Two things I like are:
* HOT lanes in the Bay Area: they allocate demand efficiently and subsidize multi-people transport. I wish there were more.
* Toll roads in Texas: you can take the slip roads almost everywhere but they’re slow. The highways were fast but you had to pay.
Overall, I think fare at point of use is a great structure. In the past we couldn’t enforce it but now we can do this for more things.
The only problem is that we’ve decided that impounding cars that don’t have license plates or which have license plate covers is unacceptable because the poor do this most frequently. I hope we will clean up enforcement and then we will have the right incentives here.
I live in the Bay Area and hate HOV lanes. I can look over and see that more than half of the drivers are in violation, and yet it is effectively unenforced. It is a system that punishes people willing to follow the rules.
Asking someone to waste maybe up to an hour of their life everyday to sit there and watch people willing to break the rules speed by and get to be home early with their families breeds massive resentment, and anger. It encourages people to abandon all sorts of social contracts.
The HOV lanes cause absurd amounts of congestion, both from encouraging all the HOV drivers to aggressively switch lanes, and because they greatly increase the speed differential between lanes.
They’re a money / surveillance grab.
To be fair, this is already true of driving in general. Often in commuter traffic you’ll see one guy driving extremely unsafely, darting in and out of lanes passing everyone as fast as they can. You know this person does this every day for years, saving time by putting everyone else in danger.
Lucky to see one guy in commuter traffic. I need to drive few times per month during commuter hours and in Seattle area there are few types of such unsafe driving:
1. Trucks - not keeping the lanes, speeding (it's 70mph cars and 60mph trucks, trucks bypass me when I'm driving 70).
2. Old company vans and pickups - that's surprising to me, but I frequently see some old Gutter/Plumbing/Heating van darting in an out of lanes. I'd think they'd get fined or in accident sooner or later, but still.
3. Large pickups. They usually are speeding, going in and out of HOV lane closer to Seattle. Never saw HOV enforced on I90.
The enforcement was somehow increased this year, but only until heavy traffic (you can see it daily 5am-6:30am), but never during heavy traffic, which would be more helpful.
Saving a tiny amount of time
Yes, I think Myth Busters did an episode on this. It saves surprisingly little time.
The thrill of weaving through traffic vs the tedium of being the traffic might be the real incentive, whether the driver is consciously aware of that or not.
Is it surprising though?
The solution is surprisingly simple. You just need moderate enforcement of fines that are scaled to the offenders income and that escalate exponentially with reoffense in a reasonable time period.
Fines should be designed to make it uneconomical to continue to reoffend.
That should only be the case if the fine was actually prosecuted in court.
Plenty of people pay the fine and admit to guilt to avoid being further penalized with court fees, etc. In other words, many people just pay a injustice fine to avoid more trouble. This would punish those type of people even more.
Haha this is a classic Bay Area solution. It’s why you have a low-income discount if you speed 120 mph over the speed limit and get caught by the camera. It is well known that if you get hit by a poor person speeding at 145 mph it hurts less.
You're being downvoted by people for whom this would be incredibly inconvenient.
I really wish we would have special enforcement for just this (and transit), and just adjust the fines and staffing levels until enforcement breaks even on costs, and evasion is minimal.
And make the fines based on income.
If they snap the license plate and no fast pass they send a bill in the mail for the full monthly cost of a pass if I recall correctly
Is there any enforcement such as towing and impounding vehicles that don't pay those bills?
Can’t you pay to be in the HOV lane?
Seems like a pretty ideal system. Having that extra lane wouldn’t solve any issues for most drivers. For high occupancy or those willing to pay, it does.
In most situations the restricted lane (regardless of how you pick who gets to use it), does in fact benefit everyone else.
Under high congestion traffic throughput plummets. Restricted access to one or more lanes lets you keep them flowing at near the peak, increasing the overall throughput of the system by much more than one of the congested lanes.
The issue is that average number is of little consolation to everyone in the slower lanes.
Most of the Bay Area HOV lanes are not limited access. They let you enter/exit wherever, creating congestion. They also slow down traffic at the points where people have to cross lots of lanes to enter/exit.
When before/after studies have been done, the HOV lanes around here generally make everything worse.
I think you missed this point:
> I can look over and see that more than half of the drivers are in violation, and yet it is effectively unenforced.
How do you know that those people aren't paying?
OTOH, I don't know how you could effectively enforce that single occupant vehicles are paying.
The FasTrak scanners above the lane flash the occupancy setting (1, 2, or 3+) on the driver's transponder. It's easy to observe cheating single-occupant vehicles because the flashed number is 3 (a toll-free rate).
For automated enforcement, there's prior art in red light camera systems that mail tickets/violations to the registered vehicle owner.
Yeah, but you pay the full fare with 1 person, half with 2 people, and it's free with 3+.
It's something that isn't straight obvious though. When I got there I also thought that people were just in violation of the people requirement.
I don't get the point of the occupancy reader if there's no hard-requirement of 3+ in the current zone. Maybe there are some stricter HOV-only lanes nowadays? I left the bay area in late 2023
In Washington state, for one, I know that there used to be a phone number posted periodically for civilian reports of HOV violators. That's gone now with just a warning of the fine amounts.
Yeah and some blind (gender-TBD) Karen reported me on that when they couldn't see my kids sitting in the back seat.
I didn’t miss the point. You had zero way to know if someone is in violation or simply paying to be there.
When I worked for a tollway (not SF so maybe they're different), toll violations were enforced by mailing a ticket to the offender after the fact. There weren't any patrols out on the road looking for violators. Don't pay the fine (plus the toll), don't get to renew your license plates. We had agreements with some other states for enforcement against their vehicles in our state. The cameras rarely were unable to get a good enough view of the license plate for the CSRs to not be able to find out whose vehicle it was.
So basically just another systemic benefit to the more well off
This is how money works. You're expressing anger at the concept of personal property. Yes, those who have more money can afford more expensive goods -- that's the whole point!
>This is how money works. You're expressing anger at the concept of personal property.
The "this is how money works" argument doesn't work well for chattel slavery and it doesn't work well for this either...
This is allocating public property, not personal.
The money raised by auctioning access is of some public benefit, but is it enough to offset the deep unfairness of the public granting, for example, software engineers a shorter commute on average than teachers?
This is allocating wear and tear on scarce highways. Dividing it evenly by use. Poor people who would never drive on this road should not be subsidizing the use by software engineers, for example (the non-toll model).
> for example, software engineers a shorter commute on average than teachers?
Housing prices already have this kind of effect -- highly compensated employees can afford to live closer to their preferred locations. There's no reason not to allocate road resources to the users who are willing to pay for them (which is a much broader segment of the population than just software engineers). Pricing is a better system than road communism.
Since the roads are paid for by taxes, the software engineers are paying more for them in the first place. Why shouldn't they get more of the benefit?
Because a civilized society is not about "who pays more gets the more benefit" from public infrastructure.
A dog-eats-dog jungle of underdeveloped monkeys in clothing, on the other hand, sure.
It’s not an expensive good - its a commons. The HOV lanes are “rich people super freeways” they are there to help mass transit.
You can't see that they're in violation: the RF transponder effects compliance and you pay when using the lane, if you're talking about the lanes i used to use to great effect, for money.
The FasTrak system shows the occupancy setting, it’s obvious when people are displaying the wrong setting.
So obvious that I was incorrectly reported by a "fellow" driver when they apparently failed to see my kids riding in the back seat.
Tall driver in a SUV looking down on an open topped convertible isn’t a false positive. But sure, cops occasionally pull people over in HOV lanes for false positives and then let them go.
However, when you’re looking at 100’s of cars doing the same thing false positives only account for a small percentage of that.
Does that setting actually matter? When I lived in the area that had these, I always forgot to set it when the number of passengers in my car changed. I never saw any difference. The charge is the same.
Depends on the area. The 210 in Los Angeles allows you to jump on the toll-lanes for free if you have >= 3 people in the car.
And I think at certain times it's only >= 2 people.
It makes a difference in some locations such as I-580 5am-8pm: https://www.bayareafastrak.org/en/help/using-your-fastrak-fl...
It would be better if we had congestion pricing for all lanes. Then it would be less of an issue.
^ There's a deep lesson in this comment.
Indeed. Benevolent introverts too often get the short stick for sticking to rules.
I think the benelovent introvert being discussed seems to have overlooked
> It is a system that punishes people willing to follow the rules.
Every system?
I don’t have an issue with HOT lanes, but I’m not a big fan of the toll roads in Texas.
I don’t like that it creates separate classes of infrastructure for citizens based on their ability to pay. Even the non-toll highways had an HOT-like lane you paid per-use to drive on that was often significantly faster than the free lanes.
It makes a system where I suspect many people won’t want to pay to upgrade the free infrastructure because they don’t use it, and people who can’t afford the daily tolls waste even more time in traffic. The fast pass lane are even worse because they cannibalize lanes that could be used to alleviate general traffic (and were typically sparsely used).
