Key vote looms for modern tolls on the Eastside
At stake is a proposal for a dynamic tolling system on two lanes of the I-405 corridor. Both toll-paying express lane users and regular drivers would benefit. And the funding could provide needed money to complete Eastside projects.
King County
The best chance for the state legislature to advance simple good sense in transportation policy comes this week. On March 16 the Senate Transportation Committee will take up whether express toll lanes should be installed by 2014 on I-405 as a forthcoming project adds new capacity between Bellevue and Bothell.
What’s new, at issue, and important, is this: When the new improvements are finished that particular section of I-405 will generally be five lanes in each direction. Will two of those lanes in each direction be tolled as express lanes?
This could set a course for highways here to operate more efficiently, for drivers to make choices as to how they use their roads, and for dollars to be raised more fairly for transportation investments than through the continued wholesale reliance on the obsolete mechanism of ever-higher gas taxes. In the mix, add the benefits of expanded bus rapid transit services on roadways that would effectively do double duty for riders as well as drivers. Finally, we would be insisting on the best use of roads we already have so as to minimize building more new pavement than we really need.
Here's how express toll lanes work when they operate in tandem with adjoining regular lanes: Tolls to enter the express lanes will constantly be adjusted through the course of the day. When traffic along the corridor gets heavier, the toll or price for using the express lane goes up. When traffic is light, the toll is low.
The toll level will always be set to attract from the regular lanes the volume of vehicles, but no more, than can flow in the express lanes at good speeds without clogging bumper-to-bumper back-ups. Users opting to pay the going rate for the express lanes will always enjoy good speeds. That’s how they get their money’s worth.
It’s all made possible by constant, automated traffic flow monitoring and the convenience of electronic toll collection systems. Finally, new technology can start delivering dramatic gains for smarter roadways.
The side benefit is to the users remaining in the regular lanes. At peak periods the express lanes where price both attracts and protects flow will routinely carry much more traffic than if it were just another jammed regular lane. Therefore the adjoining free lanes have less traffic to handle. They, too, should move faster than if the even heavier volumes weren’t being moved efficiently in the tolled lanes.
Those who pay benefit a lot and those who don’t pay still benefit some. Everyone is better off than in the system captive to how we do things today. If this seems too good to be true, examples from around the country are already delivering in practice what express toll lanes promise in theory.
So, how are we coming in getting to this better place? The bill to approve beginning the tolling approach in 2014 between Bellevue and Bothell passed the House two weeks ago. Its fate in the Senate in the committee chaired by Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen (D–Camano Island) probably hangs on finding a Republican vote or two.
It’s ironic that express lane tolling in the Washington legislature should hang on its ability to attract Republicans. The concept of express toll lanes really caught national interest several years ago when free market economists gained a toehold in the Bush Administration's Department of Transportation. They recognized, as virtually everyone now does, that funding is scarce everywhere for transportation investments. Building your way out of congestion with expensive new free roads could never work in the thinking of a free market economist.
On a national level, this is not simply a Republican insight. In Washington, D.C, the respected Bipartisan Policy Center opined in 2009 on improving the performance of transportation systems across America. It saw this kind of tolling as valuable for addressing transportation’s economic, environmental, and energy impacts. Two Democrats, former Detroit Mayor Dennis Archer and former Minnesota Rep. Martin Szabo, and two Republicans, former New York Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, and, from Seattle, former Sen. Slade Gorton chaired the report.
From economics, any diligent college economics student appreciates the power of a fluctuating market price to put supply and demand into equilibrium at the optimum level of output — translated here as traffic flow.
From physics, every driver knows from direct experience that there is a sweet spot level of freeway traffic. Even in heavy traffic, everyone moves along fine until traffic volume grows just past the sweet spot. Then just a few drivers tap the brakes for a little more following distance or experiences a little nervousness merging lanes. And in no time that flow constricts and everyone bunches up and slows to a crawl.
