Comments on: Paying to Drive: Making Every Road a Toll Road

By: floyd

floyd — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 02:09:20 +0000

miek, read what i said.

By: M1EK

M1EK — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:36:29 +0000

floyd,

Many states distribute SOME of the state fuel tax down, but none of them come anywhere near ALL roadway spending. Your town doubtlessly paid for some street costs via the property and/or sales tax.

By: floyd

floyd — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 23:20:30 +0000

miek; they do in illinois. motor fuel tax is distributed to state roads and to counties, townships and municipalities based on population, then need. i served on the board of a small rural town for thirteen years. during that time the streets AND sidewalks were paid 100% buy motor fuel tax money. the town did not even have a gas station.

By: M1EK

M1EK — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:29:39 +0000

As James notes, most of those who bleat that the poor have no choice but to drive are either woefully misinformed or willfully disingenuous. Metro areas all over the country have bus and rail systems - and poor people USE them. (The difference between good and bad transit cities is that in the good ones, the middle class uses it too - not that the poor all drive too).

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:55:07 +0000

matt: We've got viable mass transit in the urban areas. We just don't have the population density to make it work in the rural areas.

By: madmatt

madmatt — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:53:48 +0000

travel is not only a basic freedom in many cases it is a necessity...once you curtail that necessity with exorbinate fees and taxes you are in effect locking people into a location...say a poor person hears of a job in another state, how are they to pay for the chance to interview for that job? Say you live in the inner city and now have to pay to travel for groceries, medical attention, continuing education, do charity workers now have to pay to help etc!

Why doesn't the govt stop sucking up to the oil companies and discuss viable mass transit...every other developed country in the world has...why not us?

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:40:15 +0000

matt: That is followed by "There are all manner of things the well-off can buy that the less fortunate can not. Still, Americans have long considered the ability to use the roads a birthright. Charging for it will be seen as taking away a basic freedom. That will not go over well, regardless of whether it makes practical sense."

By: Tano

Tano — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 19:39:17 +0000

“the very poor may simply not be able to afford driving at all. Intrinsically, there’s no problem with that.”

Yes, the intrinsic problem with libertarianism.

By: madmatt

madmatt — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 18:15:26 +0000

"the very poor may simply not be able to afford driving at all. Intrinsically, there’s no problem with that."

Why what a wonderful "lets keep the poor in ghettos" mentality!

By: M1EK

M1EK — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:53:41 +0000

Fuel taxes do NOT make "every road a toll road"; you pay them no matter what kind of road you drive on, yet many of those roads never see one lousy penny of fuel tax money (instead being constructed, maintained, reconstructed, and expanded through property and sales tax funds).

The regressivity argument is a bit harder. Gas taxes aren't regressive across all income levels - due to the fact that poor people (in most metro areas) barely drive at all, and when they do, drive far more fuel-efficient vehicles than the exurban upper middle class. Tolls on the other hand charge exurban Expeditions the same per-mile rate as they do the old Civics and Corollas favored by the poor. But the property/sales tax implications still make tolls a better deal overall for the urban poor.

The rural poor are just screwed either way, unfortunately.

By: dustbury.com

dustbury.com — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 15:08:31 +0000

Tolls for thee...

Seattle has been experimenting with virtual toll roads, with the following results: For about eight months, drivers in 275 Seattle-area households agreed to pay for something the rest of us get for free: The right to drive on the region's......

By: davod

davod — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 13:00:18 +0000

This idea is just another revenue generator.

By: Bithead

Bithead — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:01:27 +0000

Mike;

So it was with the 'Bridge to nowhere'. The property values on the far side of that bridge would ahve gone up in dramatic fashion, had the thing been built.

But then again, that's always the effect of a road being built or improved; the property values always improve with the road.

By: Michael Hussey

Michael Hussey — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 02:05:23 +0000

Slightly offtopic: tolls haven't paid for the Veterans Expressway in Tampa. Part of the reason is there is I-275. It's easy to avoid to using the Veterans. Part of the problem in the Tampa area is the projects become pork. They're built to raise real estate values. Not ease congestion. Tolls aren't always the money generator politicians believe they are.

By: George

George — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 20:41:43 +0000

Good call on the wealth issue regarding this toll study. In my write up, I proposed car value as one way to graduate the tolls (people with cheaper cars pay less).