The tolls were substantial for some people. $3-$8 a day on toll roads (ie no fast pass lane). At $8 a day, that’d be $40 a week, ~$160/month. That’s nearly 20% of the weekly pre-tax income of someone making Austin’s $22/hr minimum wage.
If you want to disincentivize usage of certain things, money is generally the most effective option. Yes, some rich folks won't be bothered, but even fairly low amounts make most people think twice. Too many cars are a problem in many parts of the world, for a number of reasons (noise, smog, traffic jams, or parking space in cities), so nudging people towards alternative usage patterns is worthwhile in my opinion.
Weird how you can have different prices for different seats at the ball game, or different fare classes on the airplane, or member access lines at museum, or valet parking, or different restaurants, or different clothing stores... But introduce price segmentation on highways and people just can't believe it.
Highways are almost always publicly owned monopolies. We, the public, choose to build them because they enrich all of us.
If you want to raise the money to buy land and build a private highway, price segment away. If you want to price segment a publicly owned and operate commons, it needs to be in the public interest.
Planes, sports, restaurants, stores, etc are all privately-owned or publicly-traded businesses. In the social contract, it's expected that businesses offer services depending on what you're willing to pay.
Driving and public transport is not a business, it is a civil service.
Should we begin to offer tiered plans for EMS as well?
My sports stadium was built with my taxpayer dollars. I can't even watch the team on tv though.
We do sort of have tiered EMS with insurance and ambulance costs. When my buddy came to the US from India, he was told, "unless you're blessing out, call an Uber to the ER."
The government has had a flat cost model for so long that people would lose their minds if it ever changed. It's the only institution that is free for the poorest and ungodly expensive for the richest, while providing the same product to everyone.
Getting better government services logically follows from paying more for them, but the idea is so sacrilegious and alien that people would probably riot.
Which of those are public infrastructure? (Notwithstanding that many times now there is private investment, which I don't believe should be the case.)
Alternatives are the most effective option. Tolls just make laws the rich don't have to obey and conditions they don't have to experience. Aggregate suffering isn't lowered, just shifted to the poor.
If you want cars off the road, you tax rich people and build trains and bike lanes, and shut down cynical RTO. Full stop.
It’s not that simple. For trains to be a complete solution you need walkable cities, and high density transport-oriented residential construction near stations.
This is almost diametrically opposite to parking-oriented cities and sprawling suburbia.
The best time for a city to invest in making their city walkable and public-transportation-able is decades ago. The second best time for a city to invest in making their city walkable and public-transportation-able is now.
You clearly have no idea the nature of the problem you want to solve with such erroneous platitudes. But it’s probably not even your fault you are ignorant of the reality of the matter as you advocate for squeezing harder to get blood from a stone; your statement illustrates that you are a victim of a delusion and psychological abuse that has been perpetrated upon the whole western world for more than a century now, so of course after everything you know from your very first breath promoting a delusional fantasy, you would also have that world view since it is post 1984 after all.
Localities large and small have been moving towards higher density, walkable and transit oriented development for years now. It's happening, and it works.
...Can anybody else make sense of this?
Every time I attempt to read it, halfway through my brain flips into the mode that is normally reserved for when people start telling me that Ivermectin is a COVID remedy, or something equally farcical.
I'm serious when I'm asking you if you missed your meds today. Please double check.
Suburbs are often plenty dense for great transit if you give great. Howeveriwhen transit is as bad as most get it is no wonder nobody uses it
> If you want cars off the road, you tax rich people and build trains and bike lanes, and shut down cynical RTO. Full stop.
The first two smell like communism, the last massively harms the rich people and their playthings (REITs - real estate investment trusts). Won't happen, not in countries where Big Money is pulling the strings (i.e. the US, Germany and UK).
If levying taxes and using those tax receipts to build infrastructure is enough to smell like communism to you, I have unfortunate news to tell you about how every single government on the planet operates
The fastest highway in the United States is the 85 mph controlled access public-private venture toll road east of Austin. State income tax is not a thing in Texas, and that road would have otherwise not been completed at the price or schedule it was built on without the backing of the private company that built it.
Why would you tax people's income to pay for a highway? Fuel taxes and license fees would normally be the way to pay for transportation infrastructure.
It works well in many (most I know) countries: is fuel+license more common than general (income and fuel and other) taxation ('normally' would imply most do like you say?).
If you use income taxes, then people who drive less are subsidizing people who drive more. It's bad incentives.
But that does not make it 'normally'; where does it work that way vs income(and other) taxes? Where I live and all countries around, roads are paid from general taxes (including income, road and fuel taxes).
I'm not sure what your point is, can you explain?
I think the point is that in this case, the choice is between the infrastructure being pay-to-use or just not existing, not between the infrastructure being free and being pay-to-use
That was my suspicion, but I'm not sure. Obviously, they have other valid options. Raise taxes. Have the state borrow, build, and operate the road as a toll road at cost, etc.
Couldn't disagree more. People should be able to pay more for use of better infrastructure. If $3-$8 a day isn't worth it for you, there's a free option that's totally acceptable.
> If $3-$8 a day isn't worth it for you, there's a free option that's totally acceptable.
That, in fact, isn't always true.
In Austin, for example, I-45 was supposed to have "frontage roads" all along it so that people could avoid the toll road if they chose at the expense of going through a few traffic lights.
Gee, guess what somehow magically never got built in many sections of I-45? So, your options are pay the toll or go a LONG way out of the way in order to avoid it since the construction of the tollway also destroyed the old routes.
See, here's the thing. Definition of acceptable isn't up to you. It's up to the people who have no other choice but to use it.
Theoretically those people express their opinion via electing representatives. Infrastructure investment and "fixing the potholes" seems to be a common campaign theme.
It really isn't followed through on as often as you think, and since Citizen's United, the typical candidate tends to chase the donations of people who think tolls are a grand idea. Not so much the rest of the working stiffs. Institutional inertia is a hell of a thing when your working demographic is keeping the retiree's and children's heads above water.
Maybe the solution is more going over to a fee based on % of one’s net worth. So since you seem to think something like $6 being an acceptable price for someone with a $500 net worth, maybe 1.2% of net worth for each traversal of a segment is appropriate, so you pay maybe $24,000 with every trip down the toll road and Elon musk pays $9.12 billion, while the bottom of the rung working class can pay $6.
I think the right solution is charge whatever would maximize revenue, then distribute the revenues evenly among all residents/voters/whomever.
I… wow, I actually really like this idea. As you may have seen in my other comments, I’m not blind to the advantages of toll money being used to improve roads etc. This preserves that upside, while making the publicly owned resource roughly equally available to everyone.
> I don’t like that it creates separate classes of infrastructure for citizens based on their ability to pay. Even the non-toll highways had an HOT-like lane you paid per-use to drive on that was often significantly faster than the free lanes.
But ... government income is largely dependent on the rich, and government spending largely benefits the poor. This is what is always forgotten about it. The reason debt is such a thorny issue is that debt really benefited the poor. And over time, so will these toll roads.
The reason toll roads benefit the poor is that the rich don't travel anyways, and this gives extra economic options to the poor. A large portion will figure out how to use this extra economic option (because that was thoroughly checked before the bridge was even built, and it wouldn't have been built if the answer wasn't that they would)
So both the building of the bridge, and the use of it almost exclusively benefit the poor.
The rich may travel on the toll roads, but they certainly benefit from those who do.
Houston would be unlivable without toll roads in 2025. The medical center would collapse overnight. The SH288 toll has probably indirectly saved more lives than any other toll project in the state. Medical professionals can reliably get between their suburban homes and their patients in ~constant time now.
It's maybe not "fair" that some people can use this option indiscriminately every day, but at least it is an option that everyone has access to. There's no physical barrier stopping you from using the Texas toll roads if you really needed to in an emergency. All that will happen is a bill will appear in your mailbox about 30 days later. If you choose to not pay it, the chances something bad will happen are approximately zero.
Wouldn’t fast efficient light rail been generally better? From a social and economic perspective it would be more efficient. The real problem with that only tends to be political, namely there is a strange aversion to properly built public infrastructure
I think effective light rail is really hard to get right in the US. Think about Houston, its already a a massive asphalt parking lot nightmare, its not very walk-able, it gets hot and humid in the summer. It simply won't work in most of the US. This is not a build it and they will come situation.
> its not very walk-able, it gets hot and humid in the summer.
You Americans are so funny. Japan is hotter and more humid yet public transit and walking are not an issue. Taipei similar story, rapidly building out rail in a hotter place.
You build the rail, then upzome the areas around stations and over time those giant ashfault lots go away and become urban centres.
> You Americans are so funny.
People like you are funny too but its easy to make posts like yours. Density in most urban parts of Japan and Taipei are wildly higher than say a Houston Texas. Again like I said, you are oversimplifying the problem which I get it, its easy to do. I don't think this is as simple as "build the rail, then upzone the area around stations", would happy to be wrong but I think like all of the world there are cultural and historical reasons for the difference.
It would take decades, you need buy in from both tax payers, commercial buildings, retail spaces, home builders etc.
