h a l f b a k e r yMagical moments of mediocrity.
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Department of Motor Vehicles |
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Not worth it. Registration is approx. $50 per year per vehicle. No amount of reduction of the $50 could convince me not to use my vehicles when I need them. |
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If the alternative is embarking on massive road widening projects, then I bet the payback could be considerably higher than $30 or $50 suggested in the annotations. If you could re-arrange traffic flow such that you didn't need to spend $100 million widening that highway, then you could spend half that paying back the folks that cooperated and still come out well ahead. |
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It seems like I've read of some jurisdictions in the U.S. experimenting with stuff like this in the form of tax breaks for businesses that allow their employees to work non-traditional hours. |
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In Massachusetts they have a program where you can buy a monthly pass for unlimited access to public transportation. If you buy 9 in a year then your car insurance is reduced by a significant percentage. I forget the numbers, but remember it was well worth it if you commute daily by bus or train, or both. |
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Speaking of Massachusetts
The cost of the traffic rearranging / highway widening project in Boston known as the Big Dig is now at $10.8 billion. Admittedly, this is an extreme example, not a contradiction to krelniks valid point (for some locations). <link> |
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Yeah! Sounds good to me. But how about a modification...do a mileage thing where you're charged X amount of money for travelling on the roads at any one time? The cost of travel would fluctuate depending on the number of cars on the road in an area...major arteries and interstates could be monitored by embedded counting devices and cameras. The number of cars would be averaged together and applied to a severity equation based on how many cars per lane at what speed each stretch of road can handle. Factors such as weather conditions, accidents, stray chickens running across the road, etc. would be figured in as well. If a wreck suddenly occurred on a major interchange, the price of travelling would suddenly jump up quite a bit. For unexpected events like that, the last known price could be considered a ceiling for the people who were already on the road system (the intent is to deter, not to punish), but new arrivals would be charged the new rate. Travelling at 2:30 am on a Sunday might be extremely cheap or free...but 5:30 pm on a Friday would be pretty costly. GPS units, rate meters, the whole 9 yards could be installed. Sounds like a plan to me. : ) |
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