That’s the science for using up-and-down tolls to pace traffic, as I discovered with the how-to-pour-rice-through-a-funnel demonstration that surfaced in response to the $1,000 MacDonald Challenge Prize contest in 2006. The key is not letting traffic surge past the sweet spot to clog, just like pouring rice too fast into the funnel. The variable entry price on an express toll lane balances the level of vehicle demand against available capacity so that drivers always stay in the sweet spot.
Since economics and physics work together in an express toll lane configuration beside regular lanes, it’s no surprise that express toll lanes already in operation at several locations around the country are proving a big success.
The best current example is probably I-95 heading north out of Miami. A toll system very similar to the I-405 proposal began in late 2008. A peak hour trip in the seven-mile express lane costs an average $1.75-$2, but on one occasion has reached $6. The lane with tolls to control traffic and maintain speed that used to operate as an ordinary HOV lane at an average rush hour speed of 20 miles per hour now operates at 56 miles per hour. Off-peak the toll falls as low as 25 cents.
The striking fact on Miami’s I-95, however, is found in the adjoining free lanes. Their former rush hour average was 20 mph. Now they operate at 41 miles per hour. The drivers of just 25,000 vehicles a day — a tenth of the vehicles on this I-95 stretch — pay for the speed premium. But the system delivers for everyone, even those who don’t use the tolled lanes.
Washington has its own modest pilot project on State Highway 167. This is a more lightly traveled highway than I-95 north of Miami. But it is a highway segment that during rush hour still shows high levels of congestion. About 2,200 cars per day use the express lane, especially when congestion backs up the rest of the highway.
Two years after the old HOV lane was converted to a tolled lane, WSDOT has found the number of cars in that lane at peak rush hour had increased by 12 percent and were moving at the speed limit. The typical speeds in the adjoining regular land had increased by 11 percent. Indeed the volume of the traffic in the adjoining regular lanes actually slightly increased. In short: a more useful, more efficient highway for everybody.
Even though the relatively short congestion peaks on State Highway 167 mean that its benefits fall mostly in congestion reduction and not in revenue, the ever-growing use of the lane will push the pilot project into the black (revenues more than covering toll operating costs) some point in 2011.
Customer surveys on the pilot program on State Highway 167, mirroring surveys of express toll lanes in Orange County, California, show that the users of the express lanes are hardly confined to Lexus drivers. People form all walks and stations of life choose to pay to use the express lanes regularly or on occasion — hourly service people like plumbers driving between jobs, delivery van drivers, and parents hustling to day-care pickups, ordinary people late for the dentist or a dinner date.
What a novel idea! Finally, people may make their own choices of their own individual balance between money spent and time spent.
Promising results characterize systems of mixed tolled and free lanes now operating in Florida, California, and elsewhere. They are helping drive plans for start-ups, extensions, and even entire networks in metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, San Diego, Atlanta, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C. along with other locations. Several metropolitan areas, not just the Settle/Eastside area, are planning express toll lane projects and even entire networks.
Then there is the prospect of tolls not just increasing the efficiency of the highway, but also helping to pay for transportation improvements. That’s where the specific circumstances of I-405 — a highly-travelled roadway with certain traffic growth in its future — have drawn out significant support for the express toll lane proposal.
Interstate 405 and its connecting offshoot State Highway 167 from Renton to Kent, Auburn, and south is a 40-mile long corridor. State legislation in 2003 and 2005 earmarked piecemeal funding for a several projects the corridor needs. Drivers have seen many improvements already completed, and construction will soon start as scheduled on lane additions expected to be completed in 2014 at a cost of about $330 million between Bellevue and Bothell.
But the funding expectations for other critical projects between Bellevue and Renton, and especially the notorious 405/167 interchange in Renton — one of the worst congestion bottlenecks in the state — suffered voter turndowns in Referendum 51 in 2001 and the so-called Roads + Transit package in 2007. There is today no money for the projects.
