As a person and a driver I’m a laid back guy. Unlike a lot of my friends and family I rarely get road rage and generally handle sitting in traffic pretty well. As an economist I hate waiting in line. I have to admit that I would rather premium and get where I’m going faster than sit around and waste that time.
Today I witnessed an empirical puzzle first hand. For about a month my roommates and I have taken the 395 highway North into Arlington to attend our Tuesday morning class. Traffic on 395 in morning rush hour is horrible. After several attempts we finally discovered how to get on the HOV lane where there was virtually no traffic. “That’s obvious,” you might say, “there’s supposed to be less traffic on the HOV lane.” Less traffic yes, but no traffic? What does it mean to witness no traffic on the HOV lane? All of the people waiting in line on 395 who would rather pay a price to not wait in line, must estimate that price level below what ever it costs to find additional riders to get on the HOV, or buy a hybrid. In other words even though it would save you time waiting to ride the HOV lane it costs to much to switch.
Finding additional riders and dropping them off seems (to me) like such a minor cost compared to wasting two sometimes three hours a day everyday. Is it really that costly?
I got several responses from my fellow grad students. I’m not completely satisfies with any of them, but some I like better than others. One was that people value the convenience of having their cars on hand throughout the day at work more than the swift trip to work in the morning. If this were right I’d expect to see people drive off for lunch and around town in the afternoons, which I’d bet you don’t see. I bet if you tracked the people on 395 in the morning and followed them throughout the day you’d see them walk or metro to lunch more often then drive, especially with how easy it is to get around DC once you’re in it. So I don’t buy this explanation.
The second explanation accused me of underestimating the costs of finding extra riders. I’m a burly fellow with no fear of being abducted, but it’s not so easy for frail women to feel so comfortable in the presence of strangers. If this were the explanation, I’d expect to see significantly more frail women drivers on 395 and significantly more burly men like me on the HOV lane. I don’t think that’s the case, so I don’t buy this answer either.
The two explanations that I thought were plausible were also the two proposed in jest. First, politics is a dirty business so maybe the DC traffickers are self deprecating. Maybe they hate their jobs and themselves and think they deserve to suffer. It’s a cultural claim that’s difficult to test but if it’s right it would sufficiently explain why DC drivers are unwilling to use the HOV lane. This would also imply that DC drivers fail to make use of HOV lanes more so than drivers in other cities.
Finally my favorite explanation; in democracy the worst rise to the top. Government positions are filled with individuals who are used to making processes lengthier than they need to be. When it comes to traffic their going to have a built up resilience to this inconvenience. And once again DC would feel this more than other cities.
Any one have alternative theories?
Picking people up in the morning may not seem like a lot of trouble, but what if being picked up is a lot of trouble? You lose a good bit of control over your schedule, you spend time coordinating/communicating with regard to the schedule, you spend time waiting for the person whenever they are late, and you may exert effort (rising early, etc.) to anticipate the possibility that they will be ahead of time.
Well that’s very similar to the first explanation that people value having their cars on hand more than the savings of driving without traffic. But your version seems kind of counter intuitive to me. Why should a person who is so concerned about wasting extra time spent waiting for a late driver opt for sitting in traffic, especially when you can make some profitable use of the time as the passenger more easily than as the driver?
There are a number of things going on here.
There is a park and ride near Woodbridge, I think (maybe farther north, in Dumfries). This is the main place for “slugs” and drivers to meet up in Northern Virginia (slugs are anonymous HOV-threshold passengers). From what I’ve heard, this market clears around 6 am, maybe earlier. This location is focal. Once the market has cleared, there’s not much going on there, which means around 8:30 am or whenever you slackass grad students get around to hitting the road the only people left in their cars are those who prefer not to use this market, for various reasons (one very rational reason is that if you live in Annandale and want to go into DC, it’s simply not worth it to head South to pick up passengers). The timing is the other thing, slugging into DC entails some uncertainty, so you have to allow more time to find a driver (I think both riders on foot and drivers in cars queue up). This might be what leads the market to clear so early in the morning, though there are probably other factors.
The big observation is that there are no prices that I’m aware of. It’s a barter exchange, so queueing happens rather than price rationing. To the extent that there have been attempts at pricing… I think I’ve read in the past about Virginia DOT cops/State Troopers cracking down on that at the Park and Ride. Just some random thoughts.