It’s fun to feign omnipotence and think how I would change
Los Angeles if I could.
I would certainly give the state more money, so it
wouldn’t have to take its debt out on students and force me
into month-long Ramen-fests. I would unclog the freeway, so that
driving (ideally being faster than walking) would have a purpose
again, and I would clean the air, as this has to be the only desert
in the world that aggravates my allergies more than a field of hay.
And then, just for kicks, I’d give jobs to the
unemployed.
All of this can be accomplished in one step. Everything I have
outlined, a Los Angeles that could be better in every way, is
easily within our grasp. The cost? Fifty cents.
The answer is simple: the 405 Freeway should be transformed from
a freeway to a tollway. When I’ve mentioned this idea the
reaction has almost always been shock and an emphatic
“No!” as if I had said that I wanted to secede from the
Union or reinstate Prohibition. But instead of the initial,
knee-jerk resistance to the idea of tolls that would cost the price
of a pencil, consider the facts.
For starters, the 405 could become self-sustaining. Michelle
Damico, senior manager for the Illinois tollway system, explained
that in the greater Chicago area “all toll revenues are
generated for the maintenance, operation and construction of the
tollway. … We get no state or federal tax revenues.” She
went on to say that in 2006, projected revenues from toll
collection are estimated at $603 million, and noted that the
Illinois tollway does in fact pay for itself.
Of course, the comparison between Illinois and California is not
perfect, as the Illinois system has been in place for years, and
the financial gains do not reflect the actual construction of the
alterations.
But Randall Crane, UCLA professor of urban planning and
associate director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies,
explains that installing tolls is the future of highways; most of
the new major highways in California are going to be tolled.
“The federal government no longer subsidizes highway
development as generously as in the 1950s-1980s,” he said in
an e-mail. And if the road is used, “there is no good reason
that users shouldn’t pay, just as they pay for other services
such as garbage collection and water.”
In addition, all of the financial benefits are buttressed by the
indisputable fact that a tollway system provides thousands of men
and women with well-paying, unskilled employment. The Illinois
tollway, for example, has created 252,000 jobs.
But despite the obvious benefits of the influx of money Illinois
saved and the employment of thousands of unemployed individuals,
the highways in and around Los Angeles remain free.
Apparently, all the potential good is nullified when facing the
prospect of paying two gumballs worth of change in exchange for a
service that shouldn’t be free in the first place.
“Voters have been consistently opposed to toll lanes,”
Crane said, explaining that there is no political support for
transforming free lanes into toll lanes. “People don’t
like to pay for things they are used to getting for
free.”
But of all the students and other nonexperts I have talked to,
the biggest concern I’ve heard is not the money as much as
the effect toll booths would have on traffic. “Are you
kidding?” asked fourth-year engineering student Jake
Williams, “I can barely move on the 405 as it is.”
Surprisingly, there is a sound argument that the transition to
tolls would actually reduce congestion, not worsen it. In February
of 2003, the city of London began charging a toll for driving at
certain points and times in the city in an effort to reduce traffic
and fund road improvements, and it has been considered a unanimous
success.
The theory is simple: If the 405 wasn’t free, fewer people
would take it. Crane explains that “two-thirds of highway
traffic today is running errands, rather than the journey to work
or school. … (This) has a high social cost, via
congestion.”
In other words, there is no point in complaining about the
traffic on the freeway if you’re stuck in it on your way to
go buy ice cream.
By offering disincentives to superfluous drivers, more people
carpool and some don’t drive at all ““ which not only
helps the congestion problem, but also assists in cleaning the air,
which is something of a problem here in the land of smog and
haze.
I’m not saying this is without questions. The exact London
system would not work for a tollway because it involves checking
pre-bought tickets, and therefore there would have to be tollbooths
that would indeed slow down traffic in their particular areas. But
tollbooths can be active during times of high traffic and inactive
at off-peak times, which would have an identical effect.
Cities, like people, are all unique, and there is no telling
exactly how traffic patterns would respond to a new factor. But
perhaps it’s time to start listening to the experts. We are
as certain as we can be that transforming the 405 into a tollway
would be beneficial.
Phil Goodwin, the professor of transport policy at the
University College London put it best when he referred to tolls on
roads as a policy that “offers some chance of making things
better rather than just (slowing) down the pace at which they get
worse.”
Yes, it is an inconvenience. But it’s time we learned to
accept mild annoyances in the face of overwhelming good. It’s
the only way anything is going to change.
If you can’t hear “tollbooth” without
thinking “phantom,” O’Bryan will
talk you through it at
jobryan@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.