Many local officials along the corridor strongly believe that the express lane tolling approach eventually can be extended the length of I-405, perhaps providing 40 percent or more of the funding for the now-orphan projects. Details of that long-view approach still must be developed. But this is a partial plan for funding that is much more pragmatic than hoping that a future gas tax package from Olympia will bestow a behemoth bequest to wholly carry just one more big Central Puget Sound area highway need.
Officials on a corridor-long executive committee who support this year’s legislation include mayors or council members of Algona, Bellevue, Pacific, Kirkland, Newcastle, Kent, Auburn, Puyallup, Renton, and Tukwila as well as Roger Bush, chair of the Pierce County Council, Dave Gossett of the Snohomish County Council, and Reagan Dunn of the King County Council.
The Puget Sound Regional Council has joined that endorsement. That’s unsurprising since its recently adopted Transportation 2040 regional plan is premised on a broad adoption of tolling approaches to support any remotely achievable financial plan for 30 years of needed regional transportation investments. Key businesses dependent on the corridor, notably Microsoft and Boeing, also support the proposal. So does the Downtown Bellevue Association.
Metro Transit and Sound Transit also have endorsed the proposal. That grows from the concern that simple HOV lanes clogged with traffic now frustrate any vision for stronger bus rapid transit routes serving throughout the critical north-south routes on the Eastside. There is enormous appeal to the ancillary benefit of speed-reliable express toll lanes: a backbone for bus rapid transit networks without huge costs for separate right-of-way. The Miami, San Diego, Minneapolis, and San Francisco areas already are leading the way in integrating express bus expansions into their express toll lane plans.
Another important endorsement of the express toll lane approach on I-405 comes on behalf of an expert review panel for the project and offered by Robert Poole, a national transportation consultant and Director of Transportation Policy for the free-market-oriented Reason Foundation. Poole and the Reason Foundation have for years vigorously pushed for broader use of managed lane tolling to make American transportation systems more cost-effective and efficient.
In fact, environmentally-inclined transportation gurus, especially at the Environmental Defense Fund, align their own arguments with Poole’s on the benefits from express toll lanes. Fewer hours of stalled traffic and better bus rapid transit weigh the scales in favor of using variable tolling to make highways more efficient, avoid the dollar cost and land gobble of huge highway build-outs, and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
What’s not to like about a proposal that promises faster travel, less delay, more efficient use of highways, a user-based revenue source for highway improvement costs that lessens the pressure for statewide gas tax increases, and in the bargain helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions?
If there is a jam up in Olympia, the main explanation seems to lie in the stiff resistance to the I-405 express toll lane proposal offered by former Mercer Island state Sen. Jim Horn, a Republican leader in Olympia on transportation until his election defeat in 2004. Horn now speaks for the Eastside Transportation Association, the group over the years consistently allied with views of Bellevue real estate owner Kemper Freeman, Jr. Horn’s senior statesman position in the Republican caucuses has been reinforced by a blizzard of statistics and the passion of his conviction that most transportation problems can best be solved simply by building more highway lanes.
Horn recognizes that some kind of alternative tolling proposal needs to be thrown into the discussion. In a telephone conversation, he reiterated his long-held affection for gas tax increases. But he has acknowledged that some toll component is probably necessary to fund the remaining important components of the I-405 corridor program. So he urges an eventual flat fee tolling program for all lanes, all days, all hours — maybe a dollar or dollar and a half — for the central section of the I-405 corridor.
With that kind of blunderbuss tolling counter-proposal that eschews the power of premium travel lanes with guaranteed reliability and high use, Horn and his Freeman-centered allies at the Eastside Transportation Association turn their back on the power of premium express lanes with guaranteed reliability and high use now made possible by technology and gaining acceptance around the country.
That plan focuses only on raising money and forgoes efficiency gains for the roadway corridor as a whole. It also offers no vision of how bus rapid transit, a huge need on the Eastside, could quickly and cheaply score a major improvement in how people can get around on the Eastside. And an all day/all lanes toll that would apply even when the corridor was uncongested will push a measure of traffic onto local streets. It’s not a good plan for I-405 and it’s a terrible plan with which to oppose modern options that make better roadway sense, better environmental sense and fairer financial sense.
