No Light Rail in Vancouver!

Drew Carey: We Can Build Our Way out of Congestion

Oct 23

2007

The Reason Foundation has posted a great video about traffic congestion featuring Drew Carey. Carey touts variable-priced high-occupancy toll lanes as a solution to congestion.

The video features California’s SR 91 HOT lanes, which cost anywhere from $1.50 to $9.50 to use depending on the traffic. “Sounds pricey,” says Carey, “but each day about 40,000 people pay the toll.”

“Traffic can often keep parents from picking up kids at day care on time,” says Cary. “Imagine paying five bucks for each minute you are late.” Carey interviews a man who was paying $120 a week for daycare late fees. Now he uses the HOT lanes and saves most of that, plus his time.

Just for fun, Carey gives one lucky commuter a ride to and from work by helicopter. “I had no idea what my neighborhood looked like at 5 pm,” said the commuter. For one day, his 90-minute one-way commute was reduced to 9 minutes.

The Carey video can be downloaded in Quicktime format for replay when you don’t have a high-speed Internet connection. The iPod version is about 100 MB; I didn’t download the HD version.

The Reason.tv site also features a number of other videos, including Robert Poole talking about highway finance and Ted Balaker talking about the myth that new roads simply induce more traffic.

If that is not enough, there are scenes deleted from the Drew Carey video on HOT lanes vs. HOV lanes and what would you pay to end gridlock? (above).

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Reprinted from The Antiplanner