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  1. August 15 2013

    VALUE PRICING ALTERNATIVES – GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

    Before exploring value pricing alternatives, let’s consider these general transportation concepts:

    Transportation systems are represented by the relationship between a set of “Supplies” (transportation modes and facilities) and a set of “Demands” (people and goods travel needs).

    The purpose and need for traveling is a function of land uses or activities (trip generation) and their geographic location in an area (spatial planning). There are two distinct scales for traveling: short and long distance travel, and because of travel speed ranges, short distance travel is generally related to a pedestrian scale while long distance travel is associated with the other transportation modes (bicycles, transit services, roadways or air/water travel). A well-balanced transportation system properly combines short and long distance travel alternatives in response to the spatial organization of land uses and activities; at the same time, transportation systems influence the spatial planning of land uses and activities by increasing their inter-accessibility.

    Traveling has an intrinsic cost, either in initial capital investments, ongoing maintenance/operations and in energy, space and time consumption, usually spent by the traveler or as part of the specific service costs; for example, energy consumption may include fuel and electricity costs, space consumption can include parking-related costs and time consumption includes delays and congestion-related costs.

    One interesting fact is that levels of service among transportation modes compete with each other; for example, improvements in travel time for roadway users can reduce the incentive for transit service usage. Accepting congestion levels on roadways, together with parking pricing strategies, may increase transit ridership (assuming that transit services are exclusive and frequent enough to be a viable alternative to the automobile for a similar trip purpose and travel distance).

    Moving people and goods is the ultimate transportation goal; therefore, value pricing programs and alternatives to recover the real cost of traveling should be aimed towards improvements for the movement of people and goods, regardless of the transportation modes involved.

    GC1 & GC2 Value Pricing Alternatives are consistent with the aforementioned general considerations.

  2. August 15 2013

    Consider using a portion of toll revenue from existing and future toll facilities within the region to be reinvested in transit operations parallel to the toll facility (similar to the San Francisco Bay Bridge operation); required regulatory changes to the expressway authority charter may not be accepted in the short term.