PrepTest 147, Section 1, Question 1
After a major toll highway introduced a system(46 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(13 more words not shown)
- AThe highway began(10 more words not shown)
- BEven after the(14 more words not shown)
- CThe prospect of(11 more words not shown)
- DTravel time on(14 more words not shown)
- ESome drivers did(19 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Maybe more people are using the highway now. A faster, easier trip could attract drivers who used to avoid it.
What we’re looking for
Electronic tolls let drivers pay without stopping to hand over money. Less waiting means less time with the engine running, so the drop in pollution per trip makes sense. But pollution per trip and pollution from the whole highway are different things. Each car can produce less while a larger number of cars keeps the total from falling. To resolve the discrepancy, I'd look for a choice that supplies those extra trips.
Working the answers
- A
Higher tolls don't explain why total pollution stayed up. If anything, a higher price might discourage people from using the highway, which would tend to reduce total pollution further. We don't know whether that happened, but this gives us no reason for enough additional pollution to offset the cleaner trips.
- B
Some long delays can remain even though delays have declined overall. We already know that the average trip became shorter and that each trip's pollution fell along with it. Pointing to occasional bad traffic doesn't explain why those stated improvements failed to reduce the total.
- CCorrect
This supplies the extra drivers. The electronic tolls made the highway more attractive, so more people used it. Imagine each trip now produces nine units of pollution instead of ten: that's an improvement, but making more trips could still bring the highway's total back to where it started. We can accept both the lower pollution per trip and the unchanged total.
- D
Short trips may have benefited less than other trips, but that doesn't erase the overall result we're given. The average trip took less time, and pollution per trip declined. We still need to explain why the highway's total failed to decline along with that average.
- E
Keeping some cash booths could leave some drivers waiting to pay. But the passage has already accounted for the system's actual results: trips became shorter and cleaner despite any remaining delays. This doesn't tell us what offset that reduction when we add up pollution from all the vehicles.
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