-gap solution at best, and it'll be congested to the hilt within another few years. Is the goal to have 30-lane freeways by 2030 or something?

Re:pays money to "study" speeding construction

[Trepidity]

The 405 expansion is only moderately cheaper than the Red Line, even if you measure purely in terms of construction cost per capacity. For $1.1b, it's estimated to add capacity for another 50k passengers/day or so, making it cost about $22k per new passenger. The Red Line, for $4.5b, carries about 150k passengers/day, so it cost about $30k per passenger.

Re:pays money to "study" speeding construction

[Trepidity]

I agree there are diminishing returns, but some heavily traveled routes could certainly be better. For example, the whole Westside is relatively compact but poorly served by transit, since the purple line stops after like 1 mile due to being axed after partial construction. It'd be sensible for it to continue west, which fortunately does seem like it may happen. Any kind of transit connection to LAX would also be useful.

Re:pays money to "study" speeding construction

[jabuzz]

It's been done. There was a study looking at traffic levels around some roadworks in London about a decade ago. What they found was that even six months after the road works had finished the traffic levels had not returned to there pre road work levels.

Dear Elon

[geekoid]

You aren't in traffic, you are traffic.

Re:Dear Elon

[Ichijo]

"Nobody drives on the 405 anymore. There's too much traffic." --Yogi Berra

Re:Dear Elon

[tehcyder]

I get why people move out of cities, I really do. Pollution is higher, it's noisier than the suburbs, the yards are not as big, etc.

And houses in a good area cost five times as much. The idea that people choose to live in suburbs is ridiculous. It's all they can afford. The suburbs of a city are just like living in the city, but further away and more inconenient.

Living in the actual countryside is a different matter, but in that case you have to expect to commute further.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[SJHillman]

I like living in the country, I'm not going to move into the inner city where my job is just because the commute sucks. However, if I can contribute a fairly small portion of my money to make my commute a bit easier, I will. A good place for a job can be a really shitty place for a home.

Commuting is the problem

[TubeReceiver]

He lives in BelAir and commutes to Hawthorne ?? Give me a break... that was ridiculous 30 years ago and still is. One word, listen closely... MOVE. Everyone seems to think it's normal to drive these ridiculous long commutes and it's actually a symptom of a screwed up society in love with their crappy cars. Try living closer to work and walk there, or ride your golf cart or something.

Re:Commuting is the problem

[Onan]

Yes, clearly the only reasonable solution is for everyone to move (probably to a vastly different neighborhood with completely different safety and cost) every time they change jobs. Certainly there's nothing in the world wiser than applying for a new mortgage every time you have just started a new job.

Also, couples or people living together are only allowed to work within four blocks of one another.

May I contribute $5 ?

[Taco Cowboy]

Since Elon Musk is so wealthy and he's only paying $50,000, may I contribute my $5 ?

The $5 from me to me is worth much more (by ratio of my wealth) than the $50,000 to Mr. Musk, btw

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[edumacator]

This really isn't a bad idea. You could surely speed up construction on the most heavily trafficked roads.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[sanman2]

Immorally gotten wealth? You mean anyone who earns more money than you has automatically done it immorally?

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[gewalker]

I don't know, he claimed to be cash broke during a divorce 3 years ago. Maybe coughing up $50K is harder than you would think.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't earn that kind of wealth by working hard. You earn it by withholding it from the people who do the work. In the past even the rich would have blushed at the idea of being paid that much more than the people doing the actual work.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

This really isn't a bad idea. You could surely speed up construction on the most heavily trafficked roads.

If you think that construction companies, union workers and prevailing wage workers are not already soaking this government project, then you have no idea how government contracts work in California. if it a State, County or Federal project ultimately makes no difference. By offering more money from another source, it just cues those involved that they can charge extra to do what have been contracted to do already. Be it $5.00 per person or $50,000.00 per person adding the thought of having private money contributed to do a job that the government supposedly gave to the lowest bidder, which has already missed its time target and is overbudget is insane.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[dk20]

When faced with a divorce a lot of rich suddenly become poor. Besides living on INCOME means paying taxes but hording the wealth and using it to secure debt is more tax friendly.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the past even the rich would have blushed at the idea of being paid that much more than the people doing the actual work.

