Is air quality important or not?

Here’s an interesting juxtaposition of headlines from this morning’s DMN:

“Natural gas taxis going to the front of the line at Love Field.”

“Solo drivers may be able to buy way onto Dallas HOV lanes.”

On the one hand, our government leaders are busting the chops of small, individual-owned taxis by requiring them to purchase a natural-gas fueled vehicle in order to get priority at the airport. The reason: Improved air quality from the few natural-gas cabs that will be converted, probably primarily by large corporations with available funds.

And on the other hand, our government leaders are willing to sell off what were originally billed as traffic- and pollution-busting high-occupancy-vehicle lanes to the highest bidders. Potentially, if you’re willing to pay a higher price to ride in the HOV lanes, you won’t need another person in the car. Another “innovation” in the works, thanks to cash-strapped DART: If the HOVs will be clogged with single-occupancy vehicles, then the number of regular HOV people required to ride for free in the HOVs is going to increase from two to three or four to reduce the number of those drivers in the lanes.

So we’re beating up on small taxi owners at Love Field in the name of cleaning up the air, but we’re selling off the “clean-air” HOV lanes to anyone willing to pay, particularly solo drivers who naturally pollute more.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

Posted by: Rick Wamre on September 1st, 2010 in All Blog Posts, City Hall, DART, Traffic
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Mike

HOV lanes…what a wast of valuable highway space. Inevitably there are few if any cars in that lane while the other “normal” lanes are congested with heavy Dallas rush hour traffic. I’ve often wondered (while sitting in traffic) how that extra lane of traffic might ease congestion if it were open to everyone. My gut says the environment isn’t improving at all with the addition of the HOV lane. Its empty while 3-4 other lanes are completely full of stop and go traffic causing plenty of pollution.
http://www.alandwilliams.com Alan W

Hmm…selling HOV access. Is this what is meant by cap and trade?

Seriously though, I’m still trying to figure out how this will be enforced for the non-dedicated HOV lanes which I see people slipping in and out of constantly on LBJ.
DallasM

To the first point, the conversion from Petrol to NG isn’t that big of a deal. It doesn’t cost that much, and it’s a business expense so it’s tax deductible. Current regulations require that taxi companies retire their cars on very frequent schedules anyways. Much more frequent than most people replace their cars. So, the cabby should just hold out and buy a new NG car during their normal replacement schedule. It’s really not that big of a deal. Then again, we are also not NY and I can’t believe that the city’s fleet of taxis is really contributing that much to the air quality.

On the second point, I don’t like giving single passenger cars the right to drive in the HOV lane. It is well demonstrated in numerous studies that adding lanes does not decrease traffic. I mean, really, just think about it. How many lanes does 635 have? At least five lanes going each direction between 75 and DNT. Six in some places. People that want the HOV lane opened to regular traffic are pretty dense. What do you think you are going to accomplish, really? If there is heavy traffic in five lanes, do you really think a sixth is going to fix everything? No, it won’t. People will just fill up the sixth lane just as quickly. People are amazingly selfish. They will take up whatever space you give them.

Do you actually want to know a surprising method that has been demonstrated in more than one instance to decrease traffic congestion? Remove the freeways. That’s right. Removing freeways from existence actually decreases traffic congestion. It’s been demonstrated time and time again. Look it up.