Gary Miller speaks on stimulus spending at a 2009 press conference while Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chair John Mica looking on. Mica is reportedly backing Miller's plan to end Metro's Express Lanes project. Photo: GOP House and Infrastructure Committee/Flickr

Congressman Gary Miller (R-OC) and Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-LA) have teamed up to try and stop Metro’s “Express Lanes” project to allow single-passenger vehicles to buy their way in to the carpool lane on the I-10 and I-110 HOV Lanes.  Just as we did with the bike lanes opinion piece in City Watch yesterday, it’s important to take a look at the arguments against congestion pricing, because we’re going to start seeing them a lot in the press.

First off, let’s look at the given reasons for opposing congestion pricing from Miller and Waters to the Times:

Even though driving in the carpool lane is voluntary, Miller said the toll would be tantamount to a double taxation on motorists, who already paid gasoline taxes to build the freeway lanes.

“If you want to do a toll road, build a toll road with private funds,” he said in a Capitol Hill interview. “But don’t use taxpayers’ dollars to build a road and then charge them to use it.”

We should note that Miller’s last legislative attempt to end the this project was called the “Free Way Act,” because Miller apparently believes that the most highly subsidized form of transportation should be completely free.  Research that goes back as far as 1994 shows that drivers don’t come close to paying the cost of their driving habit, and that doesn’t include the cost in pollution and other negative secondary impacts.  We should also note that if three people are in a car, than they can use the lane for free.  Only drivers who refuse to carpool with three people per car will be charged to use the Express Lane.

Maxine Waters Photo:jsdart/flickr

Waters’ position is even less defensible:

Waters, whose district includes part of 110 Freeway corridor, said in a statement that she too had “significant concerns” about the project’s effect on low- and middle-income drivers.

“I don’t think it’s fair that drivers of lesser means, making a grueling commute to go to work and make ends meet for their families, should sit in stand-still traffic while those who can afford to pay about $4 for a one-way trip get to use the carpool lane,” Waters said.

First, as we’ve noted literally dozens of times before, when “people of lesser means” are polled as to their feelings on congestion pricing, they approve of it by a 3 to 2 margin, the same margin that people of greater means do.  Why?  Because the entire purpose of congestion pricing is about providing a congestion free commute and there are emergency situations where even “drivers of lesser means” are going to appreciate the choice to have a congestion free commute.  Besides, three “drivers of lesser means” can always form a carpool and pay nothing to use the lanes.

If Waters is really concerned about “PEOPLE of lesser means” instead of “drivers of lesser means,” she would be enthusiastically backing this proposal.   Metro recently received an over $213 million grant to implement HOT Lanes on two area highways, and purchase new buses for and build new park-and-ride facilities adjacent to the new HOT Lanes.  So the entire transit dependent population of the 110 Freeway Corridor will benefit from this proposal because of better bus service and better parking to access the lanes.

Metro will look at five corridors to convert HOV lanes to HOT lanes. For a better look, visit our Google Map

Throughout 2008, local politicians and the media seemed to be in a race to see who could say more substance-free attacks on converting HOV Lanes on two Los Angeles freeeways.  In particular, politicians of both parties representing the San Gabriel Valley, including Member of Congress, State Senators and County Supervisors on the Metro Board, threw such a fit they managed to get one freeway, the I-210, removed from the proposal.

Along with those nasty off-peak toll lanes, these leaders managed to chase off hundreds of millions of federal dollars for transit improvements that the federal government was offering as a carrot to agencies for a one-year pilot program.  If you consider that Metro’s final plan for the pilot project won’t remove any cars from the HOV lanes that are being converted, those “leaders” have to be smarting that they basically gave away a hundred million dollars.  Yet, outside of Streetsblog, nobody has seemed to call them on it.

Which is why it is somewhat surprising to see the San Gabriel Valley Tribune publish an editorial that’s basically a lukewarm embrace of Metro’s plans to study converting HOV to variable toll lanes on five more stretches of L.A. County freeways…especially since this time there’s no promise of transit improvements to go with the toll lanes.  The editorial recognizes that someone has to pay to maintain our highway system, and it might as well be the people that use it.

