520 Tolls, I-90 Tolls (Seattle, Bellevue, Olympia: car rental, real estate, homes)

[HandsUpThumbsDown]

Originally Posted by Jalhop

I don't see how that difference could be relevant. Both cases are mass transit.

There are probably 10,000 reasons why they are different.

This gent's blog (and book, Human Transit) could fill you in a little bit better on the science and art of transit planning:

Human Transit

[Hemlock140]

Originally Posted by HandsUpThumbsDown

A bus trip rarely costs more when factoring in depreciation, fuel, and parking costs, (not to mention the hidden social costs: congestion costs for other drivers, and environmental costs of driving) except for very short trips.

Buses can only carry so many people along a corridor efficiently. As demand increases, plans must be made to move to a higher capacity mode that can move more people using less engergy with a lower labor cost. That could be a number of things, but most of them involve rail.

At 30 mpg when I drive to work in Seattle I will use 1.54 gallons round trip, at a cost of $6.15 just in gas, not counting wear and tear. The same trip by bus is $3 each way, so cheaper by at least 15 cents a day. For most people there will also be parking to pay for if they work in Seattle, and if they take 520 (and I90 in the future) the toll which may be more than the gas cost.

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by HandsUpThumbsDown

There are probably 10,000 reasons why they are different.

This gent's blog (and book, Human Transit) could fill you in a little bit better on the science and art of transit planning:

Human Transit

Maybe Jalhop is referring to the old 'free ride' buses that were full of drunks when comparing Seattle's mass transit to shuttling vacationers around Las Vegas.

[Jalhop]

Originally Posted by HandsUpThumbsDown

Buses can only carry so many people along a corridor efficiently. As demand increases, plans must be made to move to a higher capacity mode that can move more people using less engergy with a lower labor cost. That could be a number of things, but most of them involve rail.

True. However, if that higher capacity mode has an build cost of $30 billion and takes 30 years to build out, that may not be better overall, or maybe not for 20 years. There's obviously a break-even point that needs to factor in the build time & cost for rail.

Long before getting to a full implementation of rail it makes sense to have more Rapid Ride buses that aren't milk runs, and a per-distance charge for all buses that keeps the cost less than driving for the same distance.

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by Jalhop

True. However, if that higher capacity mode has an build cost of $30 billion and takes 30 years to build out, that may not be better overall, or maybe not for 20 years. There's obviously a break-even point that needs to factor in the build time & cost for rail.

Long before getting to a full implementation of rail it makes sense to have more Rapid Ride buses that aren't milk runs, and a per-distance charge for all buses that keeps the cost less than driving for the same distance.

...and freeway tolls to cut down on traffic in the meantime.

[HandsUpThumbsDown]

Originally Posted by Jalhop

True. However, if that higher capacity mode has an build cost of $30 billion and takes 30 years to build out, that may not be better overall, or maybe not for 20 years. There's obviously a break-even point that needs to factor in the build time & cost for rail.

Long before getting to a full implementation of rail it makes sense to have more Rapid Ride buses that aren't milk runs, and a per-distance charge for all buses that keeps the cost less than driving for the same distance.

I dont know offhand, but im very doubtful that a rubber tire monorail would beat out light rail on operating costs. The rapid ride buses don't really seem like milk runs either, but I've never used one. Seattle does have a lot of express buses, anyway.

[Jalhop]

Originally Posted by tifoso

I was here too. But it certainly wasn't a "powerful minority" who killed off the monorial; it was the voters.

I said it stemmed largely from them. The voters were swayed by the powerful minority's lobby effort. Financing issues were fixable. The monorail should still have been built if it was the best choice when properly implemented. My point as it relates to tolling is that Seattle often gets that which benefits a minority at the expense of the general public.

At the city level, those cities that have formed a Transportation Benefit District already have the authority to levy tolls on their roads. Seattle's recently adopted Carbon Neutral plan specifically recommends that a pilot tolling project on a local arterial be implemented ASAP.

And so it starts. One toll is the beachhead that leads to many. If a single transponder worked perfectly for all tolls and our gov't was highly efficient and working completely for our best interests, go ahead and toll the arterials and sidewalks too. It's a safe bet though that tolling will be a net loss.

[Jalhop]

Originally Posted by mkarch

...and freeway tolls to cut down on traffic in the meantime.

Yes. I don't know what the best solution is. Gas taxes worked okay when we didn't have electric and other high mileage cars. Better than tolling is to charge per mile driven. Then there's one rate the public can more easily put downward pressure on when gov't wants to increase it. A request to increase can be voted on. When you have a dozen or more tolls in the area, they public will have all but lost control on increases. The gov't will increase them without a vote. The cost of living in today's dollars will spiral upward. The difficulty is in how to efficiently charge per mile driven.

[mkarch]

Originally Posted by Jalhop

Yes. I don't know what the best solution is. Gas taxes worked okay when we didn't have electric and other high mileage cars. Better than tolling is to charge per mile driven. Then there's one rate the public can more easily put downward pressure on when gov't wants to increase it. A request to increase can be voted on. When you have a dozen or more tolls in the area, they public will have all but lost control on increases. The gov't will increase them without a vote. The cost of living in today's dollars will spiral upward. The difficulty is in how to efficiently charge per mile driven.

Mileage taxes won't necessarily improve the areas with serious capacity issues. A toll applied during peak hours would. As long as the tolls are implemented in a way that can be voted on, I don't see them being any more or less abusive than any of the other initiatives we have on the ballot each year. After all, that's how we got the monorail, and how it was killed.

[jm31828]

Originally Posted by Hemlock140

At 30 mpg when I drive to work in Seattle I will use 1.54 gallons round trip, at a cost of $6.15 just in gas, not counting wear and tear. The same trip by bus is $3 each way, so cheaper by at least 15 cents a day. For most people there will also be parking to pay for if they work in Seattle, and if they take 520 (and I90 in the future) the toll which may be more than the gas cost.

That bus ride costs more than $3 in reality- it is heavily subsidized, so we only pay a small fraction of what the actual cost of that ride is. I will stick my neck out and say this is not really fair- gas taxes paid by drivers are supposed to go 100% towards fixing/building roads, but here they take a large portion of those funds to subsidize mass transit, and then sit there and complain that we don't have enough money to keep up the roads, claiming that is why we need to add tolls to every road, jack up existing tolls, etc. If things are in that bad of shape then I say pull that gas tax money back in, let it go 100% towards those roads and let mass transit and its riders come up with all the funding it needs. Why should we as drivers pay these taxes for the roads we drive on, then be told we need to pay a separate fee to drive on those same roads we are already paying for, while the tax money we have been paying is being shifted to pay for mass transit instead of what it was originally intended for?