It would be great if you could have a central planner like a China to just build a city with all the infrastructure in place but in places like America, that does not happen and so its a very tough egg to crack. Keep in mind its not just about being hot, definitely lots of Japan and Taiwan are very humid but you are also in city centers that have 8-9x the density of Houston. Lots of things to do and often you are most likely not walking that far, relative for city walking. I could walk a mile in Houston and still have not left my starting spot.
>there is a strange aversion to properly built public infrastructure
It costs money which taxpayers don't want to pay (unless it benefits them personally,) it requires long term planning which governments are incapable of, and it smells like socialism.
In the medical scenario, having medical workers sit around waiting for the train after they've driven to the station would be a problem if their presence is needed quickly. Or did you also want everyone to cram into high rises clustered around stations?
The point is that use of public transit by ordinary people helps free up the road for EMS vehicles.
Idk, man, Europe and like... half of Asia seem to have figured this out, and their healthcare outcomes are better. But sure, this contrived pro-car scenario is why trains don't work.
Of course, this project cost $2.1 billion, including $815 million to build the toll lanes in the freeway’s center.
And it could be made ineffective as regional expansion continues. As soon as enough people who are willing to pay the toll saturates capacity you end up with the same issue (“just one more lane bro”). I see this all the time in the DC metro area’s toll express lanes that often save no significant time.
Another effective way to control highway congestion is to get people off of highways and invest in your transit system, make it better than driving so that people don’t drive as often.
But maybe Houston is too far gone for that.
For comparison, the Chicago red line extension project adds 5 miles of heavy rail for about twice the cost, so 4x more per mile. But the Houston toll lane project doesn’t do anything positive for adjacent property values like new rail stations do. Chicago will get money back from more property taxes and the new stations will relieve traffic on the Dan Ryan.
Transit lines get faster as ridership increases due to the ability to increase schedule frequency, the exact opposite of highways.
I am not saying Houston should magically turn into 1800s-era urban fabric but maybe some decent park and ride commuter transit would be a start? There are cities in Texas with 6 figure populations that have NO public bus system.
> As soon as enough people who are willing to pay the toll saturates capacity you end up with the same issue (“just one more lane bro”).
Increase the toll prices to reduce congestion, increase the number of buses on that route, and use some of the money for either expanding the road or building another more-or-less parallel road.
> Increase the toll prices to reduce congestion
This stretch of road is already using congestion/dynamic pricing. I've never had to go slower than 85mph the entire way.
Sure, the point is, what about 10-20 years from now when there are enough drivers where the cost doesn’t matter?
It’s like Disney World. They can fill the parks with people willing to pay $200 a day for tickets alone. If you can’t afford it then it doesn’t matter that other people get to get in.
Highways just don’t scale well. Two train tracks can move about the same number of people as 15 lanes of highway.
>Wouldn’t fast efficient light rail been generally better?
Light rail has been there since before the toll lanes.
This is not a small medical center, some of the hospitals are skyscrapers.
Sure, Chicago’s daily regional transit ridership is 10x higher than Houston though. And they also have skyscraper medical centers. One of them doesn’t even have direct interstate access.
Houston’s red line has similar ridership levels to Chicago’s third busiest L line.
The two metro areas have a very similar population.
In NYC it's the police that have been obfuscating their plate number for a long time, not just poor people. https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/04/19/if-nypd-is-cracking-d...
In Tennessee (other states, too), it is not illegal to have a trailer hitch ball in front of your license plate. They're recently begun erecting ALPRs everywhere...
...so I have a trailer hitch ball hung entirely across my plate — not considered "obstructing view" de jure, but YMMV (depending on officer).
Tennessee does not issue license plates for most trailers, either, so you can easily & even more legally conceal your license plate when towing.
Anything else that obstructs the view is illegal (including bicycle racks, leaves, dirt, lenses). But not trailers & hitch balls.
HOV lanes in the bay area are terrible. We pay to build these lanes and then the government makes us pay to use them? Seems terribly unfair. Its also unfair to make the poorer people spend more of their time commuting than the wealthy.
You don’t have to be wealthy to pay to use them, you just have to value the time savings more than others. Imagine a “poor” person late for their job where they will get fired, they might value the lane more than a “rich” person just cruising around for fun. Whereas if it weren’t an option at all the poor person in this scenario loses their job and is strictly worse off.
Also isn’t it more fair to charge people using the roads than everyone? What if someone doesn’t even drive should they have to pay taxes for roads?
And in the absence of these congestion fees we’d likely have to take taxes overall. That would probably be even worse for poor people.
I dislike them not so much in my home area but everywhere else where I have no idea what I'm doing and worry that I'm going to come home to a ton of envelopes full of enormous fines. This is made worse as cash payment disappears.
Here in Norway we have funded the vast majority of new highways and similar by turing them into toll roads. The government might chip in but some fraction is covered by toll.
An issue is that it's set up as a regular loan, which the collected toll repays. So over the lifetime of the loan, often more than half is interest. Add administration costs and in some cases the actual money spent on the road is a small fraction of the total toll paid.
That said, in principle I think it's fair to have some use-based pricing. Same goes for public transportation. Studies have shown it's not ideal to have free public transportation, but rather a low fare.
Anything the poor do more frequently should be punished more severely.
Personally I just hate that I have to go on the roads with the poors to avoid the surveilance that powers the toll roads.
> or which have license plate covers is unacceptable because the poor do this most frequently
There's a YT channel where a guy exposes these. He found that one of the most common group of offenders in NYC was ... cops and their personal vehicles.
These are not commonly called slip roads in Texas - the term is feeder road. Most feeder roads in the metro areas are lined with business or multifamily residential frontage.
These are not commonly called "slip roads" nor "feeder roads" — they're actually called frontage roads.
Yes, they are called both frontage roads and feeder roads by Texans interchangeably. Frontage roads is the official term but feeder is the lingo. Obvious to anyone who knows real Texans.
> Overall, I think fare at point of use is a great structure. In the past we couldn’t enforce it but now we can do this for more things.
I don't agree. Price "discrimination" for government services is not acceptable. The perverse incentives that sets up are far too strong and the profits too juicy to avoid corruption.
We have historical analogs (paying for fire service and the corruption that caused in Rome). We have modern analogs (money from marijuana funding police forces that then arrest marijuana offenders and fight legalization efforts).
Letting price discrimination enter government services is simply a road to corruption and disaster.
> you can take the slip roads almost everywhere but they’re slow.
We have that problem here in Germany. The roads aren't just slow - the people living in the towns these roads run through are going through hell because they are affected massively. Can't safely cross the road, emergency response vehicles take ages, an insane amount of noise and emissions (because vehicles near idle make much more toxic exhaust when at low load and thus temperature), more brake and tire dust... Austria was fed up years ago, Bavaria recently followed suit [1].
[1] https://www.adac.de/der-adac/regionalclubs/suedbayern/news/a...
They're wrong on multiple fronts, they're regressive. The poor bear the brunt of them.
Despite the bad press, a well run government highway is much cheaper, generally 30% or more of that toll goes directly to maintaining the system and it's profits, there's more efficient funding methods out there.
They're natural monopolies, they fill up with traffic regardless of how much you rip people off.
It's the traffic jam at the toll plaza that I completely fail to understand. It massively slows traffic town, creates hazards, it's uniquely unsafe for the workers, it ruins engine and roadway efficiency, and causes engine breakdown on unseasonably hot days.
I cannot imagine that this is the best way to fund roads.
New Jersey solved this: just put up signs saying “you’re on a toll road, go check what you owe and pay later”. No toll plaza!
Then when you forget, which you 100% will if you’re not dealing with it frequently, or just reasonably assume they’ll send you a bill—ta-da! First communication they send is a nastygram assessing an extra $50 for every toll you forgot to go beg to pay when you got home.
Ingenious way to screw non-locals, and no toll plazas needed!
The vast majority of the tolling infrastructure no longer uses plazas. In California and in Texas, the tech exists to prevent you from even noticing. That's not deployed everywhere, especially in areas where they do rate-limiting, like the Bay Bridge, where they need you to slow down and stop when the bridge traffic gets too high, but most areas you wouldn't even notice.
This is also causing problems with people using fake plates and magnetized plates. There's an entire growing industry around it. We're going to have to eventually start requiring some kind of transponder that repeats your plate number for sensors that can't be trivially covered... or you know... just raise the gas tax.
I don't know what toll plaza's you're going through. Here's my typical experience trying to get to a meeting in SFO:
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQZ2WkX...
The Bay Bridge Toll Plaza:
https://maps.app.goo.gl/rh9rcJe2nDz5Hnkv7?g_st=ic
You’re photo doesn’t show the metering that happens in the opposite direction.
I dont like privatized highways or HOV, but...people still have toll roads? Georgia and Florida and surrounding states have electronic passes and pay by toll if you dont have that.
I have thrown coins into a bucket in at least 15 years.
They don't have to have any profit, they can be 100% public infrastructure.
And the excess revenue can be used to subsidize transit.
Tax what you want less of, subsidize what you want more of.