Metro will look at five corridors to convert HOV lanes to HOT lanes. For a better look, visit our Google Map

Drivers willing to pay an extra fee for a congestion free commute could get some good news in the coming months.

Buried in a Metro Board Subcommittee report is an interesting update on Metro’s congestion pricing plans.  In addition to turning standard HOV Lanes on the I-10 and I-110 into HOV and toll lanes during non peak hour periods, a move that seems more about capacity expansion plan than congestion reduction; the MTA is also planning to study whether to bring congestion pricing in some form or another to five more stretches of Los Angeles County Highways.

Staff is proposing to study five stretches of highway to assess the feasibility of expanding their Congestion Pricing program.  If you can’t read the map above, the report recommends studying:

• 1-1 05, from 1-405 to 1-605
• 1-405, from 1-105 to 1-5 north of LAX
• SR91, from 1-1 10 to the Orange County Line
• SR57, from SR60 to the Orange County Line
• Additional consideration may also be warranted for the 1-10 between 1-605 and the San Bernardino County Line.

These corridors were selected based on a criteria created by the federal government.  Every corridor was rated on connectivity, constructability, transit benefits and revenue potential.  This last category is a tricky issue for Metro who stated over and over again, in the face of harsh media criticism, that their congestion pricing plans are about reducing congestion and protecting investment in HOV lanes.  The “revenue potential” of these tolls was just a bonus.

At this point, Metro isn’t using the term “Express Lanes” to discuss the study.  “Express Lanes” is the term they created for their almost-congestion-pricing pilot plans for the I-10 and I-110 that will begin construction sometime in 2011.  As we discussed earlier, the Express Lanes concept, which doesn’t change any part of the road pattern during rush hour, would allow drivers of single passenger vehicles to buy a congestion free ride during non-peak hours by buying their way into the carpool lane.

Instead, Express Lanes’ impact on peak hour travel time is limited to the transit expansion projects that the federal government paid for to entice Metro to experiment with HOV/Express Lanes conversion.

As for these five corridors, Metro staff says its way to soon to know what form, if any, congestion pricing might take.  But one thing is for certain, Metro’s plans for congestion pricing in existing HOV lanes go way beyond a one year pilot study on the I-10 and I-110.

For Los Angeles County, Metro is the agency responsible for putting together the local plan, and omorrow, the Metro Board will meet to consider adoption of the 2010 CMP, a mammoth 265 page document that’s available on their website.  Metro is also charged with insuring that every city is in compliance with the plan, or cities could lose their share of the gas tax revenue.

The content of the local CMP has changed dramatically over the decades.  Back in the 1990′s, Metro and its member cities, especially the City of Los Angeles, seemed most concerned with reducing car trips to reduce congestion.  This 1996 story from the Daily News quotes a City Manager for Westlake Village explaining their plan to come into compliance:

“The Congestion Management Program is an attempt to reduce congestion in Los Angeles County by reducing the total number of vehicle trips,” explained City Manager Ray Taylor

To be fair, there is some talk of using carpool programs and work from home programs to reduce congestion, there is a far greater focus on “road improvements” such as some of the new freeways that have been added to the network since 1992 and the 480 miles of new carpool lanes.

As for new strategies, to fight congestion; the plan focuses on densifying development and charging developers a fee for congestion created by new development.   This “Congestion Mitigation Fee” shouldn’t be confused with “Congestion Pricing.”  The former applies to developers and development.  The latter allows agencies to collect money for use of less congested lanes on freeways.  For a more detailed explanation of “Congestion Mitigation Fees” visit the Streetsblog story when from 2008 when Metro first proposed and studied the fees.

While the report can be a bit dense, there are some highlights and surprising information that can be gleaned.  For example, the Level of Service, i.e. the amount of cars that can be moved on a street, on major arterial streets has actually improved throughout the county between 1992 and 2007.  I think most Angelenos would be surprised by that.