Because I'm sure Vanderbilt, Carnegie, Rockefeller, Schwab, Morgan, etc. were SO embarrassed by being multimillionaires in an era where an average employee in one of their companies made about $450 per YEAR...

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[ChrisMaple]

You earn that kind of money by providing value that allows you to hire people, people who make more working for you than they would otherwise. Why else would they work for you?

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the poorest of the "multimillionaires" then had the equivalent of $133 million.

So how does that change the point in the slightest?

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[ShanghaiBill]

You earn it by withholding it from the people who do the work.

By far the biggest misconception about the economy is that it is a zero sum game, and therefore if someone gets rich, it must be because others are getting poorer. The real world doesn't work like that. Most people that get rich do so by creating opportunities that pull lots of other people up with them. Microsoft made Bill Gates a billionaire, but also created more than 2,000 millionaires and good salaries for tens of thousands more.

If your theory was right, third world countries, with very few billionaires keeping them down, would all be wealthy.

In the past even the rich would have blushed at the idea of being paid that much more than the people doing the actual work.

Are you serious? Have you ever heard of the Guilded Age. In the past, the rich had no inhibitions about flaunting their wealth. Of course, this was a period when the wages of the poor were rising rapidly as well.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[ShanghaiBill]

If you think that construction companies, union workers and prevailing wage workers are not already soaking this government project, then you have no idea how government contracts work in California.

This is an American problem. In other countries it doesn't work this way. I lived in Japan and China for several years, and public construction projects in both of them are done amazingly fast.

In the USA, the construction crew will show up, tear everything up, and put out lots of traffic cones, ... and then disappear. For months there is no activity. The machinery just sits there. Everyone now and then you see some guy in a hard-hat drinking some coffee, but nothing is getting done.

In Japan and China it is completely different. A construction site is a beehive of activity from start to finish. They set up giant lights so they can work through the night. When I lived in Shanghai, they build the middle ring freeway past my house, and it was annoying to hear the din of construction all day and night. But in three months it was over because they were done.

I really don't understand why America is so bad at managing these kinds of projects.

Re: May I contribute $5 ?

[murphtall]

It works like that in the Midwest. I live in WA state and construction is like you describe. Years ago driving multiple times to St. Louis and Dallas from Seattle you'd see projected going all night long even in the winter!!! I was constantly like WTF? Why can't they work like this in my state? Shit then i-5 may not suck so bad. Geez.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Patch86]

If only we could establish some sort of formal, coordinated system for extracting money out of people, proportional to their earnings, to pay for local infrastructure projects. Think, boy, think!

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[icebraining]

What's the exact number of millimeters that makes a person tall? The fact that there isn't a specific number does not mean the concept doesn't exist. See "sorites".

(This doesn't mean I agree with GP, I'm just pointing out the fallacy)

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[captainpanic]

Faster construction means higher costs.
The simple reason is that you have to pay crews more if they work in the night. Also, the logistics of a project that runs 24/7 is more complicated than a project that runs only a few hours per week. The costs of a few diggers standing idle is small to the costs of the crews or the asphalt factory that may have to run over-hours. Asphalt is a major bottleneck: it cannot be stored after it has been made. It comes out of the factory, still hot, and must be transported to the site quickly.

I bet that in the US, as well as in Europe, they can actually pull off a trick like in China/Japan easily, but they often deliberately choose not to, to lower the costs. Only vital infrastructure is worked on overnight.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[dargaud]

In the USA, the construction crew will show up, tear everything up, and put out lots of traffic cones, ... and then disappear.

Yes, same technique in Italy. During a trip I counted something like 10 different areas with restricted lanes (or lane changing side) and traffic cones on the highway, some as long as 15km, and not a single worker to be seen. One such area has been like that for over 15 years.

In France it depends. I like the technique they use on the Paris beltway: they shut it down at 10pm, move all the equipment at once under floodlights, work on only 10 to 50 meters, clean up everything and reopen by 6am. Repeat the next night on the next 10 to 50 meters. But it's expensive and the planning must be held tight no matter what otherwise the city can shut down the next day!

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Hatta]

Capitalism: you take a risk with money

And that's the problem with capitalism. Taking a risk with money is non-productive. Labor is productive.

At no point is wealth witheld from anyone

Executives and shareholders take a share of the profits earned off of the backs of labor.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[Hatta]

Anything you can earn through labor is moral. Anything you acquire through investment is immoral.