It’s probably necessary long term as gasoline taxes are yielding less per mile as total fuel efficiency improves. The dedicated funding source is necessary because if DOT construction budgets (which are huge) were in the general fund, they would be looted by lawmakers to fund patronage programs and the entire surface transportation network would be unfit for service within 20 years. TxDOT loves NTTA because it’s a huge cash cow and hits non-residents hard. If I have to go to Dallas, I expect to spend at least $25 one way. Usually someone else is footing that bill. By extension, I consider myself very lucky that I don’t have to live there.
The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Roads aren't free to build and/or maintain... in fact, it's extremely expensive to build and maintain them. It's just that all levels of gov't have allowed revenues from the gas tax get inflated away by both regular inflation and increased fuel efficiency.
Determining who pays to maintain these systems is a political decision, but it certainly makes sense that we should really be charging people who use them. Adding a luxury tax to folks who want to skip traffic seems like a free lunch for everyone else. At the end of the day, suburbanites want to force the rural and urban dwellers to subsidize their primary mode of transportation (large, dense highways), but it's becoming more and more politically untenable.
I think the most important thing to think about here, is how this affects long term real estate values and development patterns. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
>. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
We incentivize density in this country by having a ton of compliance hoops that increase cost on a per-building basis. People might just decide that they love suburbs so much that they vote for politicians who tell the Strong Towns crowd, the environmentalists and the trades and engineering groups to shove it and we go back to the 1980s and slap up street after street of chap AF single family homes on septic with nary a site plan in site.
> The poor bear the brunt of them.
Going to need a citation for that, because it seems the wealth(ier) and/or business-classes would bear the most significant burden of toll roads.
Typically, in my experience, tolls are assessed at boundaries of cities, regions, and intra-region/city transit is toll-free.
Businesses that use the toll road (think trucking/freight, etc) pay tolls because they come from outside of the boundary. Wealthier individuals may commute into the boundary for work, also paying tolls.
One can live inside the city of San Francisco and never pay a toll - but someone that lives outside and commutes in for work or business pays tolls every day.
Other states, such as Illinois have a vast amount of toll roads - where tolls are trivial (typically) but also still only assessed at boundaries. The roads are often much more well maintained than government roads, since the toll collector has a direct financial interest in maintaining traffic on the roads.
Here in Chicagoland, the major tollways aren't boundary oriented, they're just charging effectively per mile. The same is true of my home state of Indiana. They were supposed to be free once the bonds were paid off, but, of course, that never happened.
>but, of course, that never happened.
Because there is no consequences for the peddlers or the supporters.
You wouldn't take seriously someone who advocates with a straight face for reinstating prohibition or segregation yet it's perfectly socially acceptable to say "no, it will be different this time".
It's not just toll roads. You see this with every recurring bad thing.
When I was in the Chicago area, I paid no tolls when I entered and exited the tollway within the same region. Perhaps that has changed within the last 10ish years?
It doesn't seem practical to charge tolls at every onramp.
It was very much on and off for many years. It was intended to cover the costs then go away. Instead they installed stream lined overhead tolls to not have to wait at the toll booth anymore and now it's just a perpetual tax.
It's also partially owned by outside investment (specifically the skyway from Indiana)
Very interesting. That still doesn't imply the "poor bear the brunt" (the original GP's assertion). Likely the inverse - since again, businesses and wealthy individuals are going to travel by vehicle vastly more than "poor" individuals.
Yeah work from home, but all the jobs for the less well off require driving.
A well run public transport system is significantly cheaper.
Public transit systems are only effective in highly-dense, urban settings.
Toll roads are often not within dense urban cities - usually on the outskirts, suburbs, highways, bridges and more. Public transit simply doesn't work in these places because of how large and spread-out the US is.
You’re forgetting how this is all interconnected. Creating the large freeways creates sparse housing that requires freeways. Creating public transport does the reverse.
Before all these massive road developments it’s not like people just sat at home and couldn’t go anywhere.
So what's your proposal? Go back in time 200 years and create a public-transit system?
The US is huge. There is no feasible way to support public transit for 95%+ of it's land-mass. That's not going to change anytime soon, or ever.
Also, most mass-transit systems in the US operate at significant loss, even with government (ie. taxpayer) funding and collecting rider-fare. A lot of public transit systems are in complete disrepair and are severely lacking. Buses and lightrails are never going to be "cheaper", as convenient or accessible as roads and vehicles are.
I subscribe to the opinion that there are probably some good reasons why people in the US tend to spread out when they have the option. I think the problem of collective human action is complex enough that optimizing at the individual level is probably the best we can do. I would rather spend time thinking about how to serve people in ways that they actually want instead of “big idea” approaches.
What I would do is the same as what most cities around the world are doing, spending more on public transport, spending less on roads, implementing tolls and congestion charges, and over time reshaping cities to be better for walking, PT, and cycling.
The US is not unique in having fully adopted cars and ripped up old PT networks. It happened all over Australia which is also a massive very spread out country. But significant effort has gone in to reversing the damage.
There is something deeply wrong about a society that can afford to create hundred billionaires but can’t afford busses.
Look to Sydney, Australia, if you want to see where this is heading, as Sydney is completely tied up with toll roads. On the point of them being regressive, the NSW government has been forced to reduce political pressure by capping annual toll expenditure with a government funded rebate system.
It's no coincidence that the companies behind the expansion of US toll roads are mostly the Australian companies that run Sydney's toll roads: Transurban, Macquarie, IFM, ...
Tangential, but: Cars are in part so problematic because they are a means of transportation designed for a handful of people, but mostly used by a single person. All the alternatives are either unpopular to most people (like bikes, or public transport), or obscure (small one-person cars). Especially the US just converged to this impractical de-facto standard in size and shape.
Almost 25% of Americans are rural as well… bikes and public transportation are never going to work for them. In fact, cars don’t always work for rural folks - a lot of them benefit from (if not outright need) trucks.
The alternatives are impractical due to all the space cars and their infrastructure consume (walking, transit), or due to the danger cars pose (bicycles, motorbikes, small cars).
The US has converged because we are trapped in a vicious cycle.
The cycle would have broken in 2008 if we hadn't bailed out the auto manufacturers. Pro-free market until the moment it counts.
Public transportation in a lot of places isn’t safe especially when traveling with women or children
Women and children aren’t inherently dangerous. If you just avoid eye contact and keep to yourself, you should be fine
Must not be enough cops to either stand around and do nothing or beat the wrong guy to death then.
Public transportation is a no go because there are too many drug addicts, and violent lunatics out there. When I worked in the city in Miami, I enjoyed taking the train into the city. It was stress free and a fun quiet time. But then homeless started harassing the stairs and it became terrible.
Toll roads are good economics. If a choice has negative externalities (more traffic, more pollution, road damage), tax it.
They are very regressive unless there are income-based credits, which adds administrative complexity.
Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought. For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet.
The regressiveness issue of tolls is effectively a nitpick compared to the broader more comprehensive issue of how to we create an affordable transportation system for the working class and how do we raise the revenue to fund that through taxes.
The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. The best thing we can do to make transportation more affordable in general is giving people more options aside from the car. Taxing the wealthy in order to raise revenue for public transportation and active transportation options dominates any sort of regressiveness issues around road tolls and less traffic makes buses more effective.
> The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry.
Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses.
The transit ticket price in the US is typically covers just around 15-20% of the _operational_ _cost_ ("farebox recovery rate"). And the capital costs for transit are off the charts. Seattle is going to pay $180B (yes, that's "B" for "billion") for about 20 miles of new lines. And for one mile of subways in Manhattan, you can build 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway.
It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
“Democracy in the US is failing because of the resources invested into public transit” might be the hottest take I’ve read in 2025. Nice.
Must be why European democracy is in shambles then: it's the damn trains and buses! Who woulda thunk?
Yes. Exactly.
I suggest looking at Germany and the rapid ascendance of the AFD. And then looking at real estate prices in Berlin.
Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit.
And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat.
And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization.
Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.
Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel? Would be interested to see - I’m generally aware of the cost vs. fare side of subways, but haven’t seen numbers that support individual car travel being cheaper when you account for subsidies there.
Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO.
> Do you have any source for these numbers & the equivalent for auto travel?
There are several ways you can look at it. The easiest way is to divide the opex budget by the ridership. E.g. MTA ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_Transportation_Au... ) had a $19B budget in 2023 for 1.15B rides, resulting in about $16 per ride. Assuming conservatively 60 rides a month, that's $960 a month for transit in NYC. Without any capital expenses taken into account.
The average total car cost in the US in 2023 was around $1000 a month ( https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-it-cost-to-own-a... ). And this includes _everything_, including the capital cost.
> Also worth noting that comparing capital costs of underground transit to above ground private travel is pretty apples and oranges. Buses would be fairer comparison IMO.
Buses don't scale for large cities.
>Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses.
Meanwhile, we're barreling toward 2-3 C of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me.
>It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
Lol. Lmao, even.
> Oh, sorry, that doesn't have a line item on the toll receipt, silly me.
Money is a pretty good proxy for CO2. So the carbon footprint of large cities is unsustainable.