However, the report gives the “credit” for this congestion reduction to traffic light synchronization.  Of course, a faster commute is hardly a sign that the city is becoming more livable or a better place to live.  However, even as Metro daily promotes and publicizes the 405 widening project, it releases a document stating that fixing traffic light timing can do more for local congestion that the multi-billion highway projects that it so proudly trumpets.  From page 21:

While some of this improvement can be attributed to roadway and intersection improvements to increase capacity and improve traffic flow, much of it is due to ITS arterial operational efficiency improvements that have been widely implemented throughout the county in recent years, in particular, the substantial county-wide program of traffic signal synchronization that has been promoted and funded by MTA and implemented by local jurisdictions.

Of course, the freeway system, despite over 500 miles of widenings, isn’t seeing an improvement.  Despite some cheery language that 2009 “approached baseline levels” of congestion, caused of course by the national trend of reduced v.m.t. caused by the recession and higher gas prices, our freeways remain congested more often than not.  From page 19 of the report:

Between 1992 and 2009, about half of the system has consistently operated at the two most congested levels, LOS E and F, during both the morning and afternoon rush hours. 2001 marked the first year, since monitoring began in 1992, that LOS E and F accounted for greater than fifty percent of the morning peak period LOS. LOS E and F accounted for fifty percent or greater of the afternoon peak period LOS in seven of the ten monitoring years, including each of the last five CMP years

Other surprises?  Both the speed and frequency of transit services have improved.  Doubtless some of that is caused by the expansion of the rail and rapid bus programs, but an overall speed improvement for transit of 6% over sixteen years, especially when congestion is growing on the highways, is of note.

Streetsblog will be listening to the hearing.  If there’s any surprises, we’ll let you know.

It’s not often that you get to
see your work set off a Eureka moment for someone else — particularly
when that someone is from a different
culture. But I had that experience recently, and it seems worth sharing
on
Streetsblog in light of the interest shown today in my analysis of the travel
delay costs from FreshDirect deliveries.

I presented a paper last week at an international forum on
traffic congestion in Guangzhou, China.
People in that city are beginning to look at congestion pricing, and I was asked
to discuss why the Bloomberg toll plan failed politically.

As part of my talk,
I described the “social delay costs”
from an additional car trip into the center of Manhattan — literally,
the total time that all road users combined spend in traffic because
any one of them decided to drive. Afterwards, one of the organizers, a
professor of transportation engineering, asked me to present a
technical version of my paper to his students at South China
University of Technology.

The next day, when I came to the
part about social-delay
costs, the professor peppered me with questions about my methodology.
As I went
through the steps — basically, every trip takes up an incremental
amount of limited street space, which lowers speeds, which adds to
everyone’s travel times — the professor
grew more intrigued. It wasn’t that the idea itself was new, but that
if
traffic speeds and other baseline data were known, then the
delay-impact of one
trip could be quantified. And,
moreover, that the impact varied enormously depending on the time of day: when
there is ample spare road capacity, say, in the middle of the night, an extra
trip has little discernible impact, whereas one trip during congested peak
times adds several hours to the aggregate time that all other vehicles must
spend on the road.

I daresay that for the professor, my elucidation of one
trip’s delay costs helped move congestion pricing from the realm of
abstraction to something tangible and, perhaps, essential. If a peak trip to
the center of New York or some other city can impose one or two hundred minutes
worth of delays on others — and if no driver is ever called on to take that impact
into consideration — then of course the city will be awash in gridlock. No city, not
even Guangzhou, despite an emerging
21st century transit infrastructure of Bus Rapid Transit and new
subway lines, will be able to forestall the tide of free driving.

The same construct animates the FreshDirect analysis in my
Time Thieves paper, except that there the bulk of the delays result from the
trucks’ double-parking. The point is the one I made in my Dot Earth post from Guangzhou: Motorists who pay only for their own lost time, but not for the time their trips
take from other motorists, have little incentive to make efficient decisions about when to drive and how often. In
the case of FreshDirect, this "time theft" averages $15 per delivery. If that
cost were added to the delivery price, FreshDirect’s business, I estimate,
would drop off by around 20 percent.

Then again, no one in New York City — myself included — is proposing congestion tolls even close to the social
delay costs of the trips that would be tolled. The Kheel-Komanoff Plan’s
$2-$9
variable tolls ($2-$3-$4 on weekends and holidays, $3-$6-$9 on
weekdays) are a
little under 10 percent of the same trips’ respective $30-$130
congestion costs. Yet, as I told the forum in Guangzhou, even this toll
– modest relative to the trip’s full social cost — would eliminate
enough car trips
that speeds within the Manhattan CBD would rise more than 15 percent.

