CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 9, 2022, OR THEREAFTER
BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“FREEWAY TOLL LANE BAIT-AND-SWITCH
EXPANDS”
Traffic
rules and traffic jams act as one of the few true equalizers in American life.
The rules cover everyone equally, drivers of 1993 Honda Civics facing the same
speed limits, red lights and delays as people driving the newest Cadillacs and
Lamborghinis.
But the
movement to make things unequal on California’s urban highways, to favor the
rich over the poor, grows steadily, always pushed by the well-meaning denizens
of university planning departments.
The toll
lanes and toll roads these folks consistently favor and drill into the students
who will eventually become city, county and state traffic planners, have yet to
eliminate a single traffic jam. They also are one of the great governmental
bait-and-switches of all time.
Everyone
paid for this state’s freeways via the gasoline tax, highest in the lower 48
states. Everyone expected to enjoy equal access to their land and lanes.
But toll
lanes common on freeways in the San Francisco Bay Area, Southern California and
soon – if planners have their way – in places like Fresno and San Diego –
plainly favor the rich.
Tolls are
often charged by the mile, with people paying to enjoy the same privileges when
alone in their vehicles that are usually provided by carpool lanes. Only a few
of those were added to the original freeways – and not merely appropriated from
existing lanes – because of public protests over the bait-and-switch. Tolls are
higher in peak hours when people have the most need to drive. Who hasn’t
endured traffic jams while watching the privileged whiz by in converted toll
lanes that once were available to all?
It’s yet
another failed tactic pushed by utopian planners. Remember, these are the same
folks who claimed slowdowns and stoppages would be mitigated by metering
freeway onramps so that only one car at a time can enter traffic lanes. Anyone
who has driven the I-405 freeway in Los Angeles or the I-80 near the eastern
approaches to the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge knows that does not ease
traffic loads.
But
failure and unfairness do not stop the university departments that create traffic
policy. A new study from UCLA’s influential transportation institute once again
claims that “congestion pricing” – charging more to use freeways at peak hours
– is “the gold standard policy for managing traffic.”
This
time, though, the traffic “experts” concede their favored practice is unfair on
its face, excluding those who can’t afford high tolls from the fast lanes, and
consigning them to traffic jams on freeways like I-880 and I-110, to name just
two.
Their new
report suggests 13 percent of households in the state’s six largest urban areas
might be “unduly burdened” by the combination of their driving needs, high
tolls and low incomes.
So the
planners suggest subsidizing drivers with household incomes below 200 percent
of the federal poverty level ($55,000 or less for a family of four). Real life
in this era suggests far more than 13 percent of Californians fall into that
category.
But how
to tell which drivers are in what category? Their auto registrations don’t
provide this information, with many rich folks preferring to hang onto older
cars they like rather than buying new ones. So the planners suggest matching
car registrations with welfare records, thus violating the privacy of many.
Plus,
giving those who match up in this way cash does not guarantee it will be spent
on toll lanes. In fact, odds are it will be spent on other things, defeating
the purpose of trying to make toll lanes fair.
There’s
the rub. Toll lanes imposed on existing roadways are inherently unfair, and no
amount of subsidies for the poor will change that. Most of those lanes have
essentially been stolen from drivers who were guaranteed the ability to use
them in exchange for paying gas taxes.
But
fairness has never been the goal of all this. Rather, the aim is to install
ideas that look fine in theory, but don’t do much in practice.
The
ultimate answer probably lies not in any tinkering, but in making rapid transit
live up to its name, while also making it safe and convenient and clean enough
to pull drivers out of their cars in large numbers.
-30-
Email Thomas Elias at
tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising
Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now
available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net
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