The most eco-friendly model? Low-density semi-rural areas, with EV-based infrastructure, with sane-sized cars (not SUVs).
This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though. Charging $1/lb for bananas is regressive. Charging $3/gallon for gas is regressive. Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive. Etc...
For commodities like that, competition already pushes prices to the zero profit limit. Everyone gets them as cheaply as they can be produced. And for those who can't afford even that we have subsidies.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."
> This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though.
Maybe EVERYTHING shouldn't BE "constant prices". Maybe where there are practical alternatives to constant pricing, those should be preferred and used.
> Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive.
No. Not unless there is only 1 type of t-shirt in the world available. If I'm poor I can go find cheaper t-shirts either less stylish, poorer quality, from a generic brand, from a discount retailer, second-hand (used), packaged in bulk, etc., or maybe wait around for a sale on the t-shirt.
Besides price signals, what other tools are available to communicate local knowledge through an economy? I can’t think of any that are particularly effective
Correct.
Tolls are a regressive tax on the working class. The rich don't even need to use the roads as much because they have other people delivering for them. When they need the road system, the tolls are nothing to them.
The working class, which are generally required to be driving to survive, are left holding the bag for tolls. In places with bad public transit, tolls are just a forced wealth transfer from working class to private firms managing the tolls.
The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. It doesn't matter if that makes it a "regressive" tax. If you are a daily user of a road, you should pay more for its upkeep than someone who doesn't use the road.
Why should a delivery driver pay the toll for the road to my house, and not me? Why should I be able to exploit flat-rate product pricing like that and skim some money from all customers of the delivery service?
Why should I pay the toll to drive to a friend's house? They're the one getting the benefit out of having easy access to transportation.
What if my taxes pay for all the roads in my town, while the neighboring town chooses to implement tolls instead? Why should I get double-taxed? Prisoner's dilemma and race-to-the-bottom?
Why should I have to deal with having my license plate stolen, and police time wasted (who are paid out of taxes), because of people who don't pay the tolls?
Delivery driver passes that costs of delivery on to you, so you do pay.
Why stop there? Why should I pay for my own food, given that my employer, friends, and family benefit from me being well nourished?
>The people who use something should pay for its upkeep.
Fee-for-service city parks? Public libraries? Fire departments? Sidewalks? What about investing in the "public good"?
Public good? That sounds ripe for disruption. Won’t somebody please think of the shareholders!?
>The people who use something should pay for its upkeep
Why? That doesn’t seem like a good way to run society.
All the statistics I've been able to find point to higher toll road usage among higher income people, not less.
Which may already be a sign of ability to pay? Not that I will argue against the right of US Americans to have a country that gets more and more divided by "class" defined by money, an interesting if not very ethical experiment for sure.
The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?")
Being able to get to places by car is one of the most basic needs in the US. I think it leads to cementing the monetary status quo and monetary class affiliation when that becomes even more dependent on how much money one can spend on it. A nicer car being more expensive is fine in that regard, it does not get you from A to B much or any faster than the cheap one. Being able to choose roads or lanes that will take you there much faster is different.
It removes one's personal "hard work" contribution to success if more and more of it is out of your control - after all, how much money you start the game of life with is nothing one has control over. Maybe making that kind of mechanism worse is not the best idea in the long term. Unless we are really aiming for what all the dystopia movies and anime have been showing us.
There are also tons and tons of indirect effects. For example, I would make the claim that wealthy shareholders benefit a lot more from roads than poor people, even when they don't drive, since the companies they own and the entire economy needs them. The poorer people driving to work "paying their share" does not look so clearly justified to me, unless one believes that their salaries are perfect indications of their role in value creation.
> The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?")
Canadian stand-up comedian Casually Explained (I don't actually know if he stands up to record his videos) had basically the same joke a few days before them.
It's a joke people have been making for years.
Tolls and public transit fares are regressive.
We have removed all tolls here in Nova Scotia,including for small car ferry's , were not rich or populous,but are building out our infrastructure bit by bit to facilitate ease of transport and the prevention of accidents and traffic jams. The other thing they added are info signs accross the main hyways comming in, giving times for the main transit routes, making it easy to redirect , 45 MIN!, yikes! sounds like coffee and grocerie shopping to me! It has realy made a huge difference getting around the city and has opened up options for travelling rural routes that have ferries.
If you have two lanes and want three lanes, you could build the third as public, or as toll. If you build as public, it comes out of taxes, such as the gas tax. If you don’t have enough public money, perhaps you increase the tax. If you build it as toll, you can bond the construction and pay for it with tolls.
At least in theory, this means the toll lane accomplishes the same total road throughput, but shifts the entire cost of its construction to its users instead of depleting public funds. It then appears regressive, but is arguably progressive.
Or if there are practical, affordable, alternatives.
If there is low cost public transit available, then a toll could be an incentive to use public transit instead of driving. But if there is no other viable transportation option, then it is effectively just a regressive tax.
Edited because I admit original statement below is incorrect.
"You could say they are a flat tax since every driver pays the same per usage. You could even argue it is a progressive tax since richer people use toll roads more. The only way you CAN'T describe a toll is a regressive tax. Words have meaning."
This is completely incorrect. A flat tax has a constant tax rate, which is why it's often referred to as a "proportional tax." Under a true flat tax system, everyone pays the same percentage of their income.
A toll is absolutely regressive because the burden it imposes is constant, irrespective of income; poorer individuals will pay a proportionally higher percentage of their income than wealthier counterparts. As income increases the "effective rate" asymptotically approaches zero, which is regressive by definition.
Good point, I've edited my comment to clarify that it is incorrect
If you read the literature[1], they're regressive - less regressive than sales tax, but still regressive despite being utilized more by higher income drivers.
It’s also a direct usage tax to support road maintenance. Heavier users of the road ways end up contributing more to the maintenance of the public good.
We had a proxy for that via gasoline taxes but with EV becoming more common we need to find a replacement for that revenue.
The gas tax hasn’t kept up with inflation, EVs are only a secondary contributor to the shortfall. Most states have been leeching from their general funds to keep up with highway maintenance. California has raised theres fair aggressively, though.
Most states include higher tag fees for EVs. I pay way more in the EV fee than I would have paid in gas taxes considering I don’t drive that much. Trucks and other heavy users dwarf car traffic by far though, and those extra logistic costs (if charged by weight) would show up as increased cost of goods.
I'm not sure that use taxes really support road maintenance, at least in my state. The reason is that money is fungible, and the income from use taxes can be offset by a reduction in support from the general fund.
There are several states that have an EV registration surcharge that replaces gas tax. It's not popular with the pro-EV crowd.
it's pretty silly to have a tax that incentivizes the opposite behaviour to what you want. registration surcharges benefit the people who drive the most, at the expense of the people who drive the least.
if you're trying to pay for wear and tear on the roads, or reduce congestion, making people feel like they have to "get their moneys worth" on the registration surcharge really isn't helping.
I'm fine with a decently fair registration tax to offset the gas taxes, but the one in my state is the equivalent of 1,000 gallons of gas for the state gas taxes. If the car was a 35mpg hybrid that would be 35,000mi of equivalent driving. This is incredibly unfair.
35,000 mi of driving is not anywhere near out of the question if you're a daily commuter who takes road trips once in a while. If you're driving a truck or a non-hybrid, it's also a lot less mileage. It sounds like this is actually close to what you would be expected to use.
Just because a small percentage of drivers drive that much each year doesn’t make it a reasonable number for the general case.
It sounds like this is actually close to what you would be expected to use.
Not even close to what the average driver drives.
The average American driver gets about 25 mpg and drives about 15-20k miles. That's exactly in line with the tax rate here.
Now you've moved the goal posts to about half of your original claim. And it's still not accurate (links have already been provided elsewhere in this thread). And the only thing I've owned in the last 30 years that gets 25 mpg is a camper van (and, no, that thing doesn't move anywhere near 15K miles/year).
The average American car does not drive 20k miles. 12,500 is the average yearly mileage.
And it's an EV, a closer comparison should be something more like a hybrid. It's not a giant truck.
But it weighs as much as a giant truck
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.
Ref: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-ro...
It's far away from the average of around 12,000. Few cars drive 35,000mi.
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" isn't far off.
Ref: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-ro...
The average driver also doesn't get 35 mpg driving regularly. The average driver probably gets around 20 mpg, and that would make this distance about 15000 mi.
The kind of people choosing an EV wouldn't get a 20mpg car, it's an unfair comparison.
They also chose a car that's extremely heavy (by virtue of the battery), so they create more road wear per mile than the average American car. The point is that tax rate seems fair.
The ICE I would have picked otherwise is only 100kg lighter and gets 40mpg.
And you’d be paying gas tax
Far less than what I'm paying with the EV, which is my point!
If I owned an ev for 3 years, the tax means I save money.
This is a yearly tax. So that would be the same as 105,000mi in three years meanwhile the average car probably only drove ~37,500 in that time period.
The EV tax applies to people who a) casue a disproportionate amount of wear & tear on the roads vs ICE vehicles and b) are generally higher income in the state.