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[NoImNotNineVolt]

By far the biggest misconception about the economy is that it is a zero sum game, and therefore if someone gets rich, it must be because others are getting poorer.

No, I'd disagree. That's the second biggest misconception. As we can see from your post, though, it's evident that there's a lot of people out there that realize it's not a zero sum game and won't hesitate to point that out. If you haven't heard someone cry out "but the economy is not a zero sum game!", then you've been living under a rock.

By far the biggest misconception about the economy is that it is infinite in size, and therefore if someone possesses wealth, it does not necessarily deprive someone else of wealth.

At any point in time, whether it's now, in the past, or in the future, there is a finite amount of wealth. If person X has all of the wealth, then it is necessarily true that no other person has any wealth. It doesn't matter if the economy is a zero sum game or not. The zero sum game argument is a red herring and has no bearing on the fact that wealth is finite, period.

And yes, the capitalist class earns their wealth by withholding it from the people who do the work, literally. That the people who do the work still benefit from this arrangement (because the economy is not a zero sum game) does nothing to refute this claim. The workers may not be getting poorer in absolute terms, but they clearly are in relative terms, because the real world does work like that. Most people don't get rich; those that do do so by creating opportunities that pull lots of other people up with them, and then exploiting the labor of those other people, literally. Sure, Microsoft made Bill Gates a billionaire but helped out all their other employees as well. However, Bill Gates' accumulation of a sizable personal fortune was not a requirement for this; I don't believe that it was the truckloads of cash that were pouring into Bill's personal bank account that made Microsoft a success. I'll even go so far as to say that if Bill had compensated himself as generously as he compensated his workforce, Microsoft's success would not have been jeopardized. And yes, every single dollar that he paid himself is one fewer dollar Microsoft had to pay other employees.

If you're uncomfortable with some negative connotation of "withholding it", "relatively poorer", or "exploiting", then stop being an apologist for the capitalist class.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[lloydchristmas759]

Kind of true.The section of the 405 Elon Musk drives every day is the most congested of all, though. Have a look at traffic information on Google Maps. Right now (5:05pm local time), more than half of the distance between Hawthorne and Bel Air is red or black. The estimated time for that drive is 27 min, but 55 in the current traffic. And it is the same every day of the week.

I still find the money would be better invested in expanding the rail/subway network. How many lanes can you add to a freeway before it becomes ridiculously dangerous? There are already 17 lanes on some sections of the I-5 over here...

Move

[hondo77]

If he doesn't like his commute so much, maybe he should move closer to "work"? Oh, he wants to live in a densely populated, highly desirable area which means that he knew the commute to Hawthorne was going to suck? Sounds like someone who moves near an airport and complains about the noise.

Hamburger Analogy

[Ichijo]

Widening the 405 is an expensive and only temporary band-aid to the problem of traffic congestion. The hamburger analogy explains why:

Let's give everyone free McDonald's hamburgers. Let's put 10,000 hamburgers a day on a table in front of the Capitol (or wherever).

What would happen? People would take and eat the hamburgers, and once word got out, all 10,000 hamburgers would be taken very quickly every day. We may thus infer that because people need food and they really seemed to like those burgers, McDonald's hamburgers are an important public good.

A city planner might notice a problem: those 10,000 hamburgers just aren't enough. They get taken very early in the morning, so not everybody has a chance to get a hamburger. The obvious solution--because burgers are a highly-valued public good--is to provide more free burgers. So the city planner starts to provide 20,000 hamburgers a day.

You can see where this is going. People start going out of their way to get the free hamburgers, and planning their day around that trip. The city has to keep providing more and more free burgers--eventually millions a day--to keep satisfying the demand for free hamburgers.

Free hamburgers are like unpriced freeway lanes. Eventually they will all get taken up. Any city planner (and Elon Musk) should know that a shortage happens when the price of an item is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand. It's much, much easier and cheaper to fix the problem of traffic congestion once and for all with a variable price set at the market equilibrium rate than by trying to build your way out of traffic congestion. Even Randal O'Toole agrees.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[Ichijo]

Air is a public good because it is "both non-excludable and non-rivalrous in that individuals cannot be effectively excluded from use and where use by one individual does not reduce availability to others." Freeways are not public goods because a vehicle taking up space on the road reduces availability of the road to others.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[ColdWetDog]

You're describing Jevon's Paradox.

