<story><title>Why the focus should be mass transit instead of tolls to fix traffic congestion</title><url>http://economicjustice.ca/2015/11/23/why-the-focus-should-be-mass-transit-instead-of-tolls-to-relieve-traffic-congestion-1/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erispoe</author><text>This article conflates two very different things: creating new tolls on existing infrastructure, and creating new toll-funded infrastructures. The first one changes the incentives of existing users, the other one is creating induced demand for wealthy commuters. Wealthy or not, induced demand is still induced demand, and will create new congestion on the existing network.&lt;p&gt;The main fallacy, however, is the goal of reducing congestion. If we want to move trips from cars to more sustainable means, congestion is a way of reducing the competitive speed of individual vehicles, therefore shifting the incentives towards public transit.&lt;p&gt;edit: typos</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Natsu</author><text>Congestion, among its other faults, leaves cars idling on the roads wasting gas.  It also harms some of the more common mass transit systems.  For example, nobody is going to see a bus as the faster option when they&amp;#x27;re both traveling the same congested streets as the cars do.&lt;p&gt;That said, it does work sometimes.  For example, if you&amp;#x27;re going to a baseball game, it&amp;#x27;s better to use the light rail than to go anywhere near the downtown traffic in Phoenix.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why the focus should be mass transit instead of tolls to fix traffic congestion</title><url>http://economicjustice.ca/2015/11/23/why-the-focus-should-be-mass-transit-instead-of-tolls-to-relieve-traffic-congestion-1/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>erispoe</author><text>This article conflates two very different things: creating new tolls on existing infrastructure, and creating new toll-funded infrastructures. The first one changes the incentives of existing users, the other one is creating induced demand for wealthy commuters. Wealthy or not, induced demand is still induced demand, and will create new congestion on the existing network.&lt;p&gt;The main fallacy, however, is the goal of reducing congestion. If we want to move trips from cars to more sustainable means, congestion is a way of reducing the competitive speed of individual vehicles, therefore shifting the incentives towards public transit.&lt;p&gt;edit: typos</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jseliger</author><text>More simply, I&amp;#x27;d observe that tolls and mass transit aren&amp;#x27;t rivalrous: for that matter, one could earmark funds from the former to pay for the latter.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t see why assuming too that a particular toll scheme that didn&amp;#x27;t work in a particular place means that no such schemes can work anywhere under any system.</text></comment>