How about tolls on Rte. 3 to add a lane?

Do you know how much daycare costs? There is not much left over luxury traffic lanes.

We can also charge for every call made to the police or fire department. We can also charge parents for every child they enroll in school. The possibilities are endless!

Or we could just pay per mile.

\\not actually suggesting this

that is, in my opinion, in large part because it was used to "manage" existing infrastructure (and provide a huge one-time payout to the states) rather than to build new infrastructure. Same thing with the Chicago parking meters.

Those were both private-public partnership projects. It is not clear to me from the article, however, whether the Rt. 3 thing is a PPP idea or just that the state would do the construction and use dynamic tolling as a way to pay for it. I am happy to try either one in for this project.

With respect to PPPs though, IMO, these should only be used to build new infrastructure, not to manage existing infrastructure (not least because the politicians use the short-term windfall to enable all of their bad habits). The private company should get a concession to collect tolls for X years, and then the property reverts to the state (with adequate protections in place to ensure that the state does not inherit something that is falling apart, among other things). I think that the Port of Miami tunnel project, which was done in this way, will prove to be a better model than the shenanigans in the Midwest.

This is a huge topic, and unfortunately, I don't have time just now to fully expound, but I'm looking forward to catching up tonight (particularly with roadman's and matthew's comments - two UHubbers with demonstrated credibility in this area)

If the bus (generally the P&B along Route 3) were 20-30 minutes faster to Boston than driving, you better believe a lot of people would ride the bus. Or make it a 3+ carpool and you'll probably have slug lines form. While you're at it, build similar HOV lanes north of the city (there are something like 90 buses on 93 South every rush hour, even without any HOV priority). If there's excess capacity, charge for it, but make sure the charge is high enough to allow for free-flowing traffic. And if the lanes turn a profit, use that money to subsidize parallel transit services.

Make it a zero-sum game, but incentivize people, by time and money, to use transportation options which create less congestion, not more.

^ This is exactly the kind of wrong-headed attitude that I meant.

Congestion pricing is VERY progressive, not regressive. What's regressive is forcing a bus full of passengers to get stuck in traffic. Congestion pricing can both help pay the cost of running the bus (making it cheap and easy for low-income workers to use it) and can keep the bus out of traffic jams (making it reliable).

People on the bottom of the totem pole, whose boss says "Be here on the dot of 9:00 or you're fired," are stuck

If your boss says that, do you really think it's an excuse to say "well, I was stuck in traffic, but at least everybody else was stuck in the same exact traffic."

Sounds more like spite, to me.

the idea is to widen the southern end of Route 3 to three lanes in each direction (a project that has been on the radar for a long time, even with the construction of the Old Colony lines).

Construction would be financed by a private company, which would foot the capital for the work based on the expected future toll revenue they will receive for operating the road once it is widened.

This is similar to the funding strategy that was used for Virginia's HOT lanes on the Capital Beltway (open) and I-95 (pending).

First, to qualify for an Interstate designation, especially extension of a principal (i.e. not a loop or spur route) Interstate, the roadway in question has to be in substantial conformance with current Interstate design standards. Most of Route 3 south of Derby Street does not meet those standards.

Second, per established conventions for numbering Interstate highways, a principal Interstate route should connect to another Interstate route at its beginning and end points. Although there are some exceptions to this rule (such as I-90 ending at Route 1A in East Boston), both AASHTO and FHWA, which normally oversee the assignment of Interstate numbers (not counting Interstate 99 in Pennsylvania, which was created by an Act of Congress), have been very reluctant to grant exceptions to the current numbering conventions.

Lastly, there has been a project under discussion since the 1990s to widen Route 24 between Fall River and Raynham. If and when this project (which is still being pursued despite the work on South Coast Rail) is completed, MassDOT's plan is to disconnect I-93 from I-95 in Canton and re-route it via current Route 24 down to I-195 in Fall River. What the broken link between I-95 and Route 24 will be numbered is anybody's guess at this point, but that's another story.

While other states, such as New York, currently have roads designated as "Future Interstate XX", that designation has been established for specific corridors where providing an Interstate route is deemed to improve connectivity within the Interstate system. With respect, I'm not convinced that extending the I-93 designation down to Cape Cod will provide enough improved Interstate connectivity to justify the re-designation.