And you should be downmodded for using a hamburger analogy in a car thread. That's just not right.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[mjwx]

Free hamburgers are like unpriced freeway lanes.

Not really, a free hamburger is a good, a free highway is a service. That is a critical difference.

The goal of a highway isn't to accommodate cars, it's to accommodate car movement. This means you dont worry about how many cars you can put on there at any one time rather you are concerned with how quickly you can get a car from point A to point B. Adding tolls to roads does not fix congestion, it just makes it more expensive to sit in congestion. It will also force more traffic onto secondary routes, increasing commute times because it takes longer just to get to an expressway. This has been well proven everywhere from Sydney to Bangkok. You cant treat a road like a hamburger, if you constrict supply of a road, demand does not decrease.

To fix congestion, you need to offer alternatives like decent public transport or by better traffic management. I.E. Prohibiting trucks (any vehicle with a GVM >4.5t using the Australian definition) from using expressways in peak hours (7-9 AM and 4-6 PM for arguments sake) will do as much as adding another lane.

Toll roads are not a solution to congestion. They are at best a means to offset the cost of road maintenance or at worse a blatant money grab.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[wisnoskij]

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard.
First off the road is not free. It already costs loads of money to maintain cars, insurance, and gas, and you pay for the road in your taxes. That is like saying the solution to house hold fires is to make people pay x thousand dollars before the firemen turn on the hoses. People do not want to commute in the first place, and they already shelled out the cash to buy those roads/firetrucks.

Preventing people from travelling/taxing it beyond reason is only something you would want to do if you wanted to stifle the economy.

There is not a infinite demand for roads. There are a finite number of people trying to go to a finite number of places. And all of them are either going somewhere to make money or to spend it. The only correct way to plan a cities transit system is to provide enough transit to accommodate all of these trips.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[diamondmagic]

Why it matters is because public versus private goods is the entire point the cited passage. You started this by arguing that air somehow was a non-scarce good (i.e. can potentially be used up until there is "no more air left"). In doing so you provided an example of a free public good, which is neither scarce, nor rivalrous, nor excludable, as the passage requires. Do you have half a brain to be able to rationalize the fact that no matter how hard we breathe, we cannot "use up" the air like we use up hamburgers or freeways? Did that even cross your mind, yes or no?

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[JakartaDean]

That is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. First off the road is not free. It already costs loads of money to maintain cars, insurance, and gas, and you pay for the road in your taxes. That is like saying the solution to house hold fires is to make people pay x thousand dollars before the firemen turn on the hoses.

You're very vehement for someone so incorrect. Use of a road is so different from asking for help from the fire department that I don't see what could possibly make you think they're similar. Okay, they're both public services, I get that. After that, nada.

The way to get the most efficient system is to have supply meet demand, and that cannot be at a price point of zero forever. Having to pay some amount for a service encourages or forces people to make choices, including whether they should work from home that day in the short term. Longer term it might influence their choices in place of employment or residence. That allows the taxpayer you seem so concerned about to maximize the public benefit of the whole system. Mass rapid transit is paid for by the taxpayer, so presumably that should be free also? Let me guess, you only drive so that's not relevant.

Preventing people from travelling/taxing it beyond reason is only something you would want to do if you wanted to stifle the economy.

There is not a infinite demand for roads. There are a finite number of people trying to go to a finite number of places. And all of them are either going somewhere to make money or to spend it. The only correct way to plan a cities transit system is to provide enough transit to accommodate all of these trips.

There is also a finite amount of land to be built upon, a finite amount of public money to use to build roads and so on. In general the people who plan urban transportation are not idiots. They know the costs to the economy, and their political bosses hear the complaints of the public and businesses. They don't set out to underbuild a road system just to piss you off. They try to maximize the effectiveness of the whole system given their constraints due to availability of money, land issues, political realities and so on. It seems that you understand that the number of drivers is not infinite, but you think that everything else is, or should be. That is irrational.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[tlhIngan]

Next those idiots that don't understand economics are going to give people free air to breathe. Obviously with a "free" resource like that everyone is just going to keep on breathing and breathing until there's no more air left.

