I'd rather see more lanes converted to HOT lanes - "High Occupancy or Toll" lanes that's open to HOVs and the remaining space is filled by cars who pay tolls. HOV4 lanes in the middle of the freeway sounds tough, and I don't think they'll actually create a lot of carpooling.

Still, given how much freeways and parking are subsidized against their high actual cost, it makes sense to recoup this from drivers. (No, gas tax doesn't pay for freeways anymore and hasn't since the early 90s.)

Economist,

Policy watchdog Transdef has a strong dislike of HOT lanes, "The sole purpose of HOT lanes is to facilitate drive-alone mode. HOT lanes were invented to forestall the need to change driver behavior." To Transdef, HOT helps congestion but harms climate.

Economist,

It is hard to envision busy HOV4 lanes with the Bay Area's current 77% single occupancy vehicle (SOV) commute mode share. With the projected 75% increase in driving operation cost yielding a 17% reduction in vehicle miles traveled, this should lead to transportation modelling showing busy HOV3 and HOV4 lanes that are more "productive" than standard General Purpose lanes. The more travel mode shifts away from SOV, the more busy HOV3 and HOV4 lanes will be.

This is also very interesting from a congestion standpoint, because the Bay Area now has the nation's second worst traffic congestion after LA. So we have a economic competitiveness issue where we need much more efficient use of our roads and freeways. So the need is to increase occupancy in vehicles.

I think all the transportation officials must be shareholders in high blood pressure medicines, online shopping and take-out food delivery services since they want to ensure we'll be totally frustrated if ever leave home.

Well, if you want to make people use less gas, you should increase the gas tax. No matter how you are setting out HOV lanes, it's a better use of th road space to let people pay a toll to ride if there's not carpooling drivers to fill up the roadway to the right level of capacity.

Economist,

Agreed re HOT lanes in your scenario. But CTP 2040 is attempting something different.

Agreed that raising the gas tax is a very effective policy idea. A challenge is that many of these pricing measures poll abysmally. 75% of California voters polled opposed a $0.25 gas tax increase, let alone the level of driving price increase envisioned in CTP2040. See: Web Link

Yes, let's raise the gas tax! Driving should only be for the affluent.

Musical,

I think your point is that some driving pricing policies are economically regressive, disproportionately affecting low income citizens. This is a very important point. Not all pricing policies are the same and policy making should score policies on social/economic equity, GHG reduction, traffic reduction, political viability, ease of implementation, and cost-effectiveness.

For example, pay-as-you-drive auto insurance is a great way to reduce California driving by 3% while providing considerable savings for the average driver. Economically progressive. A no-brainer pricing policy that is making slow progress in California.

Musical - how much do you think California should subsidize driving vs. mass transit? Transit is disproportionately used by the poor. It's also subsidized, but the numbers involved in subsidizing driving are staggering.

I think it's only fair to ask drivers to pay for the costs of the roads and parking spaces they use.

These utopian social engineering notions should be confined by law to the salons where they originate. Converting SOV lanes to HOV will only boost carbon emissions as ever more SOVs creep along ever more slowly.

The solution is building more lanes, or bringing in fewer commuters.

@Curmudgeon -- Why not take it to the (il)logical extreme, and just bulldoze everything -- and put in roads in their place?

That is what you would want to have...right?

@Stop the Trolls

You know how absurd that is; of course he'd want to spare his home, and whatever his destination he's headed to.

Planners don't seem to understand the human factor. Theoretically it is a nice idea and theoretically it would work, but human behavior will not change just because of what the plan will implement. How do you find three others that live in the same neighborhood and have exactly the same schedule and work in the same area? Why don't you solve that problem first? What if one of the 4 needs to leave early because of an emergency with their child? That's my problem? The plan is obviously disconnected from reality and human needs. The plan is therefore incomplete, it is ignoring the most important factor - the human itself. It's like building a house without doors and people have to figure out themselves how to get in and out - yeah, super smart plan! As long as you don't include human behavior and human needs in your planning you are just wasting taxpayer's money. In fact, you are ignoring the needs of the people who are paying you, think about that.

Planners don't seem to understand the human factor. Theoretically it is a nice idea and theoretically it would work, but human behavior will not change just because of what the plan will implement. How do you find three others that live in the same neighborhood and have exactly the same schedule and work in the same area? Why don't you solve that problem first? What if one of the 4 needs to leave early because of an emergency with their child? That's my problem? The plan is obviously disconnected from reality and human needs. The plan is therefore incomplete, it is ignoring the most important factor - the human itself. It's like building a house without doors and people have to figure out themselves how to get in and out - yeah, super smart plan! As long as you don't include human behavior and human needs in your planning you are just wasting taxpayer's money. In fact, you are ignoring the needs of the people who are paying you, think about that.

I would like to see car taxes (gas tax, property tax, etc) cover the cost of building and maintaining roads. Right now, only a fraction of road costs are paid for by car taxes. The majority comes from general sales taxes. This really isn't fair to people who don't drive much or at all.

The proposal to raise driving costs is, well, absolutely ridiculous. A free market -- with some government incentives to energy companies and the workplace -- will help make non-gasoline vehicles the norm within a decade or two.

@use tax -- "This really isn't fair to people who don't drive much or at all."

Unless you live on a waterway or airport, all goods and services come to you on roads.
The cost of roads will always be built in to the cost of everything we consume.
If costs were redistributed to land directly and solely on motorists, you'd just see the costs of everything else go up.

@musical

And those shipping costs would be passed on to the consumer based on the road use of the shipper, I really don't see what your point is.

Roberto, in the US 12% of folks carpool, but 80% of those are "fampools" - folks who carpool with someone in their household. So probabilistically, carpool commute matching does not have critical mass.

I think the CTP2040 do have an excellent understanding of creating a critical mass of folks looking to carpool match. Their pricing scheme will dramatically increase probability of finding a carpool. In addition, innovative new services like carma carpool take carpool matching to the next level, further improving matching. Past experiments with pricing, such as the 20th Century company's (Fox News) Century City pricing project did result in a very large increase in carpooling. So there is some rigorous analysis to support an increase in carpooling. In addition, CTP 2040 is envisioning a speedup for carpools on Highway 101, etc.

Transportation Planning is a fine discipline with some really terrific intellectual achievements (like MTC's travel demand forecasting model)- in spite of the awful traffic we have. Europeans pay $9 per gallon of gas and drive 33% less. Humans travel behavior is pretty well understood, but the politics are kinda tricky.

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