When you look at taxation from a "charge the people who use it" or the "the rich should pay more" perspective, this appears to address both.
Is the problem simply that you want to pay less taxes?
No, I just want to pay a fair amount of taxes. Honestly the gas taxes should be increased or we should move to a tax structure where it's mileage, weight, and emissions based.
Paying 3x the same taxes while having less externalities isn't fair.
As I've cited elsewhere on this thread:
> With that information, the British newspaper calculated that BEVs [battery electric vehicles] could expose roads to 2.24 times more damage than gas cars.
Ref: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/bevs-could-also-damage-ro...
If that's true, then 12-15k miles in an EV would be equivalent to 27-33k miles in a gas car in the externalities of road wear & tear.. so "taxes equivalent to 35k miles" is at most 25% higher in a "damage per mile equivalent" but could be as little as 6% using the averages.
If your actual mileage is over 15625/year, then you're paying less than the equivalent.
What's your annual mileage?
12-15k miles in a Ford SuperDuty is equivalent to how far in a gas Civic? I suspect that driver isn't being charged accordingly.
Registration fees are likely the same or close but when you factor in gas taxes (the original comparison here), the Ford is definitely paying more both based on fuel type and mpg.
More, sure. But not remotely proportional to the increased wear and tear from vehicle weight.
Possible. How far off is it?
Pretty far?
According to your link, an EV that is 700lb heavier => 2.24x damage
Civic: ~2900lb SuperDuty: ~5700-7600lb
What is the difference in taxes paid for an equivalent amount of damage?
I understand the point you're trying to make - and you may be right - but you're leaving out the math to demonstrate it.
Civic fuel economy is about 2x an unloaded SuperDuty, so the SuperDuty owner likely pays maybe a bit more than 2x in gas tax + registration.
+700lb (+25%) => 2.25x damage +2800lb (+100%) => ???x damage
Your story doesn't provide a formula, but seems obvious it is much, much greater than 2 - this isn't a linear relationship
And that's the very lightest SuperDuty model, unloaded.
Excellent, much more useful.
Not sure where you are but in Indiana, gas tax for unleaded is 36c while diesel is 62c so on a per-gallon basis, that's an additional +72% in taxes. Back of the envelope: Civic at 30mpg pays 1.2c/mile vs SuperDuty at 15mpg pays 4.13c/mile so the multiple is closer to 3.4 vs 2
So yes - assuming registration fees are comparable and mileage is comparable - the SuperDuty should pay more.
The lightest SuperDuty has a gas engine. Diesel SuperDuty fuel economy is a bit better, but the vehicle also weighs more and is likely to be carrying/pulling more. But regardless of whether the multiple is 2 or 3.4 or somewhere in between, it is a small fraction of the added road wear.
By the fourth power law, an unloaded diesel Superduty creates ~22x the road wear of a honda civic. Loaded can be 100x more.
27 isn't 35 no matter how many times you say it is.
> If your actual mileage is over 15625/year, then you're paying less than the equivalent.
The average is less than that by a decent bit, so more than half of US cars are paying more even with your unproven, contorted math based on some estimates done once in the 70s and never really looked into closely again.
It's also assuming the difference in weight. The closest hybrid I would have bought instead is only like 100kg lighter than my EV. And it gets like 40mpg, better than 35mpg.
It would also mean semi trucks should pay like 20,000x more in registration fees. Does this make sense?
> What's your annual mileage?
Less than 15k on that car (like most people), so even with your assumed math it's overpaying.
Semi trucks pay huge amounts in gas taxes because they guzzle gas like nobody's business. It's only the EVs that aren't paying for their road wear in gas taxes.
20,000x more in taxes?
Realistically speaking, they probably do. Do you know how much fuel they use and miles they drive per year?
Average class 8 truck (>33,000lbs) burns under 11,000GGEa year, ratio is 1GGE=1.13gal of diesel. So somewhere under 12,500gal of diesel on average, but we'll use that to lean even more in the truck's favor.
https://afdc.energy.gov/data/10308
Are you suggesting the average car burns less than 1 gallon of gas a year?
A 20mpg car driving 12,500mi (the average ICE in the US) would use 625gal of gas. So more like 20x, maybe 40x if the per gallon tax of diesel is double. Pretty dang far off from 20,000x.
And they're doing way more miles while being massively heavier, meaning incredibly more harm on the road than whatever EV you're thinking.
GGE: Gasoline gallon equivalent
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_gallon_equivalent>
(Most tractor-trailor rigs burn diesel rather than petrol.)
You keep repeating it, but it's reductive at best and incorrect as a general assumption.
Is there another model you'd recommend to estimate/compare road wear and tear?
1:1 is at least as good a default assumption.
Based on numerous studies, we already know it's not 1:1 so why bother starting with a default assumption that we know is wrong?
Do you have an alternative analysis? I'd love to check it out.
The UK is creating a new pay-per-mile EV duty from 2028 to fix this.
They're a prime sign of broken economics.
The people who can least afford to move closer to their jobs are the ones who are regressively taxed in time, energy, and money the most.
A proper solution would be to require more housing NEAR the jobs to make it easier for people to save time and money by moving closer.
Require housing in certain places? Now that's what I'd call broken economics. If there is such a need for housing near job centers...why wouldn't that automatically create the incentive to build it? (Hint: It does; the problem is that in most places there are "requirements" that make it nearly impossible to build new housing. Texas is notable in that it lacks the worst extremes of this problem, hence the recent trends in rent in Austin).
Nah. Roads, specifically giant limited access highways through urban cities cost lots money to build. it makes perfect sense for them to be funded by user fees. Urban land is at a premium, if you want to utilize it you have to pay for it. Mass transit is a much more space efficient way to move people in urban environments, and encourages people to walk more in their daily life which has tons of health benefits. Also transit really help urban air quality (even electric cars cause air quality issues because of the rubber tires)
I agree. I don't like toll roads, but I recognize that they only charge me for using them, because my use isn't necessarily good for everybody else.
Gas taxes also work (ignoring electric vehicles), but paying a specific amount for a specific road certainly seems more direct.
Thing is, I suspect the taxing is inefficient. I would guess guessing 1% of it goes to mitigating traffic, pollution and road damage.
I think most people will just be burdened by it.
I think taxes would be a more efficient way of collecting these fees, and ensuring they go to fund mass transit in a way that traffic/pollution/road damage was mitigated directly and the people were still served.
Pervasive tolling is surveillance-of-movement in disguise.
Why would they need tolls for that? They have your phone location, they have you on number plate readers which don’t require tolls.
Each of these things is a contributor.
Like all "economically sound" ideas, people fuck it up. To the drivers, its one more reminder of a government taxing you on a day to day basis, locking up the roads taxes paid for, for another series of taxes.
Chicago is the poster child here. Constant rate hikes. Diverted funds meant to maintain the roads going elsewhere. "Temporary" tolls that become "permanent", etc.
It's bad, stop the madness.
100%. All of this.
With a side of handing off management and a slice of the revenue to private entities. With minimum revenue guarantees that then act as a disincentive to improving nearby roadways.
That's only if you completely ignore all the positives. More efficient economy, more citizen capabilities, better access for emergency and maintenance equipment.
It's so clearly a net win for society and humanity to have open and available roads.
Aside from that if you want to tax me then just charge me more for a license plate. Don't stop me in the middle of driving to hustle me for a buck and some change. Utterly ridiculous management of the problem.
Meanwhile... private jets exist...
Sure, if one must drive on a road.
Problem is, it’s not a tax. It’s a handout to private companies that take advantage of taxpayers fronting the construction cost in a lot of cases. We had one here paid for by tax payers but then leased to a company for some low dollar amount and they keep most of the money.
It’s just another form of rent seeking.
Now, gov run tolls seem like a good idea in areas where congestion needs to be managed. But also needs to be careful not to be a secret tax on the poor.
Fwiw in the Bay Area I thought it was a private company but turns out it’s government run with Fastrak operated by The Bay Area Transportation Authority (BATA) in partnership with The California Department of Transportation and The California Highway Patrol (not sure why CHP is involved but they probably get some kickback of the revenue stream in exchange for some enforcement).
CHP probably provides accident response services to the roads
Meh, after housing now yet another resource only available to the rich?
I think rationing is more fair and the only way to prevent massive outrage until maybe we have reduced the wealth gap to a large degree.
But the economics of collecting them suck. A tax is a lot easier and much less "enshittifying" the daily experience.
But a tax is not targeted to where the usage occurs. Tolls allowed highways with more usage to get more revenue to save up for the more frequent maintenance.
Yeah nice in theory but the reality is far from this.
In order to implement tolls, you need several components involving middlemen. This includes frontend software, backend, payment processing, transponder management, all the hardware involved, support staff, sometimes toll station staff, among other things.
These toll companies are often owned by foreign companies that are in it for the long haul, offering sweet deals up front then gradually charging more and more with no end in sight, as roads diminish in quality and rest stops fall into disarray.
Toll roads are a scam, a regressive tax on the working class, and downright immoral. We should not limit the mobility of people.