Well, if you ask someone living in Beijing, they might disagree. Given that it's not people "consuming" the air that's the problem, it's the people polluting it so people can't breathe it anymore.

And in fact, we do charge for it through pollution taxes, carbon taxes, air quality standards, etc. Because if given a chance, people DO spoil it. Hell, LA used to have a huge smog problem until California introduced some of the most stringent air quality standards around.

And that was people consuming air for "free". Now China's actually had to admit the air in Beijing is actually polluted.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[vux984]

Yes and no. Yes there would absolutely be rioting, but it -would- also solve the problem.

People would literally not be able to afford to get to work. So they would quit and find a closer job, or move closer to work. Or both.

Simultaneously employers would find their employees completely unwilling to show up for work unless they got substantial raises to cover the cost of showing up. Employers would embrace telecommuting, move their offices to locales more accessible to employees, etc.

Public transit would take off as a vastly less expensive alternative to commuting.

And people would flee the city en masse to work elsewhere. Abandoning suburban homes devalued by the fact that they are no longer inhabitable by people who plan to work in the city.

The market would sort it out.

Or the city is burnt to the ground in the riots, torn apart by crime due to the massive unemployment and severe turmoil that would ensue.

Either way, if you take a long enough view the problem is solved. I'd hate to live through the transition though, and would lynch anyone that suggested it.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[MachineShedFred]

The premise of your argument is incorrect.

People will get a hamburger if they want a hamburger. People don't drive on a road simply because it's there - they drive on a road because they need to get somewhere it goes. In your comparison, you assume that 100% of the population need to use a road, just like 100% of the population need to eat. That is incorrect.

If you don't build a freeway and people still need to get to that place, they will do it via surface arterials or neighborhood streets causing the neighborhoods to become much less safe due to through traffic that should be on a freeway. The "induced demand" argument is centered around this unmetered traffic that is already happening being put into the proper place, once that place has sufficient carrying capacity.

If you expand a rural section of I-71 between Columbus, OH and Cincinnati, OH, cars don't magically appear to fill the expanded capacity; nor does Washington Courthouse, OH start becoming a suburb of Columbus with people driving 50 miles each way to commute.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[Ichijo]

If you don't build a freeway and people still need to get to that place, they will do it via surface arterials or neighborhood streets causing the neighborhoods to become much less safe due to through traffic that should be on a freeway.

Or they'll carpool or take mass transit and let someone else drive. Or they'll ride a bike and pass all that traffic. Or they'll move closer to where they need to be. Or they'll work a different shift when traffic is lower.

You bring up a good argument for eliminating minimum parking requirements that cities force upon developers and business owners. If there were less parking available at your destination, you might try to avoid the busier periods so you can find a parking space (if parking is unpriced) or cheaper parking, or you would find a different way to get there.

I don't know of any case where variable tolls set at market equilibrium have increased traffic congestion on surface streets.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If I were Musk, I'd just ride in a limo and treat the backseat as my mobile office for the variable amount of time spent in traffic. I'm sure the guy spends most of his time in email or on the phone anyway. He's got the money to do all that and full high-def video-conferencing from his car if he wanted to.

Sure, that doesn't help anyone else. But this article is about his personal frustration and what he's done in response.

Move your company

[asm2750]

Sure, LA has a great talent pool of engineers, but I am sure it would have been cheaper to just have SpaceX in a region with better managed freeways, and less density. I'm sure the engineers wouldn't mind moving since LA is a hell hole these days when it comes to commuting.

Re:Kill the Hippy Operated Vehicle lanes

[Pseudonym Authority]

How about replying instead of trying to knock off my karma?

You're an idiot. Happy?

Re: I found a solution

[DigiShaman]

Oh fuck that! He needs an Ironman suit. Would fit his bloated ego well.

Meanwhile...

[Charliemopps]

Meanwhile, the owner of the construction firm in charge of the project, who's been bleeding the state for every last dime it could just shit himself as he looked up Elon Musks net worth and realized just how much more money he could make if he made the delays even more intolerable.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I prefer the country myself (and just recently took a job in the country to get out of the city), working in the city and living in the country is irrational by almost any objective criteria. Here are some examples (all times are for the round trip):

• A 45 minute commute makes you 40% more likely to get a divorce.
• A 90 minute commute kills your Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, even when you eventually do get home.
• Every 10 minutes commuting decreases your number of social connections by 10%
• Commuters have more neck & back problems (plus obesity), and for every minute they spend commuting there's "a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction". BTW, that study controlled for time spent outside of the home by comparing people who worked 10 hours and commuted 2 hours with those who just worked 12 hours.
• It takes a 40% higher salary to justify an extra hour of commuting. (Measured by some economists based on well-being.)

