[lbo-talk] London congestion charge

[Andy F]

On Thu, Apr 10, 2008 at 2:38 PM, Jordan Hayes <jmhayes at j-o-r-d-a-n.com> wrote:
> > So if you think that reversing these policies is
>  > possible by incentives alone, without imposing any
>  > cost on the population - I think you are dreaming.
>
>  I didn't say "at no cost" -- in fact, half this conversation is about
>  cost!
>
>  I gave you a (working) example yesterday: the growth of BART; but I'll
>  expand that to commuter rail in general.  Providing the right incentives
>  gets people out of their cars ... it's not great, but it's got promise.
>  All it needs is more.

What you said was this:

-----------
Well, we have a little experimental data for this: the 1989 Loma Priata
earthquake closed the Bay Bridge for 6 weeks.  At the time, about
250,000 vehicles per day used the bridge, and BART carried about 218,000
passengers.  Within a week, average ridership was 308,000 per day;
current ridership is 340k/day ("official" capacity is about 350k, though
the all-time record was 381k ... which means if we have another one,
we're well and fucked).
-----------

The incentive in that case was making driving completely nonviable,
not improving BART.  I'll grant that banning cars altogether would do
the trick, but I suspect that's not what you meant.

-- 
Andy