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Imagine pumping money out of the Newport Coast like an oil well.
.I think that I may be switching sides in the 405 toll lane debate.
I think that maybe we should build Alternative 3 after all.
Wait, wait — hear me out. It would not shock me if, by the end of this article, my friends Vern the Publisher and the mysterious Mayor of Quimby might agree with me.
Before I begin, though, let’s agree on two things:
(1) We want to allow people driving up from the Newport Coast to get up to Long Beach as quickly as possible, right? (Nod your head even if you don’t actually care about this.)
(2) We all believe in following the law, right? (Again, nod your head even if you violently disagree.)
All right, then, here’s my modest proposal.
(By the way, if the 405 tollway, which I call the “expensiveway,” is actually built, we will actually do this. Democrats will campaign on this, and it will be extremely popular with voters, and it will lead to Democratic control of the whole bloody coastal region north of the 73. Within a year Newport Coast will be begging us to close the expensiveway down — but we won’t until it’s paid for!.)
OK: We will build the tollway and it will have a 65 mph speed limit — because that’s the official speed limit on the 405.
When someone gets a ticket to get onto the tollway (or rather when their transponder registers), it will come with a time stamp.
At 65 miles per hour, traveling 13 miles on the expensiveway should take one exactly 12 minutes on the nose. (Do the math, it’s not hard: 13 miles/65mph = 13/65 hour = 1/5 hour = 12 minutes.)
If one goes 70 mph, say, it will take 11 minutes and 8.5 seconds.
At 75, it will take 10 minutes and 24 seconds.
At 80, it will take 9 minutes and 45 seconds.
Do you see where I’m going here? With transponders at the beginning and end of a trip, you can calculate duration of travel down to the second, and therefore speed of travel down to the fraction of a mile. (You can’t do that on a freeway without a lot of work!)
And we all believe in following the law, right? (Remember, I made you nod?)
So here’s the system: car passes from the 73 to the 405, gets a time stamp. It exits 13 miles up the road, and the finely calibrated system gives it another time stamp. It automatically calculates the speed of travel and docks the car the cost of the fine — increasing after the first offense, of course — while a photo is taken automatically to show who was driving the car.
In fact, I’ll bet we could rig up the transponders so that it will print out a little receipt:
“Calculated Speed: 81.4 mph. Presumed Offense number: 2. Calculated fine: $1067.”
Will the wealthy care? It’s a small price for them to pay for being able to whiz by the suckers in the other lane stopped in traffic, isn’t it? In fact, my bet is that for the wealthy, having these little tickets — we could rig the transponders to print them out in gold ink on expensive linen paper — would turn out to be a status symbol. “Oh, you went 81.4 mph in the toll lane? Well, I went 97.3 mph in the toll lane! For the eighteenth time! I had to pay a $31,000 ticket! That’s how rich I am!
Everybody wins! The rich get pampered and get to flaunt their wealth and privilege, the state shares the benefit from the fines with the county and we balance the budget with better schools and services! And the best part is, the rich will actually be penalized for breaking the law for once! Oh, heck yeah, build those toll lanes!
(Note: it is possible that the rich will just hire drivers and make them speed and be responsible for the fines. This should be made illegal and punished with lots of massive fines. Fines only: We don’t want to put rich people in jail, after all. Oh, and the employees can sue the employers, of course, under existing law.)
Of course, some may argue that a system like this can’t possibly work. I understand that concern. As a North County resident without a transponder, I’m willing to see it tested on the 91, if that would help. (After all, we all care that people not break the law, right? Remember all the fuss about camping in public?) And if this leads people to decide that maybe the 91 toll lanes should become free HOV lanes and help reduce one of the most massive headaches in Orange County — that’s fine too
Our Coverage Thus Far:
- “Lexus Lanes” on the 405? Help Stop the Latest Toll Road Outrage!
- Perfect Circularity: A 405 Toll Lane for the Sole Purpose of Funding a 405 Toll Lane?
- OCTA’s Will Kempton to Betray OC Voters?
- Proposal Unites Enemies in Costa Mesa, against HB Mayor Don Hansen.
- 405 Toll-Gate For Dummies: How the proposed toll lanes are illegal.
- My Modest Proposal to build “Expensiveways” on the 405
- A Taxpayer Bailout for the Failed 73 San Joaquin Hills Toll Road?
- Seal Beach and Westminster to Join Costa Mesa in opposing 405 tolls
- OCTA expects BILLIONS in revenue from 405 Tolls!
- 405 Toll Projection – $2.95 for Three Miles!
- Cooking the Books with Two VERY different sets of numbers…
- How We Can Defeat the 405 Toll Lanes! And … Meet Your OCTA Board!
- Huntington Beach Mayor Hansen Rebuffed by his own City Council
AND NOW, somebody has created the excellent…
No 405 Tolls.Com!
E-mail ALL the OCTA Board Members by clicking HERE.
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The public has paid for improvements to the 405 freeway with the approval of Measure M extension. Option 3, express lane toll lanes, does not benefit everyone, only those who can pay. I believe in inclusive policies that benefit the entire public, especially when the public paid for it. No toll roads!
Robin, you’re appealing to principles of justice, to logic, and to people’s better nature.
I’m just flat out threatening rich people with what happens if toll roads are built. It’s all good.
GD- Funny you should bring this up…I always thought it was a logical enforcement action with most all of the toll roads that would eventually come up and most would not want. If people don’t like red light cameras, they will love the toll speeding tickets.