Here is the article I pulled those stats from, it links to more definitive sources. Basically, it's absolutely not worth it to live further away from your job to have a bigger house. That said, raising a family might be better in the country, unless you're subjecting your kids to a long commute as well.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[ruir]

If I were musk, I would have my personal helicopter.

With more capacity, more people will move here

[BlueCoder]

The widening project was a travesty of wasted money. It's was more about employing people than it was increasing capacity which they didn't want to do since if you did that the rest of the LA area would suffer more crowning and traffic.

With the money they had they had available they could have built a layer on top of the existing freeway that could have withstood a 10.0 earthquake. It's really not that long a stretch they are working on. They could possibly have tunneled through the mountains in two or three places with the same amount of money which wouldn't have bothered existing traffic.

Back in the 50's oil companies bought off LA area city planning. They designed the city for traffic. They decided where the more expensive and less expensive areas would be. Then they put the areas of industry and shopping far away from the cheaper housing which is where more people travel from.

Re:Japan Hamburger fail

[Ichijo]

if the roads are sufficient then you don't have congestion.

That's correct, and when the price of using them is set at the market equilibrium price, the roads will be sufficient in that supply and demand will be in equilibrium. Setting the price below the market equilibrium rate is never a good long-term strategy.

The optimal amount of road lane-miles is not the amount where there's never any congestion when the price is zero, but the amount where the cost of traffic congestion equals the price of the tolls or the cost of adding more road.

Variable pricing does not fix capacity, it rewards incompetence.

And that's why restaurant managers who set different lunch and dinner prices do so because they are incompetent.

No, incompetence is setting the price below the market equilibrium rate as a long-term strategy.

Re:405

[Cyberax]

Actually, LA benefits a LOT even from its current #*$&^#$ mass transit. You see, people who are contributing most to congestion are also most likely to use the mass transit. That was empirically checked during the LA strikes of subway drivers - the congestion skyrocketed even though the increase in number of cars was not that big.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[ub3r n3u7r4l1st]

In America, suburban schools are usually better than inner city schools. Being that said, I am willing to take a slight pay cut for telecommunting privlege and indefinite tenure. Some dumb blonde CEO may disagree with your finding however.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[Miamicanes]

The problem isn't that LA needs wider freeways OR an expanded rail/subway network... LA needs wider freeways *AND* an expanded rail/subway network. People who argue for one to the exclusion of the other are missing the point.

A new rail line won't do a damn thing for gridlock *today* -- it takes a minimum of 25-40 years before a new rail line really starts to pull its own weight (40 when it's the first segment in a city, 25 when you're extending one that's already established). That doesn't mean the rail line shouldn't get built... it means the rail line should get built today, along with the freeway's reconstruction, so that 25-40 years from now, the rail line will have matured enough to start absorbing travel loads from the freeway, and it won't be necessary to demolish and rebuild the whole freeway yet again.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[PrimaryConsult]

In America, suburban schools are usually better than inner city schools. Being that said, I am willing to take a slight pay cut for telecommunting privlege and indefinite tenure.

While true, inner cities also have private schools which are better than suburban public schools (particularly since problem students can easily be expelled, thanks to the safety net of public schools). Take ~$6,000/yr for high school for example - if schools are the main reason for moving to the suburbs, determine if you are losing more than $6,000/yr in money or time by commuting - it may end up actually being cheaper.

Re:Logistics are not the publics problem

[ackthpt]

You suggest that logistics are complicated and causing delays. As a public, that's not our problem, that's the contractors. If the contractor is delayed because they are using a loader or paver across town for a 2 month project, that's not the public's problem. We are paying for THIS stretch of the freeway. You bid and you agreed to do it within the same time window. The contractor is on hook to have a paver on the site as needed, and not delay it because it's not convenient.

