Roads and Restaurants (fwd from misc.transport.roads)
John Abraham
Here's something I posted to misc.transport.roads but it applies
very well to many of the discussions here:
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In article <dmoorman-150...@d215.nb.interaccess.com>,
Dave Moorman <dmoo...@interaccess.com> wrote:
>In article <smdailey.2...@smdailey.seanet.com>,
>smda...@smdailey.seanet.com (Stephen Dailey) wrote:
>
>> So let's examine the reasons why a business may want to exclude some
>> customers. A business's inventory is finite, whether the product is
>> hamburgers, jeans, computers, airline tickets, or space on a highway. No
>> matter what the price of the product is, someone will be excluded.
>
>When the toll on a highway is set high enough to eliminate congestion by
>excluding potential travelers, an analagous plan at a fast food retaurant
>would be; "We don't want anyone to have to be troubled by waiting in line
>for their hamburger, so we are going to raise our price to a level which
>excludes enough people to eliminate waiting lines".
If you're selling burgers as fast as you can then it makes sense
to either expand capacity or raise prices.
But 8 lane freeways are more analogous to government owned 4 star
restaurants. Let's imagine a situation where the government
nationalises the restaurant industry. The restarants are divided
into two types, cafeteria style "mass restaurants" which are
designed to serve a lot of people simultaneously, and sit-down
"private" restaurants where privacy and choice are emphasised.
In the "mass restaurants" there are a limited number of menu
choices, whereas in the "private" restaurants the chef will
basically make what you want.
The "mass restaurants" charge a user fee, called a "fare" which
offsets some of their operating costs. The "private" restaurants
are completely free, except you have to bring your own plates and
cutlery.
In the beginning, most people think this is great; because the
government now provides high quality sit-down restaurants for
free.
Over time, more and more people want to eat at these best
restaurants, which brings about massive congestion - some people
have to wait an hour just to get a meal at their favorite
restaurant.
The goverment over the years builds more and more of the highest
quality, "haute cuisine" restaurants in a desperate attempt to
get rid of the congestion at the entrances to these
restaraunts. Engineers calculate that the waiting times in the
queues to these restaurants costs the economy of the order of $50
billion dollars per year. By building more and more of these
restaurants the queues will be eliminated and the economy will
benefit.
To make more efficient use of the restaurant floor space, the
government has put "HOD booths" (Higher Occupancy Diners Booths)
in some of the larger restaurants. These allow larger parties to
circumvent some of the line outside the restaurant.
Of course hardly anyone eats in the "mass restaurants" anymore
because there are so many free high class "private" restaurants.
The "mass restaurants" that still exist are losing market share.
Unfortunately, their operations rely on large volumes, and so
some of the "mass restaurants" are starting to become less
efficient.
The government accounting system is set up such that "mass
restaurants" are built with public money, but their operating
costs are directly compared with the "fare revenue" that they can
collect. (In private restaurants, there is no "fare revenue" so
such a comparison is meaningless and never done.) Since "mass
restaurants" are becoming less efficient the percent of their
operating costs that they recover is dropping, and more and more
people are questioning the viability of "mass restaurants".
Some radical people (on the 'net, mostly) think that if the
government just charged the equivalent of a "fare" (called a
"TOLL" - To Obliviate Long Lines) at the "private restaurants"
where congestion is particulary bad, then the lines would be
diminished and the "mass restaurants" would become more
profitable. For some reason, people tend to call these radicals
"Liberals". Others say that the government should just get out
of the restaurant business entirely and let each type of
restaurant pay their own way. These people are sometimes called
"Liberals" as well (but no-one knows why). However for the most
part the second type of "Liberal" is just ignored. After all,
what would happen to our economy if it became more expensive to
eat at "private" restaurants? We'd all have to eat at "mass
restaurants", or eat out less, and we wouldn't be able to compete
as a nation against other nations where swanky meals are still
provided for free. In any case, do we want such a critical
national resource as food services to be held by private
corporations?
In an effort to improve the environment (and to collect revenue)
the government has collected a "gas tax" that each person pays
based on a measure of their flatulance. Some people have
calculated the total amount of "gas tax" collected and compared
it to the construction costs of restaurants, and declared that
"'private' restaurants are paying their own way". And if
everyone is paying their own way through the "gas tax", then the
system must be fair and economically efficient.
In any case, as a nation we are all eating a lot better. Our
quality of life has improved in many ways, but our tax rate is
much higher than some other nations. And no-one seriously
believes that the revenue from hypothetical "TOLLS" or from
selling off restaurants would be used to reduce taxes, so of
course there is little political support for either idea.
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John E. Abraham, M.Sc. P.Eng. jabr...@enci.ucalgary.ca
Transportation Engineer, University of Calgary, Civil Engineering
Keywords: * transportation modelling * land use modelling *
stated preference surveys * logit models * object oriented
programming * numerical methods * backpacking * travelling *
photography * trombone/piano/harmonica * blues/jazz/rock
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