More broadly, everyone must see the Senate Transportation Committee review of the I-405 express lane toll proposal as an important early indication of what comes next in transportation policy and finance. Will modern, efficiency-driven tolling help shoulder the load for transportation funding even as it reduces the need for peak-driven highway capacity expansions?
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Comments:
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 6:42 a.m. Inappropriate
It will be far more efficient just to vote out of office anyone who supports Tolling 405.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 6:52 a.m. Inappropriate
I think this makes a ton of sense. Freeway capacity is a scarce resource. The most efficient way to allocate that resource is to auction it off to those who value it most highly --- ie, by using variable tolling.
We already have a grossly inefficient method of tolling --- it's called "I'll run the risk of getting a ticket if I'm in such a hurry that I need to jump in the HOV lane with only one person in the car." I simply calculate the value of getting to my destination on time (will I miss a flight if I'm late or will I simply be a couple of minutes late to dinner?), then make a decision. Guess what --- I've never paid the state for my use of the HOV lane in these circumstances, because I've never received a citation for doing so. This is grossly inefficient from the state's perspective --- it has lost out on a lot of revenue that I would have gladly paid for the use of the state's valuable resource (freeway capacity).
I am anti-tax. I gave a lot of money to defeat 1098. But I support variable tolling.
I don't pay gas taxes --- I drive an electric car. However, I have no problem paying my "fair share" for the use of state roads. Tolling is the best way to do that.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 7:40 a.m. Inappropriate
Let's see whether Andi Hill or Steve Litzow or Joe Fain (a new trio of GOP Senators from King County) represent the new Republican party or the one that Jim Horn and Kemper Freeman decimated with their ham-handed ideology.
We'll know whether any of these new promising young Republican are willing to stand up to the crusty GOP old guard by their votes on this sensible approach to reducing congestion.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 7:56 a.m. Inappropriate
Kemper wants to toll MORE lanes on 405 than Doug McDonald? Stop the presses!!
Query to Doug. How has the premium tolling experiment worked on 167, in terms of revenue collections and overall traffic flow?
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 8:37 a.m. Inappropriate
Well, I'll be damned! I'm with Cameron.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 2:59 p.m. Inappropriate
How is it that every major transportation project currently being bludgeoned into reality reduces capacity and increases congestion for commuters in the region…AWV, I-520 termination in Montlake, Mercer Street Iⅈ, etc? And now this press release suggests that to adequately fund these marginalized projects we need aggressive “modern” tolling on the new stretch of I-405.
I’d rather have those old fashion transportation projects that are designed to improve people’s ability to move from one place to the other…without the additional billions for parks and recreation, landscaping and amenities for affluent neighborhoods or turning our roads into tax collecting schemes to underwrite future sub-standard projects.
I don’t think people realize the hardship that is in store for them due to the mismanagement of our transportation resources.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 3:48 p.m. Inappropriate
I'm a commuter and I don't mind paying for the right to use the roadway.
Countries all over the world have toll roads. A big chunk of the United States has toll roads. It makes perfect sense for us to have them too.
I agree that transportation dollars have been wasted in the Puget Sound region. Sound Transit is a disaster, and the anti-car mentality of the Seattle mayor and his minions is absurd. But that doesn't mean that we should not toll the roads in order to more efficiently allocate the road space that we do have.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 4:36 p.m. Inappropriate
Only the poor will suffer.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 10:41 p.m. Inappropriate
Underneath all the verbage is a fairly simple social fact. This is part of the "Roads for the Rich" program that has as its basic reality the ability of financially comfortable people to pay tolls and get nice speedy trips on the public highway. We will be seeing the separation of sheep and goats this spring on 520. Does five bucks mean nothing to you? Then get right on our freeway. It is sad that Crosscut joins the "cause" to take care of the comfortable, no matter what citizens of limited wealth endure as a consequence.