Large construction companies that bid on these types of projects need to be held to the dates even more. "Logistics" excuses like yours are just not acceptable. Buy the equipment if you need it, deliver on time. Or for every day you pay a huge fine. Make sure the fines are more than the cost of the actual work and firms will start to deliver on time, and most likely, ahead of time.

You're funny.

Next time you try building a house, see how successful you are at getting all the contractors to arrive and get their work done according to your schedule.

It's no different with a private firm, like Granite Construction, which may have a few pavers or shovels, but they queue the jobs up so they can get things done in an order, but breakdowns happen, unforeseen things interfere, weather can delay things, then all the planning is replaced by a scramble, maybe subcontract or lease from another contractor.

Seemingly simple projects often run over in time and can't be helped.

Aside that, one thing I've noticed which makes traffic move smoother is a few police cars in the traffic. Bust the chops of a few of these jerks who keep changing lanes to save a second or two. That's what gets the whole mass of traffic crawling. Amazing how well it all works when everyone sits in their lane and goes a reasonable speed.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[s.petry]

I don't think anyone is bothered by that attitude at all. It's when people whine and complain about the commute that they "choose" to have that people pull out the pitchforks.

Re:Logistics are not the publics problem

[rahvin112]

So you hold the contractor to a schedule that says a utility line will be moved by a certain date, but the utility company doesn't get it done? If you expect that you better be prepared to pay about 100x more for road construction.

Most states have strict liquidated damages for exceeding schedule. But there are often factors beyond the control of the contractor and beyond the control of the government. When the power company fails to move the power pole that prevents the traffic shift that allows the construction to move forward you do what you have to do and stretch the schedule because you can't do jack shit to the utility company and they know it.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[bitingduck]

I just mapped it, and it comes up about 17-18, but you're still in the right ballpark.

His best bet is to move- as soon as the 405 is built out, it will return to the same congestion as before (that happens to freeways everywhere). The next best thing (and better for LA) would be to fund a rail line that essentially parallels the 405. And maybe throw in a bikeway-- LA has 330 days/year that are good biking weather, but having to do a long commute on city streets can be a pain. There are a few bikeways along the various rivers and/or freeways (SGRT, LARIO) that can make a bike commute competitive with driving, even for very long distances. Shorter than about 10 miles it's faster to bike, and even at 15-20 miles, the combination of bike and train is faster than driving at rush hour.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[gronofer]

I'd just live closer to the business. If there aren't any houses there to buy, I'd build one.

Re:Auditors, investigators, and payo ... uh donati

[bussdriver]

This donations need to go to key politicians, that is just a drop in the bucket. The cost for highways is way out of his league. Upkeep is high as well. Auditing would only go so far, the big issue is that roads are expensive.... you could lower the cost considerably if you prohibited heavy trucks and limited the speed! (F=ma dominates the cost.) I've seen the cost for roads and the load + speed makes it rise so fast, people have no clue how much all these roads legitimately cost. You could double the size of city blocks and remove a lot of waste... however, those roads are cheap and it doesn't end up making a big difference in the long run (it does however SAVE a lot of money...)

All that being said, once you look into the real world numbers you realize that adding 1 lane for billions of dollars only improves traffic by about 10% if I remember correctly. If you take too long to build it, then you gain nothing! Unless you cut down on the INCREASE in cars you can't build it fast enough; as is already the case in just about every major city in the USA. Mass transit is required and far cheaper - like everything there is some function for both and likely an intersection point where cars will always lose.

You could cut down on the number of people... contribute to education - its the most effective politically correct way to control population growth.

The solutions are not something people are going to like. Can't have your cake and eat it too. Musk could work on building a huge rail line... and a car rental service for either end of it.... I'd like to see a train station that moves with the train so you don't have to wait while people get on and off. Even that is cheap compared to highway construction and buying land.

Re:405

[bogjobber]

Or maybe it's because there are 7 million more people in LA County than in Orange County?

You can't move a population of 10+ million people around every day by automobile without traffic jams. It's an impossible task. You can eke out tiny improvements, but just as quickly they are overtaken by increased usage and then you're looking at an even larger, more expensive and time-consuming upgrade to keep traffic moving . The 405 is a perfect example of this.

Auto travel does not scale efficiently and over the long term LA is going to have to significantly improve its mass transit (ie subway, light rail, street cars NOT buses) to have any chance of improving congestion. Thankfully the government understands this and is moving beyond 1950s urban planning policies.