I don’t understand why if the 91 Toll Road was eliminated you would want it converted into an HOV lane…that is not very inclusive. Seems that it would be better for the public and all of us taxpayers to have 2 new general purpose lanes that all of us can enjoy instead of just a select group of taxpayers.
Why HOV’s? There is – the right would call it social engineering – the legitimate interest of the public, through its government, to reduce pollution and traffic by incentivizing people to carpool. Nothing too radical there.
TJ — It’s social engineering! Seriously, society has a significant interest in encouraging both mileage efficiency and carpooling as a means of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels; one way to achieve that is to dole out rewards to those who help achieve it. (Yes, some will be faking it by having their kids in the car; it’s not unusual that the costs of enforcing the spirit of the law is not worth the gain to be had.)
In contrast, we do not need to reward people for living in Newport Coast and wanting to bypass the coastal cities of OC so as get to LA faster.
I could possibly agree that the good gained by reducing pollution and traffic at the cost of not being inclusive, if it worked. The radical part is that from my experience, I personally do not think it is reducing pollution or traffic and therefore should take a serious look at them as a whole.
A lot of those who are utilizing the HOV lanes are not reducing pollution or traffic. The 2nd person, in a lot but not all cases, far too often is someone who cannot drive (i.e. a child) or the group would be carpooling anyways. The first is pretty easy to understand…the latter may take a little thought. From my personal experience, the use of the carpool lane in before you get in the car decisions is often not a consideration…it is a benefit of doing something that you may already be doing. For example, oh good, I have another person in the car so I can use the HOV lane or, lets carpool so we don’t use twice as much gas, as opposed to, saying hey instead of both of us driving we should carpool so we can use the HOV lane. Hopefully you can see the distinction. The one area that I actually see the HOV lanes possibly having a major impact is in routing…often someone who is already carpooling will know that they should take a freeway that has a HOV lane.
I also think that the HOV proponents have a vested interest in having drivers with kids as the passenger allowed in the HOV lanes as it gives the impression that the HOV lanes have a higher goal oriented purpose than they actually do and if they were not allowed in the HOV lanes the general purpose lanes would be that much worse.
I know you keep harping on Newport Coast, but there are plenty in other parts of the County who could also benefit…I get why you are saying what you are saying, and I don’t necessarily disagree on the Toll Roads, I just happen to think that we should ALL be able to utilize the lanes on our freeways instead of restricting them to just a select group.
I should say, not reducing pollution or traffic to the extent that would overcome the good generated by the roads being open to all of us instead of a select group. I am sure that there is a slight reduction in both.
Well, ya know, TJ … as far as the immediate issue goes, and listening to your concerns, Alt 2 should be sounding best to you: keeping only one HOV lane with the improvement that it’ll be continuous access, but adding 2 general purpose lanes for a total of SIX GP lanes for us Joe commuters! No?
Yes, if I had to vote solely based on the 3 alternatives presented, Alt 2 seems to be most aligned with my thoughts…2nd step is to at least make the HOV lane continuous access, 3rd step is to make the HOV lane time sensitive, 4th step is to make the HOV lane a general purpose lane.
And I’d really like to see some kind of light rail going down the middle…
I agree, but that makes the proposal less modest!
My first impression is that the only way you could that without having a lot of the same arguments that you have against the toll road would be to have elevated tracks and it self-funding…do you think that is possible?
Ah, it’s not realistic politically this decade, although some of my enviro friends are bitching – “Let’s spend that $1.3 billion on something like that instead.”
I don’t know if anyone has studied the impact of HOV lanes on reducing traffic — I presume that they have, but if you or I had access to such studies we would have already quoted them. Of course, if staring enviously at those in HOV lanes leads people to try to carpool, especially at peak hours, then that’s what matters most. I’ve looked at HOV lanes from both sides now (as Joni Mitchell did not quite sing) from my days with a now-defunct yellow low-emissions sticker; I think that they do encourage carpooling in commuting. Could be wrong.
Having lanes that are HOV only at peak hours, as the ‘Ships have suggested, seems reasonable to me. (Try doing that with toll lanes, though….) Shifting traffic in different ways also might make sense — I have plenty of experience with that from driving from Queens into Manhattan for school and work — but I don’t think that many of our roads have quite the same dependable one-way flow that you find on the Queensboro Bridge.
I like the idea of encouraging people to do something pro-social with the presence of a free lane — but “get rich to pay tolls” is not really pro-social.
I stare at those in the HOV lane with their kids in their carseats and figure out how to get my kids to travel with me when I need to cross town…does not reduce pollution or the number cars on the road. Sure, there are some who will leave a car at home and carpool but I personally feel that is the great minority even for those with two adult drivers. Those who would carpool would carpool regardless.
I love the idea of the HOV during peak hours much more than what we have now. I also see that the Tolls could easily be peak only…essentially just open them up for the masses. Not too hard. I also like reverse direction roads, but not all of our roads would work, but certainly many could work (i.e. 91, 10, 60, even 5) on certain strethces…not sure about the 405.
Glad you brought up the “get rich to pay tolls”…I almost wrote it but thought it was going too far. I do think that it is pro-society to prosper, although not sure if you should prosper so you can pay the toll. Just like I think it is pro-society to carpool, just not sure if the majority of people in the carpool lane are doing it for that reason or if it makes other good sense.