Would American companies treat an average motorist better than foreign companies? Are you insinuating that these good, law-abiding, American companies are COMMUNIST?
What do you mean by “the economics” here? I barely drive but I have a toll transponder, I set it up once and haven’t thought about it since.
I don’t even have a toll transponder, OCR these days is good enough to detect your plate number and charge the linked account.
Don't they charge you more if you do pay-by-plate though? I always see signs that have a price with local ez-pass, a higher price with out-of-state ez-pass, and an even higher price for pay-by-plate.
Ez pass billing is all over the place, each state/authority does whatever it wants.
If you reg a secondary car’s plate to an ezpass account without using the transponder, a lot of states will just think it was a read fail and charge you the regular rate but it depends.
The less honest states (New Jersey, probably others) will charge you a punitive fee (which doubles if you don't pay on time) for not having an EZpass on that vehicle. And then when you call customer support they'll argue with you, until you call on the last day when they finally agree that everything was good and proper.
In Washington it's just 25 cents higher (if you're registered -- $2 higher if you're not registered) than without a pass. Not a huge deal.
Ussally if you don't have an account they charge you more. But at least for the systems in my area they'll charge your account wether you have your toll transponder or not (because they OCR your plate and charge the linked account)
25 cents for me. I can get a sticker for $5 sticker that negates that (no transponder I think for Seattle’s first 520 bridge, maybe for carpools?). Oh, supposedly the sticker is a transponder, so I can save 25 cents if I buy a $5 sticker. Even though I don't use the bridge that often, it makes sense to buy.
Yes, bill for plate OCR is typically a lot more expensive in addition to having to logon to a site etc.
Toll collection used to be much worse in terms of collection efficiency (revenue-cost)--perhaps 50% as I understand it. With all the automated toll booths I assume it's much better today.
I took a transportation engineering class a while back and one bit of knowledge that stuck with me is tolls are the only effective traffic relief mechanisms for a roadway. Other mechanisms like adding lanes just invite more cars and traffic is not relieved. I never checked whether this was true, but sounded reasonable.
Adding lanes may not cut congestion in the long term, but it can increase throughput and overall utility by moving more people and goods.
I don't doubt it. It is quite a while ago so I don't fully recall the talk that my professor gave, but I don't believe he intended to mean adding lanes was useless, just that they didn't help with congestion of the particular roadway
If adding lanes doesn't help you didn't add enough. People live in a city to do things and you need to enable that by preventing congestion.
i don't know how to afford the 50 more lanes that most cities need though. I suggest better transit.
Removing parts of the city to add more lanes will also help decreasing demand - it's a win-win!
I don’t know why this is downvoted, obviously more lanes increase throughput else we wouldn’t do it.
Look up «Braess's paradox», more throughput when removing capacity is long established (century +) in systems with simplistic greedy agents like humans
how do you see that something is downvoted? I don't see points on any comments but my own
> how do you see that something is downvoted?
You can’t directly. If the comment goes negative, it get greyed out. (In many cases, people are complaining about a comment they like not being the top comment.)
Either way, complaining about the voting is against the guidelines and thus flaggable. That causes your comment to get marked as flagged.
Have you considered fuel rationing?
But you run into the risk that people don't use your new expensive toll road and you're left with a big pile of debt...
That is the problem with them in the Netherlands. Building and maintaining roads is so frighteningly expensive that you can't price them to even cover the cost!
So you mean if we dont socialize the up-front cost plus the ongoing externalities, roads aren't economically sensible choice? That seems less like a problem and more like the beginning of a nice reflection...
No form of transportation would be at that point
I think perhaps my professor was talking about adding tolls explicitly as a traffic congestion relief mechanism rather than a way to recoup cost of maintaining the roadway
Toll roads are fine so long as they're flowing. If they're jamming, and I'm still paying, then that fits the definition of a scam.
If the goal is to reduce traffic you can use a highway ramp signal instead.
In australia, big corp donate a few thousand and give cushy "advisory role" jobs to politicians after they leave office in exchange for contracts to build, own and run private toll roads.
It has been proven many times it's cheaper for the government, and therefore tax payers, for the government to get a loan and build public highways themselves. yet, all new highways are private.
big corp get given the land for the roads and have builtin toll price increases. One company raises prices 4% every 6 months. According to google, that means the toll doubles every 9 years.
For me to drive 22km to the CBD via toll roads costs $25 one way, and I save 10 minutes most time of the day. In 10 years time, it will probably be around $40 one way.
big corp make a billion or two in profit every year.
I don't necessarily see this as a bad trend. Eventually a tax on mileage and weight would make the most sense vs the current attempts to use fuel taxes as a proxy for those things.
Why do we need public funds to build a private authority that pays people absurd amounts of money who don't actually do anything instead of just you know.... building the road like we always have. For the public.
If we're going to spend the money anyways why do we need private profits?
Furthermore, just tax the vehicles that are actually doing damage to the roads. i.e., trucks.
A honda civic barely does anything to a road. Where a semi-truck is EXPONENTIALLY more damaging.
Not literally exponentially, but the damage is proportional to the FOURTH power of the axle load. Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.
Honda Civic weighs 0.7t per axle, or 0.24tttt of wear.
F-150 weighs 0.9t per axle, or 0.65tttt of wear.
A school bus weighs 7.5t per axle, or 3164tttt of wear. That's more than thirteen thousand Honda Civics' worth of road damage. Imagine the driver of the Honda had to pay 1c per mile. The school bus would have to pay $130 per mile. Yes, it's carrying 78 passengers, so the cost would be $1.67 per mile per student, but I think most people would just drive their kids to school.
>Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.
The roads are already being paid for and maintained at their current state. All you'd be doing is making goods slightly more expensive and other taxes slightly less. About 1-4% of your total tax burden goes to the roads. That's a small enough total number to be easily buried among your annual spend on goods.
Like if roads were these huge financial burdens that didn't amortize away to practically nothing.
> A honda civic barely does anything to a road. Where a semi-truck is EXPONENTIALLY more damaging.
Similarly, a Honda Civic is ~360 million times more damaging to the road than a bicycle, according to the fourth power law.
No reasonable fee structure should let car drivers use roads for free.
And that's before we get into the amount of valuable public land car drivers use for personal storage.
The means of collection and treatment of it as something other than tax revenue are problematic for sure. Those should be solvable problems, though.
Your point about semi-truck damage vs lighter vehicles is exactly why I think moving in that direction is so useful. The most fair taxation would accurately take both that aspect and actual miles driven into account.
Except the impact of even gas prices going up has added to costs in basically anything delivered by truck. Every tax you put on that just eventually ends up in consumer hands.
A highway is not a public good. It is a publicly subsidized good for private consumption.
Can I use the highway if I don’t have a car? (Barely)
Can I use it for anything non driving related (like a downtown street where lanes can be repurposed for outdoor seating)? No
I agree with you on what does the majority of the damage.
>A highway is not a public good. It is a publicly subsidized good for private consumption.
So is every park. What's the point of this language game?
The US interstates move military equipment across the country without needing to deal with railroad bottlenecks. It is a public good. Just like GPS, it has ancillary civic functions but it still serves its original purpose.
I mean, that's the de jure purpose, but that's really a nonsensical point to make here. We're not talking about one controlled access route with two lanes in both directions to move tanks around.
We're talking about 10 lane monstrosities, with 8 or more flyovers, standing 20 stories high in places like in Houston and Dallas.
> Can I use the highway if I don’t have a car?
Can I use the schools if I don't have a child?
In the U.S. you can definitely use school facilities after hours (such as the fields, and even some buildings, etc).
The primary concern with not allowing access at any time of day to the general public is of course, the children.
I'm not aware of any public schools in my area that would allow me to, e.g., use the basketball court or soccer field after school hours or on the weekends.
Have you tried? I've certainly been able to. And I'm definitely not alone in having used those facilities. I've used them personally and for ad-hoc sport events (lacrosse isn't exactly popular in the area I'm in right now).
Not recently, though I have observed locked doors and gates that make it pretty difficult to use. If your caveat is you need to call ahead to organize an event that's a pretty different use-case from what I'd like to do, which is to use them very casually and occasionally.
I've never called ahead or anything like that. There are a fair amount of people using them on the weekends, as far as I've seen.
There is one school that definitely is gated off, but that's because it's near a major point of interest and I can only assume they're worried about non-community members damaging the property.
That probably says more about the area you live in than the public schools.
Around here the grounds are not only open outside of school hours, but explicitly so (they have closing hours posted: 9PM).
> you can definitely use school facilities after hours
Aside from a few things like some playgrounds shared with public parks next door this has often been pretty untrue. I've definitely had police escort me off school basketball courts when school isn't in session, the natatoriums haven't had much public access, it's not like the school libraries are open after hours, etc.
I'm sure some places are more open and some are less open, I wouldn't say you can "definitely" use them.
I'd argue there should be some access to school facilities by the public if you want to call them "public". Otherwise it's about as public as the police department.
Apparently under your definition of a public good, there's no such thing.