But it's LA, and no place on earth is more beholden to the notion that a car is freedom and taking public transit is for the unwashed masses. Even when it's obvious to everyone involved that upgrading the freeway system is a huge, inefficient pain in the ass and a waste of public money you still get people like yourself clamoring that they should do *more* of it. It's absurd.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[techno-vampire]

Another nice thing about motorcycles is that they're allowed to use the carpool lane.

Re: If he has the money and is willing to spend it

[murphtall]

*sources needed* 25 years ? 40 years?

Ten to one it is a rounding error on his tax dodge

[SmallFurryCreature]

Ten to one it is a rounding error on his tax dodges oops sorry, tax evasions.

Anyway, sooner or later, the people always get the government and infrastructure they deserve... the US government and infrastructure rotten to the core? How... unexpected, giving the nature of your average American who rather deny himself a thousand dollars for the fear someone else might get a penny of him.

That will go a long way

[Chrisq]

Since this article says

"The cost to construct one lane-mile of a typical 4-lane divided highway can range from $3.1 million to $9.1 million per lane-mile in rural areas depending on terrain type and $4.9 million to $19.5 million in urban areas depending on population size."

I would see $50,000 as a drop in the ocean. Of course if it is a bribe to get that particular road prioritized then it could be a very effective drop...

Re:Kill the Hippy Operated Vehicle lanes

[serviscope_minor]

He's got a 6-digit id. He's still relatively young.

And you've got a 5 digit ID. You're still a plonker.

Seriously.

I have a 6 digit ID in the 600k range (not the 500k range) and I've been reading slashdot for about 10 years. Maybe a bit longer. The poster you're complaining about has been here longer than me.

If you're claiming that 10 years is "new around here" then you're doing a fantastic job of demonstrating why waving teeny IDs is nothing more than e-peen waving and contributes nothing of value.

Re:Logistics are not the publics problem

[jabuzz]

You fine the utility company the cost of the increase in the schedule of widening the road. You will soon find that the utility company makes sure that stuff is moved out the way according to schedule.

Re:405

[bogjobber]

Actually, LA does have a much more dense population than Orange County, particularly around downtown. Orange County is similar in population density to The Valley or the western parts of IE. And if you drive into downtown from other parts of LA County on the 10, 5, or 405, you'll notice the same phenomenon you described coming up from Orange County.

And I don't have any data to back it up, but I guarantee that the number of cars going into LA proper is a lot smaller than the number leaving during the morning commute. Traffic is always always easier to manage the further you get from a major city center. If you look at other cities like Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, DC you see exactly the same problems.

Re:technically

[MachineShedFred]

The Interstate numbering standards are not random, nor are they some secret. Here's how they work:

1- or 2-digit freeway = primary route
even last digit = east / west route
odd last digit = north / south route
3-digit freeway = loop or spur route from 1- or 2-digit primary route
3-digit freeway, even first digit = loop route
3-digit freeway, odd first digit = spur route
1- or 2-digit freeway numbers are numbered ascending, starting west to east for odd numbered routes, and south to north for even numbered routes. Thus, I-5 on the west coast and I-95 on the east coast; and I-10 across the southern US and I-90 across the northern US.
3-digit freeway numbers are unique per state. Thus, California, Oregon, and Washington all having a 405 loop route that connects twice with I-5. Interstate 105 in Oregon is a spur route that goes from I-5 to a downtown terminus in Eugene.

There are a few oddities in the system due to an early convention that allowed a "directional prefix" in a name if a freeway split, this has been abandoned causing abnormalities in numbering. Example: I-84 used to be I-80N before being re-signed, and now I-84 is actually south of I-82 in Eastern Oregon / Washington. There are other oddities too, but they are few in comparison to the rest of the system.

Hope that clears it up.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[tehcyder]

Or, like the owner of my company, occasionally fly his helicopter from home to office.

Yes, sometimes there really is no other way of saying "I'm a highly paid douchebag with a vastly inflated sense of my own importance".

Re:I found a solution

[tehcyder]

Amphibious tank? James Bond style Lotus Esprit/submarine? Nuclear-powered jetpack?

Better still, why doesn't he use the infinite energy of his ego to power a Star Trek transporter system between his house and office?