Miami’s 95 Express HOT lanes, at left, with regular traffic at right. (Photo: SF Biz Jrnl)

The
U.S. DOT, working alongside the National Bus Rapid Transit Institute,
found that the city’s 95 Express project has trimmed travel times by as
much as two-thirds for users of the bus service on northbound HOT
lanes.

But the picture is murkier for transit in Miami’s
I-95 corridor, which saw static levels of "mode share"
(transportation-speak for the percentage of area travelers using a
particular option) between 2008 and 2009.

Overall bus
ridership in the I-95 corridor decreased by 4.6 percent, even as 95
Express bus ridership rose by 30 percent during the same period,
according to the report.

Why did broad transit use fall while
single-occupany vehicles flocked to the new HOT lanes? Service cuts and
fare hikes of as much as 33 percent for monthly transit passes played a
big role, the U.S. DOT found, as did the economic recession and lower
gas prices that made auto travel more appealing to locals.

However,
the report did contain some positive signals for transit mode share in
Miami’s I-95 area. Half of the bus riders surveyed by the U.S. DOT said
they had switched over from car travel, "which suggests that the 95
Express bus service in general has had some success over time in
attracting private auto users," the report stated.

Moreover,
the U.S. DOT noted that 95 Express buses constitute just one-fifth of
the corridor’s total transit ridership — meaning that even a
30-percent increase in popularity can’t carry the whole system. That
could change this month, however, with the current northbound 95
Express HOT lanes adding a southbound component and the state starting bus service connecting Miami-Dade with Broward County, its northern neighbor.

Traffic trying to get to Dodger Stadium. Photo:=Manny=/Flickr

Here comes one positive side benefit of the L.A. budget crisis:
Gridlock. Our tight budget means the city can no longer afford to pick
up the tab to make driving easier — by providing free traffic officers
for events at the Dodger Stadium, Hollywood Bowl, and other major
venues.

So now, most of these venues plan to pick up the tab — but also to reduce the number of traffic officers working — which according to the L.A. Times, “could lead to congestion.”

The change doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll have more congestion.
Perhaps more people will simply take public transportation to these
events, as L.A.’s Principal Transportation Engineer Alan Willis is
apparently encouraging people to do — though it’s unclear from the L.A.
Times article what concrete steps, if any, Willis plans to take to
actually get people on buses and rail. But even if we do get more
congestion, this is good news for both the environment and alternative
transit advocates, according to David Owen, a staff writer at The New
Yorker whose latest Wall Street Journal article expounds on “How Traffic Jams Help the Environment.” (via Idea)

“Traffic jams can actually be environmentally beneficial if they
turn subways, buses, car pools, bicycles and walking into
more-attractive options,” Owen points out. That may be a rather obvious
observation, but Owen’s arguments that both ramp metering and
congestion pricing aren’t necessarily good for the environment will be
surprising at first for many alternative transit advocates:

Advocates of congestion-fighting strategies usually
argue that traffic jams waste gasoline. That’s true, but the energy
waste and carbon output attributable to idling cars is smaller than
that attributable to the overall transportation network. There’s
nothing green about fighting congestion if, by distributing traffic
more efficiently, it results in an overall increase in traffic volume
and extra miles driven by vehicles avoiding the fee areas.

That said, Owen isn’t against congestion pricing — He’s simply
pointing out that such programs must be part of a “truly effective
traffic program” that “would impose high fees for all automobile access
and public parking while also gradually eliminating automobile lanes
(thereby reducing total car traffic volume without eliminating the
environmentally beneficial burden of driver frustration and
inefficiency) and increasing the capacity and efficiency of public
transit.”

Owen’s entire article’s a great read — which also gave me an idea:
Perhaps simply raising the parking prices in these L.A. venues alone
will get rid of the potential congestion problem altogether while
encouraging more people to take alternative modes of transportation.

