Wednesday, November 24, 2010

LA Ideas #2: The DMV Rich Jerk Tax

I recently posted an idea for tunnels that would let east/west traffic on Santa Monica, Wilshire and Olympic go underground for 10 blocks, thus avoiding the folks going North and South on the 405. This would generally keeping traffic flowing in all directions because you would a) let the 405 traffic have more room to "pocket" and queue up and b) the East/West folks would have 10 blocks of green lights instead of a 10 blocks of gridlock!

Today I've got another Los Angeles idea, based on my experience at the DMV. The wait today was somewhere between 90 minutes and two hours.

What if there was a "rich jerk" line, where affluent folks could pay $1 for every minute they save--with a minimum payment of $50. So, if the wait time is two hours it would be $120 to cut the line. If the wait time was 30 minutes it would be the minimum of $50.

I'm guessing 25-200 people would do this every day, and each DMV location would make $25-100,000 a month, or $250k to $1m a year in revenue. With hundreds of DMV locations this would add up a lot. 

Because the rate is variable, growing as the wait grows, it would naturally rise and fall with need.
  

Jason on Twitter Mahalo.com This Week in Startups

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