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…

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.

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.

Two of the nation's more prominent political bloggers have recently weighed in on what congestion pricing would mean to Los Angeles. Atrios, a writer for Media Matters for America, responds to criticism of congestion pricing at his personal blog by explaining that congestion pricing is more about "congestion" and less about "pricing."

But the reason to have a congestion toll is that... there's too much congestion! Road congestion involves an unpriced externality. That is, when you get on a crowded freeway in the morning you take into account your private cost (cost of expected travel time), but don't take into account the fact that your car on the road is making things just a bit worse off. Everyone pays for this excess congestion by extra waiting in traffic time. Tolling is essentially a way to replace "excess wasted time in traffic jams" with money raised, which could either be spent on productive things (SUPERTRAINS) or just rebated back to all people.

The point isn't to punish people for driving, it's to try to line up incentives a bit more closely with actual costs in order to make more efficient use of the existing infrastructure.

Responding to Atrios, Matt Yglesias at Think Progress takes things a step further by arguing that congestion pricing will have a great benefit...for people of lower incomes:

One thing to think about, though, is what kinds of people really really need to be at work on time. For a normal professional, this isn’t that big a deal. If you’re ten or fifteen minutes late to work every now and again, it’s not that big a deal. But for shift workers, who tend to be further down the economic totem pole, showing up late will get you fired—it’s hard to make up for it by just staying late or putting an hour in on Saturday from home. People like that would reap a disproportionately large benefit from the reduction in congestion associated with a congestion price.

While all of this is well and good and congestion pricing could be a major benefit to car commuters, what is missing from these arguments is that Metro's "FAST Lanes" plan won't do anyhing to help rush-hour commuters, when traffic jams are at their worst because the FAST Lanes will be regular HOV Lanes during peak hour periods. While it may be clear to some of America's most influential left-wing bloggers that congestion pricing is about pricing roads to maximize their efficiency at peak periods, Metro continues to push a pricing plan that is designed only to help when roads are at their least congested.

Metro is planning to have its congestion pricing plan in place for New Years of 2011.

Photo: Pip the Pony/Flickr