Parking pricing, in fact, is what the City of Santa Monica’s
targeting now to tackle its own gridlock issues. Reduce this
“ill-advised subsidy for public parking,” reports the L.A. Times,
and more people might walk, bike, or take public transit to enjoy a day
or night out on the Third Street Promenade: “If it works, the city
would benefit from smoother traffic flow, reduced pollution as fewer
people cruise for spaces and a better return on land developed for
public parking.”

Those plans are still in the works; the city staff first needs to
recommend a plan (”perhaps by late this year,” according to the L.A.
Times) that the City Council can take up. But reading about how L.A.
drivers can expect not only more gridlock but also higher parking
prices really made my day today!

Of course, in addition to making driving and parking less pleasant
and more costly, we need to make it easier for people to get to all of
these venues without getting in a car. I love the convenience of taking
the bus to the Hollywood Bowl, but I hear getting to the Dodger Stadium
via public transit isn’t as easy…

As Washington conventional wisdom has it,
raising gas taxes or creating a vehicle miles traveled tax to pay for
transportation is impossible during the current recession. After all,
who would want to squeeze cash-strapped commuters during tough economic
times?

As it turns out, the public is very willing to pay for the
shorter commuting times that result from less traffic — and they’re
willing to pay top dollar, as IBM’s new Commuter Pain Index (CPI) shows.

When
asked what value they would place on every 15 minutes sliced from their
daily commute, 36.5 percent of CPI respondents said between $10 and
$20. That’s about five times the recent trading price of a ton of carbon emissions on the nation’s climate-change exchanges.

And
the price of a shorter commute was higher in more congested cities. In
Los Angeles, 22 percent of residents said every 15 minutes not spent en route to work would be worth between $31 and $40 — or more than $100 per hour.

What
does the data mean? For one thing, those who fear that voters would
revolt if asked to pay more for a more efficient, less congested
transport network shouldn’t let that stop policy-making. As every
successful politician knows (and the president is re-learning on health care), messaging is the key to winning over the public.

In
other words, Democrats who feign unwillingness to subject voters to
higher gas taxes are ignoring their ability to control the message.
When a greater contribution to transportation is pitched as a way to shorten commutes and give workers more free time, the prospect becomes more desirable.

And
it’s not that lawmakers don’t know how to decrease congestion,
particularly in the urban areas that were polled to produce the CPI.
Reducing the number of car trips and lowering demand during peak travel
times are proven to be a cheaper and more effective method of battling congestion than expanding highway capacity.

Is it time to nickname the White House’s Sustainable Communities Initiative the "Shorter Commutes Initiative"?

I never imagined it would take this long to pass the plan.

You may remember that Metro delayed a vote on the 2008 LRTP until this year so that it could take into account whether or not Measure R had passed when creating its project timeline.  Over eight months after the transit tax's passage, the Board is finally ready to vote on the LRTP.

Or are they?  At a "workshop" on the LRTP last month, then Board Chair Antonio Villaraigosa moved to hold off passing the 2009 LRTP until July so that Metro could do more outreach.  Tt had been eighteen months since Imagine campaign had kicked off and the Mayor claimed he wanted to make Metro's vision clear to county residents before its passage.  If there's been any new outreach in the last six weeks, I'm not aware of it. Based on email conversations; neither is the Bus Rider's Union or the Southern California Transit Advocates.  So.CA.TA's  Dana Gabbard took a humorous look at the lack of any new outreach efforts on behalf of the LRTP.

...previous Plan preparation included convening stakeholder groups to provide input while the draft plan was being formulated and a round of public meetings in the region (held in the evenings) on the draft plan were conducted seeking input.

This current plan has had minimal to no substantive means by which to comment. A poorly publicized hearing held during a weekday in downtown L.A. falls far short of what used to be common practice.

That said, I should note the old way of doing things still mostly resulted in what you would expect they planned to do anyway, so I am not claiming it was paradise or some such. But at least the niceties were observed.

As best I can tell, with the exception of the addition of some clarifying language on bicycle and pedestrian funding; the current draft plan is no different than what was presented at last month's workshop.  So if they weren't going to change anything, or do more outreach, than what was the point of the delay?  I'm pretty sure they didn't just hold-up the process so that they could release the new bicycle and pedestrian funding numbers.