Posted Tue, Mar 15, 10:59 p.m. Inappropriate
Well said, Spike.
And I'll echo Ivan - I agreed with Cameron AND Carlson on this one.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 7:10 a.m. Inappropriate
Oh here we go again. "Lexus lanes" and other class warfare from Spike and bubbleator, conveniently ignoring that much of the rest of the world --- for most of history --- has used toll roads. Why should roads in Washington be different from roads in Germany, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc?
Governments routinely sell scarce resources to the highest bidders --- gas rights, grazing rights, wireless spectrum. Because of actions taken by environmentalists to cause freeways to become a scarce resource, the government is simply allocating it most efficiently by selling it off.
We're not talking about forcing people to pay --- there will be free alternatives, on the freeway and on surface streets.
Instead of addressing the logic of the argument, Cameron, Spike and bubbleator simply wave the flag of "it helps the rich" as if that were a rationale argument against.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 9:07 a.m. Inappropriate
Here's my "logic," Mr. Smart Guy: Any politician who votes for tolls loses my support and incurs my active opposition forever. Just because "the rest of the world" does it doesn't mean I am forced to accept it as either necessary or desirable.
If that's what the majority wants, then too bad for me. For now, I am guessing that my position is the majority position.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 9:11 a.m. Inappropriate
Mr ivan - your logic boils down to "I don't like it so I don't like it." I get it. Seems entirely cogent to me. Thanks so much for raising the level of discussion on Crosscut
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 9:54 a.m. Inappropriate
-PJS if you don’t mind paying for the right to use the roadway, are we to believe that you don’t mind handing your money over to those who you agree are wasting transportation dollars in the Puget Sound region, who created and are administering to the disaster that is Sound Transit, and are of an anti-car mentality that you consider absurd?
If this is true...and you are rich, would you mind paying my tolls too?
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 11:19 a.m. Inappropriate
In fact, all toll monies should be used to reduce general taxation.
So, it seems that every lane should be a toll lane of one sort or the other -- first class, business class, coach.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 12:25 p.m. Inappropriate
Tolling makes sense, but only if we toll every lane. Keep the HOV lane to encourage carpooling and transit, and toll every onramp. Use flexible tolls (from nothing when there is no congestion to multi-dollar rates at rush hour).
Tolling one lane disrupts the helpfulness of normal HOV lanes and creates class resentment. A general toll applies to everyone and would reduce congestion for everyone, and be cheaper per person because you'd be tolling more people. It's far superior to the Lexus Lane strategy of our current and former WSDOT highway czars.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 3:51 p.m. Inappropriate
It seems that the commenters squawking loudly against tolling roadways are the resident Libertarians. This is interesting in that the roadway system in the USA is largely socialist, subsidized by roughly equal parts fuel tax, and non-fuel tax (income tax, property tax, sales tax, debt). Tolling them slides the scale a bit more to the Libertarian side of the spectrum by adding another user fee. Consider if we were to privatize the roadway system (as Libertarians want to privatize USA passenger rail), how much would the toll be?
How can you Libertarians continue to advocate a socialist highway system?
For the record, I do advocate a socialist transportation policy, but one that does not subsidize the irrational dominance of single occupancy vehicles.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 7:25 p.m. Inappropriate
It's simple really, my tax dollars help to create the roads system, my tax dollars help to maintain the roads system. I have a finite amount of money to spend on roads. Another Two, Three or Five thousand dollars a year to be spent on roads and Transit is simply not a value proposition I can support. Rather than roll over and play dead, I choose to challenge the current expenditure of funds and ask if this tolling model is truely the most efficient way to accomplish improved throughput and congestion relief for the masses.
If you want to make the gas tax a 50 or 60 cents a gallon you would still be money ahead if the highway 167, 60 year payback model is implimented region wide. The problem is there is a social control aspect to this Tolling proposal that certain planners will not let go of. Fire the leadership and keep firing the leadership until their "vision" changes.
