Revisiting the Los Angeles Congestion Pricing Plan: Good Idea After All?
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 05. 7.08
In a side conversation a few days ago, Emerald City's Siel -- a fellow Angeleno -- took me to task for summarily dismissing the potential merits of the recently proposed congestion pricing scheme. She helpfully pointed me to a column penned by her friend, Damien Newton, who makes a convincing argument in favor of HOT (high-occupancy toll) lanes. His spirited defense rests on two central points: First, the pricing structure of the HOT lanes has not yet been hammered out -- so people like me should stop belaboring the equity issue for now -- and, secondly, this scheme should help expand and improve the MTA's services. He writes:
"Once the schedule's nailed down, it very well could be that cars with more than one passenger will be paying a very reduced rate and cars with three or more people driving free. It could also be that cars with two or more passengers will be able to access the HOT lane in non-peak hour periods for free, but have to pay a small fee during peak hours. The truth is, carpoolers probably won’t be seeing much, if any, of a change in the cost of their commute."
He goes on to slam the "class warfare" critique articulated by some mainstream writers as a "red herring," claiming (rightly) that few of the working poor probably commute in the HOV (high-occupancy vehicle, or carpool) lanes. Even for those that do, he argues, wouldn't public transit provide them with a "more cost-effective" alternative to "owning a car and paying for gas and insurance every month."
Citing a government-led study, he says that op-ed writers and other critics of the scheme should just let voters decide -- and, if this survey is any indication, people of all income levels clearly support converting HOV lanes to HOT lanes.
Another editorial penned by Roger Snoble and Doug Failing, the Metro's CEO and director of a Caltrans office, respectively, also (unsurprisingly) comes out in favor of the $213 million plan. While I'd still quibble with their suggestion that implementing the scheme would "squeeze a lot more capacity out of our congested freeways" -- after all, there is already little unused capacity now so converting the lanes probably won't free up much more -- their economic rationale seems fair:
Building new freeways, or even expanding existing ones, is extremely difficult. The region is so built up, and the environmental and funding hurdles so onerous, it would be decades before any construction was complete. That's why Metro and Caltrans sought a federal grant to test congestion-reduction pricing on the San Bernardino Freeway between downtown and El Monte and the Foothill Freeway from Duarte to Pasadena, and on the transit way in the center of the Harbor Freeway if there's funding left over. The demonstration project could be in place by the end of 2010.Carpool lanes on these freeways would be converted into toll lanes where optimum speeds of 45 to 50 mph would be guaranteed by variable pricing. Although our tolls haven't been set, in other U.S. cities they have ranged from 50 cents to $10 a trip. However, freeway express buses and vanpools would not be charged a toll, and Metro and Caltrans are also considering giving regular public transit users toll lane credits to use on those occasions when they have to drive.
Moreover, drivers would be charged less during off-peak hours than at rush hours, with the expectation that many people will then change their commuting behavior to take advantage of lower rates or beefed-up ride-share programs. Vehicles in the general-purpose lanes would pay nothing.
Much will depend, of course, on how the plan, if it is approved, becomes implemented -- whether all those extra revenues fund enough new Metro projects to make a difference to commuters, for example. Though I may not yet be fully on-board with the plan, I certainly recognize that it has a lot of merit -- and, if done right, could do a lot of good for L.A.'s clogged freeways.
Image courtesy of Burning Image via flickr
Via ::Emerald City: Heated anti-HOT lane arguments don't add up (blog)
See also: ::Is Congestion Pricing Right for Car-Happy Los Angeles?, ::Bloomberg Congestion Fee a No-Go
In 1963, Los Angeles politicians were given an offer too good to refuse. The Alweg Monorail Company, which had gained world-wide recognition for its demonstration monorail at Disneyland in 1959 and at the 1962 Seattle Century 21 Exposition, was looking to establish a major foothold in the world of urban rail transit. "We are pleased to submit this day a proposal to finance and construct an Alweg Monorail rapid transit system 43 miles in length, serving the San Fernando Valley, the Wilshire corridor, the San Bernardino corridor and downtown Los Angeles." So wrote Sixten Holmquist, then President of the Alweg Rapid Transit Systems in his June 4, 1963 letter to the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). He went on to detail the financing aspect, "this is a turn-key proposal in which a group will share risk, finance the construction, and turn over to MTA a completed and operating system to be repaid from MTA revenues." The entire system came to $105,275,000, "plus any applicable sales tax." Alweg also agreed to conduct feasibility studies for expansion of the system over the entire Los Angeles Metropolitan area if the offer was accepted. Undoubtedly, if the monorail had been built, it would by now have been expanded to all major LA destination points and beyond.
Most people in Los Angeles today are totally unaware of Alweg's offer. The subway system that today parallels only a tiny portion of what would have been the LA Monorail alignment is an extraordinarily expensive joke. An unfortunate joke that has cost USA and California taxpayers billions of dollars, not millions, and yet it still doesn't travel far enough to be of any great value to most LA basin citizens.
What happened to the Alweg proposal? In their infinite wisdom, Los Angeles supervisors at the time rejected the wonderful offer in favor of no rail. A former Alweg engineer once told me that there was much excitement for the proposal at the time, that is until Standard Oil got involved. Practically overnight support for the project disappeared amongst LA politicians. What could have been the start of monorail construction all across the USA was stopped cold before it even got started.
Ray Bradbury, world-renowned science fiction writer and futurist, recently wrote in Westways Magazine about the terrible decision in an article on the future of LA. He wrote...
"on New Years Day 2001, let us pour 10,000 tons of cement into our never-should-have-been-started, never-to-be-finished subway, for final rites. Its concept was always insane, its possible fares preposterous. Even if it were finished and opened, no one could afford to use it. So kill the subway and telephone Alweg Monorail to accept their offer, made 30 years ago, to erect 12 crosstown monorails--free, gratis--if we let them run the traffic. I was there the afternoon our supervisors rejected that splendid offer, and I was thrown out of the meeting for making impolite noises. Remember, subways are for cold climes, snow and sleet in dead-winter London, Moscow or Toronto. Monorails are for high, free, open-air spirits, for our always-fair weather. Subways are Forest Lawn extensions. Let's bury our dead MTA and get on with life."
As a born and bred Angeleno, I've often wondered the wisdom of letting the opposing sides of the freeway view one another.
Wait, before you think "Crazy" think about this: How much traffic is caused by people slowing down to view a crash on the other side of the freeway? A great deal.
So, why not build a structure to stop the lookyloos?
And why can't that structure be an elevated commuter train or monorail?
Run a train down the center of the 5 and 405 and see what happens to traffic.
Better yet, make the train big enough to hold cars and trucks and see what happens to traffic.
And even better still, work to revitalize California's existing rail lines and help get some big rigs off of the road. With less trucks on the road, see what happens to traffic.
There are solutions everywhere! Let's work together to find them.