Image: AnsaldoBreda

For the fifth meeting in a row, the fate of Contract No. P2550, the one granting an exclusive right to manufacture light rail cars to the Italian company AnsaldoBreda, will certainly bring fireworks to the meeting.  Because Breda is years behind schedule on its current contract and the cars are too heavy for the tracks, most rail advocates want the contract for new cars to go out to bid.  However, AnsaldoBreda counters that it's Metro's fault the cars aren't built to their specifications and has amassed an army of union workers to press their case.  You see, AnsaldoBreda is promising to build a new rail car factory in L.A. County.  Even though the Board of Directors can't legally take that into account when awarding a contract, the presence of scores of union workers demanding that the Board "vote for jobs" is too big for any politician to feasibly ignore.

However, hope that the Board might cancel the exclusive arrangement and put future cars construction out to bid received new hope.  An article in today's Times reports that, Metro CEO Art Leahy sent a letter to the Metro Board asking them to not re-new the contract with AnsaldoBreda.  The LA County Federation of Labor sent a memorandum countering Leahy's, but it again stresses jobs creation, something that the Metro Board is not legally allowed to consider.

Other items of note include a discussion of whether or not Metro should support efforts to allow more hybrids and other "clean" vehicles to use HOV and HOT Lanes throughout California and whether or not to extend the January 2011 sunset for the hybrid access law.  There is now precedent for allowing "hybrid benefit" laws such as these to retire, as the City of Los Angeles voted last year to end its "free parking for hybrids" program.  You would think with the state's ongoing fiscal crisis that legislators would be looking for ways to raise money, not ways to hand out more discounts.

Speaking of HOT Lanes, there is also an agenda item on the consent calendar to set the "toll costs" for single passenger vehicles to access the coming "Express Lanes" on the I-10 and I-110.  The fees would be set at a minimum of twenty-five cents a mile and a maximum of $1.40.  Streetsblog will follow-up on this story a little later this week or sometime next week.

And speaking of user fees, the Board will also approve a hearing plan needed to set the fares for the Silver Line Bus Service during the September 24 Board of Directors meeting.  Does anyone want to bet on whether the hearing is held before or after a debate on AnsaldoBreda?

Anyone trying to catch up on Metro's Express Lanes plans for the I-10 and I-110 by reading the transcript from last week's live chat would have stumbled upon a surprise.  For nearly a week, the answer has been changed now, it seemed as though the agency was planning to deliberately refuse Express Lanes entry to households of lesser means.

Question: What happens if you are in the lane without a transponder in your car? Or if the person runs out of money on their pre-paid account, do you bill them? Is there a payment plan to be set up to pay for the transponder or some kind of notification, if funds are low? Mello S.

Answer: When a person registers for the Rewards program or opens a transponder account, we will be able to link their address to U.S. Census household income data and be told if they qualify. The qualifying limit will probably be something like $35,000 per family.

This answer was pretty shocking and sort of crazy.  Not only would this be an unprecedented policy, but it was going to require the largest mea-culpa of all time.  After all the mocking I did of Times' columnist Tim Rutten's non-sensical sob story about a poor single mother having to choose between being at her son's emergency room bed or eating for the next month; I'd probably have to show up to his house and buff his car to get his forgiveness.

Fortunately, for both myself and Metro's congestion pricing plans, the answer was a mis-print.  According to Stephanie Wiggins, the author of the answer and Metro's Executive Officer for the program, the answer was actually to a different question concerning how they were going to make certain people of lesser means weren't excluded from the program.  The correct answer to the above question is now available on the chat log and now reads:

If you are in the lane without a transponder in your car, you will be able to call the toll hot line or go on the web and open a toll account within 72 hours of using the Express Lane in order to avoid receiving a violation notice.  If the person runs out of money on their pre-paid account we will bill them, however, we will encourage users to replenish their account before the balance reaches $0 -- there will be multiple payment plans for the user to choose from.

