Elon Musk Hates 405 Freeway Traffic, Pays Money To Speed Construction

S810 writes "Elon Musk, one of the main people behind PayPal, Space Exploration Technologies and Tesla Motors, has paid $50,000 to help Los Angeles speed up construction of the 405 Freeway, making it better and says that he will pay more if needed. From the article: 'Musk said he is open to pay the cost of adding workers to the widening project "as a contribution to the city and my own happiness. If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." — Musk quips that it's easier getting rockets into orbit than navigating his commute between home in Bel-Air and his Space Exploration Technologies factory in Hawthorne.' For those who aren't familiar with this issue, the 405 Freeway runs from the northern end of the San Fernando Valley all the way down to El Toro and runs by LAX. Residents are getting frustrated that this widening project is over budget and well over the anticipated time frame that it was supposed to completed by."

$50k enough?

[jimmyhat3939]

Does $50k remotely make any dent there? Aren't these projects tens of millions of dollars?

405

[ShakaUVM]

"The 405 Freeway runs from the northern end of the San Fernando Valley all the way down to El Torro and runs by LAX."

And is a complete and total piece of shit. Unlike Orange County, which has been upgrading its road network for the last 40 years, LA in the 1970s diverted money away from roads and into mass transit systems (subway, light rail, bus). The net result is the completely clogged arteries of the city, which its vaunted bus network needs dedicated lanes to even barely function in.

Everyone knows when they reach the boundary between OC and LA. Going one way, it opens up from 25MPH to 85MPH. Coming the other way, it slams down from 85MPH to 25MPH.

Also, it's spelled El Toro.

Hamburger Analogy

[Ichijo]

Widening the 405 is an expensive and only temporary band-aid to the problem of traffic congestion. The hamburger analogy [streetsblog.net] explains why:

Let's give everyone free McDonald's hamburgers. Let's put 10,000 hamburgers a day on a table in front of the Capitol (or wherever).

What would happen? People would take and eat the hamburgers, and once word got out, all 10,000 hamburgers would be taken very quickly every day. We may thus infer that because people need food and they really seemed to like those burgers, McDonald's hamburgers are an important public good.

A city planner might notice a problem: those 10,000 hamburgers just aren't enough. They get taken very early in the morning, so not everybody has a chance to get a hamburger. The obvious solution--because burgers are a highly-valued public good--is to provide more free burgers. So the city planner starts to provide 20,000 hamburgers a day.

You can see where this is going. People start going out of their way to get the free hamburgers, and planning their day around that trip. The city has to keep providing more and more free burgers--eventually millions a day--to keep satisfying the demand for free hamburgers.

Free hamburgers are like unpriced freeway lanes. Eventually they will all get taken up. Any city planner (and Elon Musk) should know that a shortage happens when the price of an item is set below the going rate determined by supply and demand [wikipedia.org]. It's much, much easier and cheaper to fix the problem of traffic congestion once and for all with a variable price set at the market equilibrium rate than by trying to build your way out of traffic congestion. Even Randal O'Toole agrees [youtube.com].

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

If I were Musk, I'd just ride in a limo and treat the backseat as my mobile office for the variable amount of time spent in traffic. I'm sure the guy spends most of his time in email or on the phone anyway. He's got the money to do all that and full high-def video-conferencing from his car if he wanted to.

Sure, that doesn't help anyone else. But this article is about his personal frustration and what he's done in response.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I prefer the country myself (and just recently took a job in the country to get out of the city), working in the city and living in the country is irrational by almost any objective criteria. Here are some examples (all times are for the round trip):

• A 45 minute commute makes you 40% more likely to get a divorce.
• A 90 minute commute kills your Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, even when you eventually do get home.
• Every 10 minutes commuting decreases your number of social connections by 10%
• Commuters have more neck & back problems (plus obesity), and for every minute they spend commuting there's "a 0.0257 minute exercise time reduction, a 0.0387 minute food preparation time reduction, and a 0.2205 minute sleep time reduction". BTW, that study controlled for time spent outside of the home by comparing people who worked 10 hours and commuted 2 hours with those who just worked 12 hours.
• It takes a 40% higher salary to justify an extra hour of commuting. (Measured by some economists based on well-being.)

Here [slate.com] is the article I pulled those stats from, it links to more definitive sources. Basically, it's absolutely not worth it to live further away from your job to have a bigger house. That said, raising a family might be better in the country, unless you're subjecting your kids to a long commute as well.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[PrimaryConsult]

In America, suburban schools are usually better than inner city schools. Being that said, I am willing to take a slight pay cut for telecommunting privlege and indefinite tenure.

While true, inner cities also have private schools which are better than suburban public schools (particularly since problem students can easily be expelled, thanks to the safety net of public schools). Take ~$6,000/yr for high school for example - if schools are the main reason for moving to the suburbs, determine if you are losing more than $6,000/yr in money or time by commuting - it may end up actually being cheaper.

Re:If he has the money and is willing to spend it.

[bitingduck]

I just mapped it, and it comes up about 17-18, but you're still in the right ballpark.

His best bet is to move- as soon as the 405 is built out, it will return to the same congestion as before (that happens to freeways everywhere). The next best thing (and better for LA) would be to fund a rail line that essentially parallels the 405. And maybe throw in a bikeway-- LA has 330 days/year that are good biking weather, but having to do a long commute on city streets can be a pain. There are a few bikeways along the various rivers and/or freeways (SGRT, LARIO) that can make a bike commute competitive with driving, even for very long distances. Shorter than about 10 miles it's faster to bike, and even at 15-20 miles, the combination of bike and train is faster than driving at rush hour.

Re:Hamburger Analogy

[tlhIngan]

Next those idiots that don't understand economics are going to give people free air to breathe. Obviously with a "free" resource like that everyone is just going to keep on breathing and breathing until there's no more air left.

Well, if you ask someone living in Beijing, they might disagree. Given that it's not people "consuming" the air that's the problem, it's the people polluting it so people can't breathe it anymore.

And in fact, we do charge for it through pollution taxes, carbon taxes, air quality standards, etc. Because if given a chance, people DO spoil it. Hell, LA used to have a huge smog problem until California introduced some of the most stringent air quality standards around.

And that was people consuming air for "free". Now China's actually had to admit the air in Beijing is actually polluted.

Re: May I contribute $5 ?

[murphtall]

It works like that in the Midwest. I live in WA state and construction is like you describe. Years ago driving multiple times to St. Louis and Dallas from Seattle you'd see projected going all night long even in the winter!!! I was constantly like WTF? Why can't they work like this in my state? Shit then i-5 may not suck so bad. Geez.

Re: If he has the money and is willing to spend it

[murphtall]

*sources needed* 25 years ? 40 years?

Re:May I contribute $5 ?

[dargaud]

In the USA, the construction crew will show up, tear everything up, and put out lots of traffic cones, ... and then disappear.

Yes, same technique in Italy. During a trip I counted something like 10 different areas with restricted lanes (or lane changing side) and traffic cones on the highway, some as long as 15km, and not a single worker to be seen. One such area has been like that for over 15 years.

In France it depends. I like the technique they use on the Paris beltway: they shut it down at 10pm, move all the equipment at once under floodlights, work on only 10 to 50 meters, clean up everything and reopen by 6am. Repeat the next night on the next 10 to 50 meters. But it's expensive and the planning must be held tight no matter what otherwise the city can shut down the next day!