Posted Wed, Mar 16, 10:49 p.m. Inappropriate
I'm an anti. Another blow for the rich. Just like the principle of insurance spreading the risk among many was decimated to the benefit of the rich, here comes the limiting of freedom to travel to the rich. And, in point of fact, I understand the numbers haven't worked well at all on 167. I have heard that the costs to collect the tolls are greater than the income. Has anyone taken a hard look at this? And if this idea spreads, where will it stop? Will I eventually be charged for traveling my local streets?
- WRM
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Posted Thu, Mar 17, 8:56 a.m. Inappropriate
To PJS: "I don't like it because I don't like it" is as high a level of discussion as elitists such as you are deserve.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 10:51 a.m. Inappropriate
So PJS has an argument based essentially on the "other places give special privileges to their rich and powerful, why shouldn't we?" Yes, and the Soviet Union had designated highway lanes for politburo members and party leaders, so why don't we? PJS sounds like someone with not enough places to pay for visible evidence of his wealth. This would be a good place to show it off. Actually the highways seem like a good place to stand up for an equitable democracy, for the idea that in some areas of life we are all equal, and money can't buy everything. Read today's SeaTimes and you will see that the Roads for the Rich crowd are already aiming at tolls on 405 from Lynnwood to Bellevue. Do you think that is where it will end?
And what is sad, is that PJS gets an "Editor's Pick" symbol, so that Crosscut puts its imprimatur openly on the elitist side of this issue. No surprise. I think the editor's table might have an internal discussion about how elitist they can get before Crosscut won't have enough readers to be sustained.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 11:42 a.m. Inappropriate
Spike, how equitable is the system for people who do not have cars, don't drive much, or take the train? Why should these people be forced to finance others single occupancy vehicle travel?
In the rest of the world, travel alone in a 5000 lb car is regarded as a luxury.
Perhaps this difference is what some people refer to as the 'American Way of Life'...
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 12:12 p.m. Inappropriate
Andy -- I am trying to decide whether to go for humor or seriousness here. In the area of transportation, this is indeed the "American Way" of life. That is, we have had a system that allows the greatest number of our citizens the ability to move freely around the country. It doesn't cover everyone. There will always be people flying to Mt. Rushmore in helicopters and others who take Metro from Everett to Auburn, but most people can afford (until now) to move freely. (When I read these posts, I wonder if any of you ever lived in a factory worker's family in the fifties on 90 dollars a week.) This "Roads for the Rich" program is designed to inhibit that American freedom. There was a time when Americans had a good rail network that allowed movement without autombile ownership, but that freedom was destroyed by government and railways between 1955 and 1970. The GOP are still trying to destroy the remnants of the passenger railway, when the best use of public money would be to bring it back for all. So, having killed rail traffic and made bus traffic intolerable, we spend our time and money building dedicated highway lanes for those able to pay the tolls. As for the vast bulk of the citizenry? Let them eat cake.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 12:15 p.m. Inappropriate
And by the way, Andy, saying that people who might disagree with you are merely "squawking loudly" doesn't advance your argument. All it does is show that you are so cock sure that you feel free to go to ad hominem tactics, to demean people who might have alternative perspectives from yours.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 12:27 p.m. Inappropriate
I love it - the critiques of my position and the attacks on me are based principally on charges of "elitism" and class warfare. No substantive discussion of the issue or viable alternatives.
Fact --- under the proposal, single occupancy drivers on 405 will be no worse off than they are now. They will not be forced to pay any tolls.
Fact --- under the proposal, single occupancy drivers on 405 will have options that they do not have now, namely, the option to pay money to go in the HOT lane. That low income driver racing to pick up her child to bring him to a doctor appointment now has an option if she is running late --- she can pay a toll and legally drive in the faster lane. How is this bad for said low income driver?
Fact --- basic principles of finance have economic value. Thus, under the proposal, all single occupancy drivers on 405 will be better off than they are now, simply by reason of the fact that they have this option. This is true even if there is no increased traffic flow in the single occupancy lane; of course, the studies show that there will be increased traffic flow, so if the studies are correct, low income drivers will have an additional benefit.