Express Lanes on the I-91. Photo: Caltrans

Poor Tim Rutten.  Last week the Times' columnist wrote an "opinion piece" that attacked congestion pricing and now everyone is attacking him.  Some hack blogger pointed out that congestion pricing actually would make life easier for the fictitious poor people he used to argue his point.  Now, a USC professor has pointed out that he didn't really do any research on congestion pricing and his own newspaper has printed an editorial that basically talks the opposite viewpoint that he expressed last week.  Heck, even Metro itself took the time to take apart Rutten's argument piece by piece.

The Times officially backs road pricing in yesterday's editorial, "Congestion Pricing on Freeways Benefits All."  It starts out slowly, noting that "proponents of economic justice" are concerned about the plan (translation: Tim Rutten is pretending to be concerned about the poor), but that it makes sense for everyone.

The toll lanes will provide people of all incomes with a choice they don't currently have. It's true that choosing to pay the toll will be easier for people of means, but it's senseless to argue that even low-income people are better off having no choice at all.

Professor Peter Gordon's "Blowback" piece that appeared in the Times over the weekend is a more direct condemnation of Rutten.  After Gordon points out that unpriced roads are one of the biggest giveaways the government can give and are a guarantee of high congestion going into the future, Gordon also points out that the poorest people, the one's Rutton so eagerly "defends" in his piece will benefit from the increased transit that congestion pricing brings.

Third, Rutten's objection to pricing is based on his concerns over "equity." But the poorest of the poor would not be tolled, as most of them use transit. Buses on tolled freeways would move faster and be attractive to more people...Finally, as our experience with the tollway along the 91 Freeway in Orange County has shown, people in all walks of life value the time they save if and when they choose to pay the toll. Many get extra time with family, extra time to earn income or both. This is why no one calls these tolled lanes "Lexus lanes" anymore.

While there are some serious concerns people could have with Metro's plan, teh concerns should be that the plan doesn't go far enough, not that it is unfair to the working poor.  I'll be unable to attend any of the community hearings on the plan that are scheduled over the next couple of weeks.  But if someone else goes and wants to write a review, I'll be happy to post it here.

As Metro’s "Express Lanes" project starts to make headlines, you can expect to see more and more of these types of articles; misinformation dressed up as altruistic concern for others, appearing in local papers everywhere.  For those of us who love the idea of congestion pricing on highways we’re left with an unsavory choice: defend Metro’s week anti-congestion pricing program or let non-believers slam congestion pricing altogether.

Fortunately, today’s piece in the Times by Tim Rutten, the same journalist who wrote a very similar piece last year, is so tortured in its logic that it doesn’t require a lot of ammo to rebut.  In it, Rutten argues that Metro’s Express Lanes plan is bad because it is part of a conspiracy to bring road pricing of any sort to Los Angeles County, it won’t do anything to reduce congestion because it won’t apply during rush hour, and because it’s anti-poor people.

First off, let’s cover where Rutten is right.  Because Metro lacks the guts to require a toll from hybrids with the anti-logic clean air stickers or "HOV-"2 and because federal law requires that HOV lanes move at 45 miles per hour; the pricing plan will not be in effect when roads are most congested.  This is a very cogent argument.

However, Rutten’s defense of the single-working mother who will be forced to choose between being with her sick child or paying the rent because of Express Lanes; is beyond eye rolling.  Last year when Rutten rose to the defense of his imaginary working-class friends, I pointed to the fact that when actually asked, the working class and working poor living in areas with congestion pricing prefer having the pay lanes than not having the pay lanes.  Personally, I’ll believe what the less-well-off highway driver says when asked over what Tim Rutten has decided they think without having done any research.

This year, Rutten creates the following imaginary nightmare scenario which is even more easily debunked.  This time I didn’t even have to use a search engine.

You’re a single mother working in a downtown law office part time
because your hours have been cut as one of the firm’s economy measures.
Just about noon, you get a call from the day-care center, where your
3-year-old is running a high fever. You decide to give up two badly
needed hours of work to pick her up early, hoping she won’t need a
visit to the pediatrician because the state no longer funds healthcare
for the working poor. About the same time you leave, the firm’s
managing partner heads out for lunch and a round of golf at his club.

