HOT lanes vs Slugs? Benefit or Problem?

The link below should take you to a PDF transcript of testimony Shirley J. Ybarra gave to the House Committee on Government Reform, Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs back in 2004. It paints a pretty good picture of her utopian views on public private partnerships in transportation. I'm not much for big government but I believe that transportation is one area where government should maintain complete control of capital assets and those assets should be democratically available i.e. they should be available for all to use equally not just those who can afford to pay. Great nations are built on great transportation networks that permit unfettered access to all with as few barriers as possible to the flow of traffic. Tolls are not democratic and they establish financial and physical barriers in our transportation system. If we continue to follow the model Ms. Ybarra discusses in her testimony we will soon find ourselves in a nation divided by its private infrastructure and the only commerce that will move effectively and efficiently will be commerce with adequate financial backing. That may sound farfetched on the surface but when you read some of the details of the 95 HOT Lanes contract I think you might agree that the idea is not as paranoid as it first sounds sounds.

www.ncppp.org/councilinstitutes/ybarra_testimony.pdf

My last post on this thread was in 2009. Wow, how things have (not) changed.

I gave up on this Lost Cause some years ago because it was obvious that we had lost. We are still losing.

The Randian forces of privatization continue to dominate discussion of government services. Things that you and I rely on to make our country great - from roads and schools, to clean air and water, to parks and beaches - are being handed over to corporations to "manage" on our behalf. Which means they get to wring a personal profit out of public resources. Nice deal if you can get it.

Giving our shared road, that our parents built and paid for (I'm talking I-395 here, in case you're wondering,)to an Australian company to own and manage for the next 70+ years, with guaranteed profits for them and laughably weak protections for you and me, is a right-wing concept that we have to find some way to stop.

But will we? Hell no. Because we are weak and they are strong. And they know it. I remember going to a Fluor/Transurban and VDOT presentation on this and all these fat motherf*ckers from Fluor tried to physically intimidate me and drag me off to a corner to "talk". At the time, we all knew it was over. They'd already won - they just didn't want sad wet Sponges to sob too loudly during their victory parade.

Yeah, that was at one of their regular public forums. I've been to three, one at Potomac H.S., one at Woodbridge Jr, and this one, which I can't recall where it was held.

It was disheartening. Maybe I'm blocking the memory.

I think it's just names of one good thing. You can share your car, reducing your expenses as well as air pollution. It doesn't matter whether it's free at all or you compensate expenses partially.

http://greenautobook.com/

I don't think anyone will really know what, if any, impact it will have until the lanes have been operating for a few months.

It'll be interesting to see whether slug riders have any success at getting rides outside the current HOV hours. That is, the reversible lanes between the Pentagon and the Turkeycock ramps just south of Duke Street will operate just as they do today, requiring HOV-3 from 3:30 to 6:00 and then open to all traffic after 6:00. South of there, however, the HO/T operation will be in effect 24/7 except while the lanes are closed to reverse the direction. So even after 6:00, it will be in some drivers' best interest to pick up slugs to obtain the toll-free ride, as I think it's reasonable to assume many SOVs who use the reversible lanes after 6:00 PM today will no longer do so such that there will be a real benefit to using the reversible lanes between, say, 6:00 and 7:30 or so. (I wonder how much of a difference that would have made last night. Traffic was horrible.)

Obviously, that's the sort of thing that takes time, and it relies on fragile trust from (a) the riders that drivers will swing by the lines after 6:00 and (b) the drivers that it'll be worth swinging by the lines because there will be riders there.