I acknowledge that our various traffic authorities have historically used their money poorly. However, the benefits above accrue regardless of the use of the additional revenue.
I also acknowledge that I am among the elite, as I assume many critics would define it. I went to the right private high school, university and graduate school. I belong to wonderful country clubs (plural) and social clubs. I sit on wonderful non-profit boards. I have a high income and net worth. But none of those things are at all relevant to the matter at hand - the proposal that Secretary MacDonald discusses provides real benefit to all drivers, including low income drivers. Envy, jealousy and class warfare do not make it otherwise.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 12:39 p.m. Inappropriate
PJS - Since untolled lanes on 405 are purely hypothetical for now, perhaps people might be skeptical. Let's talk about the untolled lanes on the 520 bridge. Wait, are you saying that there are untolled lanes there? Your argument seems to be missing something.
I would suggest that your high income, etc., are at the center of any discussion about the creation of highway lanes that serve people with high incomes. You would like to dismiss that aspect of the discussion, but it is at the very core of the issue. And if you readily admit that you have had no personal experience of surviving on working class wages then the dilemma of this big social issue might not carry due weight with you, dont you think? There are a lot of people who are not worried about getting to tee times at their country clubs.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 1:06 p.m. Inappropriate
Spike --- the article above is about HOT lanes on 405. I was not at all addressing tolls on 520, nor was Secty MacDonald's article.
My experience undoubtedly frames my views, but has no effect on the merits of either Secty MacDonald's article or my arguments. I'm delighted to be attacked as a messenger; said attack has no effect on the validity of the message.
And none of my country clubs has tee times --- we are sufficiently elite that we don't need them.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 3:14 p.m. Inappropriate
-PJS, you have raised the level of discussion to nose-bleed heights and I enjoy your candor. I understand your position, but I still don’t see why you’re so dismissive and casual about the waste, judgment errors, influence-peddling, etc. that squander billions of transportation dollars? You seem to be a critic of Sound Transit and those with an anti-car mentality yet you are clearly beating the drum for this brochure from the DOT.
I think it’s that you’re selective in your expectations for accountability. The DOT is preparing to make your driving experience much more pleasant when the little people are taxed out your way, so maybe their transgressions aren’t so bad. That’s why our Wall Street geniuses are laying in tanning beds instead of picking up cans along the highway. They screwed the right people.
Posted Thu, Mar 17, 4:46 p.m. Inappropriate
"squawking loudly" an argumentum ad hominem? Wow, the standards are being raised around here.
Posted Fri, Mar 18, 9:54 a.m. Inappropriate
Since Good2Go is already operating on 167, why not 405 and 5? It seems like its a win situation.
However, I do feel that if I'm paying extra for something, I should get better customer service and input into the "business" of running things.
For example, I was inconvenienced yesterday traveling north on 167 for a mile or so. When I got to the 405 interchange I could see that the backup was due to people entering the northbound lanes towards the Eastside who were queueing up on the 167 highway. I was going west/south on 405 and that direction was completely open.
So was I paying for "congestion pricing" or simply being the victim of the often poorly planned, inadequate and badly designed PWN highway system?
And if they start charging higher fees the worse the traffic is, then isn't their an incentive for them to not make it better...why would someone who makes money off of bad design want to ever fix it (I mean, ask Microsoft, right?)
Posted Mon, Mar 21, 8:09 a.m. Inappropriate
Several people have posted that tolls are used throughout the world, particularly on America's east coast, so they should be welcome here. Keep in mind that Washington opted to forego general tolling in favor of the gas tax, which is why we have very few tolls, but one of the highest gasoline taxes in the country. Until recently, tolls were used only for a dedicated purpose (like the 520 bridge), then came off. Now we're told that tolling should be used as a traffic management device -- while another gas tax increase is on the drawing board.
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