Despite
the time of day, L.A.’s freeways are inexplicably clogged — virtual
gridlock for no apparent reason. The new toll lanes, however, are
moving freely. For the senior partner, it’s a no-brainer. He pays the
$1.40-a-mile toll without a first, let alone a second, thought and
arrives at his club early enough for a Bloody Mary before lunch. Our
single mom, however, looks at the bumper-to-bumper traffic around her,
glances over at the freely moving toll lane and has to do the mental
math to decide whether getting to her child in less than 90 minutes is
worth being late with this month’s rent.

I’ll grant Rutten the point that it is terrible for a mother to have to choose between paying the rent on time and being with her child.  However, since the single mother, driving alone in her car, wouldn’t even have that choice under the current Express Lanes plan, Rutten isn’t arguing that we should find a way to relieve the mother of her economic condition; but that we should relieve her of the choice altogether.  You see, she can’t use the HOV lanes that currently exist no matter how much she wants to.  Under Metro’s plan, the only thing that’s changed is she has a choice between being with her child or not.

Yesterday, the Metro, aka LACMTA, announced the details of it's HOT Lanes FAST Lanes Express Lanes proposal to take existing carpool lanes on the I-10 and I-110 freeways into and out of Downtown Los Angeles.  While the new plan has been tweaked from the one outlined last August in one aspect, it is still missing one of the basic precepts of congestion pricing: congestion pricing should reduce the demand for car travel.

First, let's outline the basics of the plan.  Toll Lanes on the I-10 and I-110 will be converted to toll lanes for non HOV and transit vehicles.  Using variable toll technology, commuters of any type of will be able to use the new toll lane for a price ranging from between twenty five cents and $1.40.  However, the toll lanes will close to non-HOV and Transit vehicles if average speed in the toll lanes falls to below forty-five miles per hour.

The variable toll lanes are part of Metro's pilot program to experiment with congestion pricing that will begin in December of 2010.  The rest of the plan involves using hundreds of millions of federal dollars to increase transit options, widen on ramps and Adams Ave where much of the 110 traffic will funnel into City streets.

So here's the rub, there is nothing in the congestion pricing plan that encourages people to drive less.  The plan removes no current drivers from the current car pool lane, even "HOV-2" vehicles at any point.  Then taking the "congestion" out of congestion pricing, the lane will actually be closed to paying vehicles during the most congested periods.  In other words, this plan will not effect traffic during the most congested periods.

The difference between this plan and the one outlined in August of 2008 is that this plan closes the Express Lanes based on traffic volume instead of on whether or not it's rush hour.  I guess you could call this plan anti-Congestion Pricing.  If it's congested, it's not priced.

But, the plan isn't finalized yet.  In fact, starting Saturday, there will be a series of hearings on the proposal.  For a full list, read on after the jump.  I'll be going to one next Monday, if you want me to carry your thoughts with me to enter into public comment, leave them in the Streetsblog comment section below.

Photo:Spacing Magazine/Flickr

Under the innocuous headlines "Funding Agreements for Congestion Reduction Initiatives," the LADOT outlines a plan to bring congestion parking to Los Angeles.  Under congestion pricing, the cost of metered car parking changes throughout the day to go up and down with demand.  By pricing parking so that there will always be between ten and thirty percent of on-street parking capacity available; the city hopes to improve mobility, optimize revenue and even encourage a modal shift away from single-occupancy vehicle driving.

The LADOT plans to pilot congestion pricing in the Central Business, Chinatown, Civic Center, East Downtown, Little Tokyo and Washington-Broadway Districts

The LADOT explains how congestion parking can benefit the downtown:

Commuters and visitors to Downtown have historically enjoyed underpriced on-street parking, which has had the adverse effect of encouraging single-occupancy vehicle travel to a destination rich with transit options. By properly pricing both on- and offstreet parking in a coordinated manner, based on supply and demand, the final cost of their trip will increase, thus encouraging motorists to leave their cars at home or to park outside the Downtown core and use public transit to their final destination. Those willing to pay the "true cost" of their parking can travel directly to their destination with the Downtown IPM Project, thus reducing congestion and travel times for through traffic and transit buses along Downtown streets

Before the LADOT can begin the program, it needs to pay for new technologies including new sensors and meters.  There's no word yet on how the increased funds from the new parking rates would be spent.