Dear Tim:
A lot of people in the suburbs commute to the suburbs. Also the average time for commuters in the state is lower than for Chicago.
You can do a lot by changing the scope to either minimize a problem or expand it far beyond its real impact. You are trying to expand the scope to minimize the impact and then use a flat percentage cutoff to say it isn't a problem. Well the 9/11 terrorist crews killed 3+K people. Every month that number die on the highways. So over the last 6 years, less than 1% of the not natural deaths in the US were caused by terrorism, so terrorism isn't a problem.
So you try by expanding the scope to include people who don't commute. They walk downstairs to their shop, they walk down the block to the store and they drive a mile to the local business district. Most common people don't put those people into the "commuter" class. But they are included in your sample which skews the averages down making your "we don't have to worry about it" cutoff effectively much higher.
Similarly very few trucks put the majority of VMTs on the Interstate. Moving just them alone would effectively cut more than half of the semi VMTs on the Interstate. This segment is highly price sensitive. A 10 ton container moving 1000 miles is a $10K move. It is worth one hour of clerk time to reduce that to $9K. Its just 10%, but more than enough to change shipping vendors. Even 1% at $9,900 would be enough incentive to switch.
So a 25% rate cut would move almost all of them to the cheaper method. It wouldn't affect much the hauls of 10 miles as $25 a move isn't enough to cover the extra aggravation, unless you do a lot of them. Right now the effective crossover is about 400 miles. At a 25% rate cut, the crossover drops to about 40 miles. Yes it will mitigate over time as the tracks become congested. But it takes far less romm to add another track to a main line than another lane in each direction to an Interstate.
1 - Why should we care less about non "primary bread winners".
Because they commute at a far less rate.
2 - 14% over an hour is not inconsistent with a 33.2 minute average, or with my statement about 2.8 hours being an extreme outlier.
It is not an outlier when the scope is adjusted to commuters. Using the standard definition that commuters go between jurisdictions. Most towns are 36 square miles in area. They become suburbs of a major city over time. So the commuter group travels at least 6 miles to work. Thats 20-40% of overall workers. 14% is a large number in that scope. It could even represent half of the commuters. 5% likely are at 2.8 hours given a typical distribution. 5% of 30% is 1/6th which generally isn't considered an outlier. It might be to the population at large, but we are talking about those who "commute" to work.
The federal gasoline and diesel fuel taxes bring in more than is spent on the interstate system. Yes its government payments, but its government payments that are a cost to people who drive.
Not so for trucks, especially big semis:
fhwa.dot.gov
stateline.org
And they aren't paying for costs now. In short, maintenance and upkeep of the highways are not being covered. Too much are being delayed and will cost more in the long run. We are putting more roads in when we can't even maintain what we currently have. So the roads are going to need higher subsidies.
Those suburb to suburb commutes are often shorter than suburb to city center commutes.
May be shorter in distance, but not in time. Consider this exapmle (I know its contrived,but it illustrates the point and is not that far fetched), your house is next to a 60MPH freeway on/off ramp. Your suburb's business district is the other way on the 30MPH highway crossing the freeway. There are two jobs, one is right off the freeway ramp 10 miles away and the other is one mile away with 16 traffic lights inbetween. They are designed to force you to stop and look at the store fronts for a minute. They are on a two minute cycle and you know you'll miss every one. Does it take longer to reach the freeway job or the Suburb job? With the suburb job, you will wait 1 minute at least at every stop light. It takes you 18 minutes to go to the suburb job and 10 minutes to go to the freeway job. Even though the freeway job is ten times as far, you get there in 55% of the time.
Those that drive all around that suburb may know of routes non immediately apparent that go only 25MPH, but the cops look the other way as yuou go 35MPH ion 25MPH zones, roll through stop signs which increase the distance to two miles to the suburb job, but you can do it in 5 minutes with a lot more aggracation and risk plus the fact that you start a few minutes early to beat the rush. You being a savvy gambler will take the suburb job, but only because you know the back routes in the area. You will likely put down 5 minutes on the survey question, forgetting that there are a few delays going across busy streets that take another 3 minutes on average.
More importantly in my opinion, I don't want the government monitoring how fast I drive on any sort of continual basis.
I agree to that.
Other than that I suppose I could accept it. But to the extent it makes trucks transport more expensive, it will increase costs for business in this country. And the cost increase would have to be massive and sustained for a long time to make the type of shift to rail that you want. I think that such a cost increase would do more harm than good.
Long term we would have to pay more to not be stuck in traffic. Besides, I don't think you or I should subsidize for trucks or large SUVs. What will happen is that some other method that is not used now because its relatively too expensive would come in and cap the increases. As its volume ramps up, it could actually be cheaper in the long run than going down our current path. If gas taxes doubled, many marginal decisions will be changed. At $4 a gallon gas, people don't drive a SUV unless they have too. And they drive a more efficient compact car that may be slightly less comfortable. They opt for the 37MPG base engine rather than the sporty bigger 30MPG engine. And they drive a little bit slower as well. It doesn't cut their VMTs much, just their choice of which vehicle they use. Going to a smaller slower vehicle cuts the road damage and thus lowers maintenance costs to a sustainable level. The bigger impacts are to the high VMT vehicles. They are likely to switch modes.
Pete |
