L.A. traffic
Interview with Martin Wachs, January 3, 2008
"We’re not willing to be regulated off the roads in order to address congestion. The fact that we object so much to strategies that would impact positively in terms of reducing congestion implies that we would prefer to have the congestion than the alternative."
Q: People claimed that hot lanes would punish the poor as soon as Metro mentioned them.
"I really don’t believe that’s true! I believe what it does is: It gives people choices, and some choices that they don’t have now. It would be a mistake to think that a poor person never enjoys a good meal in a restaurant, and thereby never to provide a restaurant that offers a good meal. It’s a complete misrepresentation of what hot lanes do to assert that poor people only pay the costs, and rich people only get the benefits. We know that working people who get paid by the hour are among the people who choose to use hot lanes, because they can convert the time saved into money, and it’s sometimes worth the cost to do that. On the SR-91, we know who uses it. Surely it includes more rich people than poor people, but that’s true for everything! The important point is that quite a large number of poor people … do use that lane and pay for it."
Q: Are there good examples of congestion pricing systems?
"Certainly, yes. There have been something on the order of 50 to 75 congestion pricing applications around the world. The one that comes to mind first is in Singapore, where they’ve had congestion pricing for 45 years, and they succeeded in dramatically reducing traffic congestion in the center of the downtown area, and have increased the proportion of people traveling into the central area by public transit very dramatically."
"We’re not willing to be regulated off the roads in order to address congestion. The fact that we object so much to strategies that would impact positively in terms of reducing congestion implies that we would prefer to have the congestion than the alternative."
Q: People claimed that hot lanes would punish the poor as soon as Metro mentioned them.
"I really don’t believe that’s true! I believe what it does is: It gives people choices, and some choices that they don’t have now. It would be a mistake to think that a poor person never enjoys a good meal in a restaurant, and thereby never to provide a restaurant that offers a good meal. It’s a complete misrepresentation of what hot lanes do to assert that poor people only pay the costs, and rich people only get the benefits. We know that working people who get paid by the hour are among the people who choose to use hot lanes, because they can convert the time saved into money, and it’s sometimes worth the cost to do that. On the SR-91, we know who uses it. Surely it includes more rich people than poor people, but that’s true for everything! The important point is that quite a large number of poor people … do use that lane and pay for it."
Q: Are there good examples of congestion pricing systems?
"Certainly, yes. There have been something on the order of 50 to 75 congestion pricing applications around the world. The one that comes to mind first is in Singapore, where they’ve had congestion pricing for 45 years, and they succeeded in dramatically reducing traffic congestion in the center of the downtown area, and have increased the proportion of people traveling into the central area by public transit very dramatically."