Archive for June 16th, 2009

The interstate system was created in 1956 as the Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways, and everything about it is perfectly uniform and federally mandated, right down to the width of the dotted white line. Rest areas, however, have been the holdout of states’ rights, most of them designed in a way that’s consistent throughout a state and different from those in the commonwealth next door. Codified in federal jargon as “safety rest areas,” they grew out of the fear that as millions of us took to the road cross-country for the first time, we’d need regular resting outposts to keep us from barreling into each other.

That’s from an excellent piece over at Good, the sort of story after my own heart — the social and design history of a curious piece of vernacular architecture (the highway rest stop) one that now seems in decline.

Reader Brad writes in with a query:

I wondered if you could indulge me by trying to answer a question that has long puzzled me; I drive mostly on rural roads, and not infrequently must follow a slower car until the opportunity to pass occurs. Often, as I pass I notice the other car speeding up slightly — at least 5–8 mph it seems over its previous speed; almost a magnetic or slingshot effect. I have even noticed that at times I do it myself, involuntarily, as I am being passed! Is this a recognized phenomenon with its own name?

Has anyone else experienced this? One answer may be that the driver being passed has simply lost track of his speed, and being passed suddenly alerts them that they may be driving slowly; speeding up may be a sort of panic response. Another answer is that the sight of being passes awakens some competitive impulse, a version of the “territorial defense” mechanism theorized by Barry Ruback — even if the territory is abstract road space, and the person passing in this case is actually not competing for the same resource, given that they’re in the opposing lane. Or maybe they’re just playing chicken.

In Traffic I note a strange, somewhat related version of this phenomenon, which I call “passive-aggressive passing” — someone bullies you out of the left-lane, you dutifully get over, and they then pull in front of you, and drive slower than they were when they were on your tail. It’s as if all they wanted was to get you to pull over.

But I have no doubt there may be less than noble motives at work in these cases. I myself am guilty of doing something like the following: I will be driving along (in say the middle lane) when I notice someone coming at a high speed on the right side. It seems as if their intent is to cut in front of me, in the small space I have left between myself and the vehicle in front of me. Annoyed by this person’s behavior — the idea that they may pass close to me at a high speed, perhaps forcing me to brake — I have at times slightly accelerated, so that I move closer to the vehicle that is ahead of them in their own lane. The result is that they must hit the brakes, and try something else.

Immature? Perhaps. Or maybe it’s simply pro-social altruistic punishment — homo reciprocans.

Peter Gordon debates Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times on the federal-funded pilot project to introduce congestion (variable HOT) pricing to local freeways in L.A.

Rutten notes it’s not true congestion pricing:

Oddly enough, no solo drivers will be admitted when average speeds in the new high-occupancy toll lanes fall below 45 miles per hour. That’s to keep them from getting clogged, but the result is that there will be congestion pricing — except when the highways are most congested.

Gordon notes that, responding to the inequity claim, that Angelenos, in essence, already pay a congestion charge. It’s called time (which equals money).

First, if price does not ration road space, something else will. This means that heavy traffic on roads and highways that aren’t priced is a given. It is the default rationing mechanism. Anything made available without charge is quickly crowded. None of this is a matter of ideology, as Rutten seems to think.

The Times itself largely agrees with Gordon.

Most highway improvements are paid for with state and federal taxes on gasoline. This is an extremely regressive tax, not only because rich and poor alike pay the same amount, but because poor people typically can’t afford modern gas-sipping vehicles — there are a lot more Priuses in Santa Monica than in South L.A. Congestion pricing, though, imposes a user fee; only the people who use toll lanes pay the cost, and the people who use them tend to have higher incomes. It’s hard to imagine a fairer system.

In truth, low-income commuters stand to benefit a great deal from L.A.’s experiment. Only 25% of the project’s budget will be spent on developing the new toll lanes; the bulk of the money will pay for public-transit improvements, including the purchase of 57 new express buses traveling the affected routes. And by law, the money from the tolls must be spent on transit or carpool improvements in the same corridor where the funds were generated.