The FHWA counted 39 high occupancy toll facilities in the U.S. as of December 2024 ops.fhwa.dot.gov/publications...

He’s the governance failure

Inevitably, you can blame NS Power profits. It's prescribed Return on Equity that exceeds what government could borrow at. But look at Halifax Water, a publicly owned utility that struggles under the same political constraints

another way to see it. express lanes get less congested, whereas congestion on general lanes actually reduces throughput when it gets *bad*

A bit of understandable misconception:
- It's a lot of people using it rarely (e.g., heading to doctor/airport)
- Traffic flow is better at peak (sometimes much better), because demand is managed
- Distributional effects depend on use of revenues too. It could fund entire projects / BRT itself

Right. Imo would be a waste for just transit (a few hundred buses a day?), but I think a paid express lane could blend the best of both, allowing some people in a genuine rush to skip ahead too

I'm interested, but to/from where?

Makes you question whether better transit (like say multiple subways, streetcars and regional rail) would really make driving less of a sacred cow in council

Yep. Usually the inside lanes of a highway

Can flip you my script by email, though it was fully vibe coded with an early chatGPT model lol