Necessary public infrastructure that is paid for with tax dollars is not a public good?
And just in case this fact is being lost / forgotten: Toll roads are primarily, originally funded through tax dollars but are disingenuously structured in a way these bozos can go "see, it's not actually tax dollars" (it is). The same exact dollars that should be used to build fully public, free roads are instead used to privatize public infrastructure.
There has never been a time where a toll raid has failed and the losses were treated as private. The bonds magically get repaid (to the right people, of course).
It's all tax dollars in the end, one way or another.
"Public good" is a term of art in economics which means a good is both non-excludable (it is impractical to control who benefits from it) and non-rivalrous (one person benefiting does not prevent others from also benefiting).
Roads are clearly rivalrous and while it's often impractical to prevent non-payers from entering a toll road, one can certainly record them and met penalties after the fact to discourage it.
So no, roads are not a public good.
> roads are not a public good
You’re both right. Roads can be an impure public good.
At low traffic loading, they are not rivalrous and can be modelled as a public good. At high traffic loading they become rivalrous and thus closer to a common-pool resource.
If roads are made excludable, they resemble a club or even private group.
If roads are "rivalrous" then so is literally everything else.
Roads are rivalrous because too many people using them causes a traffic jam. Seriously go read the Wikipedia article on the subject.
> Toll roads are primarily, originally funded through tax dollars
This is untrue of all the toll roads I've regularly driven in multiple cities in the US. Their construction was funded through bonds which are paid back from the toll revenues.
why did you ignore my other statements that expressly address this "viewpoint."
The bonds are issued either by the authority itself or some other agency expressly delegated to issue those bonds.
The accounting is done EXPRESSLY with the knowledge of the states general fund, even though there's a "wink wink" don't use the tax dollars to """directly""" pay for these bonds.
Don't believe me? Look at the financial reports yourself.
There is zero point in the fuzzy accounting other than to make something that simply should be public, private, and allow grifters to make a buck or two off it.
In EVERY CASE of a failed toll road the major bond holders have all been made whole through the state directly or indirectly.
If you have the money, investing in a toll road is the easiest way to make lots of money with 0 risk.
But you can only do that if the entity issues those bonds "knows" and "selects" you. :)
> Look at the financial reports yourself
I have for the toll roads I drive on. It shows the debt payments being paid by the toll revenues, not other state taxes.
> In EVERY CASE of a failed toll road the major bond holders have all been made whole through the state directly or indirectly.
Sure, the toll agencies are ultimately a creature of the state but it's incorrect (a lie?) to argue it's funded primarily, originally through tax dollars, at least for the toll roads I drive on. What's the rate of these failures? What's the actual percentage of these bonds being paid by toll revenues versus failing and the states being on the hook? Once again you said it's primarily and originally. Being paid because the bond failed to be paid back by toll revenues isn't the original payment plan, and unless it's happening most of the time it's not the primary way of those bonds being paid.
> make something that simply should be public, private
The toll roads I'm talking about are public.
> address this "viewpoint."
This "viewpoint" is otherwise known as "reality".
>I have for the toll roads I drive on.
Link me so I can draw some circles for you.
> to argue it's funded primarily, originally through tax dollars
Do you know how bonds work? It's an isomorphic operation. A state entity is issuing bonds out to creditors. A lot of those major creditors will also be secured creditors.
It's the same thing, just covered under a sleight of hand trick.
So the state borrows money from a select few major creditors but it's "wink wink" not against the full faith and credit of the state, then regulates a consumption tax on the road, and the investors and authority get a slice of the pie.
For what purpose?
And when the toll roads fail either the creditors are paid out either through the state out right buying the road or allowing the debt to be a tax write off over X amount of time.
>This "viewpoint" is otherwise known as "reality".
This American brainworm is exhausting, ngl. Buddy you're getting bamboozled by a few vocab words and a 3 step accounting trick, please don't presume to talk to anyone about reality.
> Link me so I can draw some circles for you.
https://www.ntta.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/06-27-2025_...
> then regulates a consumption tax on the road
Yeah, the toll. One assumes you're not talking about the toll but other tax revenues when you're complaining about tax payers paying for the road. Obviously the tolls go to pay for the toll road, so what's the point otherwise about talking about the taxpayers paying for it?
Buddy it's really exhausting ngl having people always assume every toll organization is a private enterprise. It's not just a 3 step accounting trick, please don't presume you know how every toll arrangement is made.
And if your point is the idea of government bonds going to private investors, well, how do you think the freeways are financed? How does it make a difference then if it's a freeway or a toll road or a library or a playground? It's all financed in largely the same way. Government bonds issues to selected investors.
I don't understand, there are plenty of other things the public pays for that you can't use for other, unintended purposes. You can't fly your hobby drone out of a public airport just because you want.
The civic barely does anything to a road, except require its existence and maintenance, and it turns out that roads are expensive to build and maintain (even if only damaged by weather).
Good! Use fees align incentives, reducing the financial burden on non-users. And users pay a modest fee to get better roads than they would otherwise. It's win-win.
Aren't toll roads the norm? It was radical in the 1940s and 1950s to create public freeways.
Toll roads do have real consequences and, do, raise the cost of everything that needs to travel over it. It also means things that could exist on one side of a bridge or tolled section will relocate to other areas to avoid tolls.
Not against them, but I also don't like them. I personally think it's a failure of a state managing its roads where the cost has to become disproporiationally spread.
>Aren't toll roads the norm?
No. I won't say they're rare but they're not especially common in the US.
Do you perhaps live in Florida or Oklahoma? They are quite rare in CA, the southwestern states in general, and the upper midwest.
> "For now, drivers pay to access just 6,300 miles of America’s 160,000 or so miles of highway"
it would never happen, but ideally toll roads would be dynamically priced such that the average speed is always within 10% of the speed limit. congestion fixed.
earmark this money in a way that can't be siphoned and build public transportation with it. in addition buy fleets of buses with the cash that are exempt and analyze the destinations and origins of the traffic and put them there.
Buses are great! Road commuting is not much of a thing where I live, so what do I know, but the simplest way to mitigate the problem that poor people can't use a toll road is to put buses on it.
I’ve never been on a public bus and thought, “this is great!”. Crowded, dirty, and almost always there is someone on drugs or experiencing psychosis. I’ll stick to my car.
I've never experienced that on a bus. but when transit is useless only those with no option use it and those tend to be the problems you state. Make transit useful and the problems go away
I've never sat in car traffic and thought it was awesome either. It's a terrible economic drag and it's boring as fuck. There are solutions available.
> it would never happen, but ideally toll roads would be dynamically priced such that the average speed is always within 10% of the speed limit. congestion fixed.
"Good news! Surge pricing is in effect, and today your commute will cost you twice the usual price!"
People who can defer traveling to avoid traffic jams and congestion already tend to do so. Sitting in traffic is boring, stressful, and a waste of time and money. People who don’t have a good reason not to.
A good analogy is a queue. Imagine a society of mostly-identical people. You set up a stand that offers free sandwiches, but you can only give the sandwich to one person a minute. What will happen? A line will form outside your stand, growing longer until the length of the line is such that the discomfort of waiting in line is equal to the pleasure of eating the sandwich. So even though your sandwiches are supposedly free, a cost is still imposed on everyone who wants one, because they have to waste time standing in line.
You're right that people who can defer traveling to avoid traffic jams and congestion already tend to do so. But there are still people at the margin. People who don't value their time or don't mind sitting in traffic listening to the radio or dislike taking the bus. These people are creating congestion, imposting a cost on everyone else, and paying nothing for it. They would do it less if they had to pay. (It's okay for people to drive and sit in traffic, there's just no reason it should be free!) So it would really be more like "Good news! Surge pricing is in effect, and today your commute will cost you twice the usual price but take half as long!"
Minnesota experimented with throttling freeway entrances based on congestion, not even charging money, and drivers response was clear: they'd rather sit in traffic.
So let them? I fail to see the problem here.
I didnt realize there are still tollroads that are not dynamically priced?! haven’t seen one in a loooong time
There are toll roads (or lanes) with dynamic pricing attempting to achieve something like this. They exist.
There are tons of express lanes in my metro (DFW) that are dynamically priced to try and achieve a minimum speed of 55 mph
People already driving generally aren't likely to change their destination, and all the traffic headed toward the dynamically priced toll road still needs to be diverted in a way that they will reach wherever they were going.
You aren't going to change congestion unless you fix the balance between throughput and volume. Dynamic pricing doesn't improve throughput, and it doesn't decrease volume- it just forces some of that volume onto less well equipped roads.
why wouldn't it decrease volume? presumably if it starts costing 100 bucks a day people would stop driving and take these hypothetical buses, no? of course as I mentioned I know this would never actually work for political reasons.
> People already driving generally aren't likely to change their destination
They are if you price it properly. If it costs $1000 to get on that road, a lot of people are going to find alternative means of transport, carpool, or forgo the trip entirely.
That's terrible and will be gamed to maximize revenue in no time flat.
demand for transport is not that elastic though
It's more elastic than you might assume. There's a phenomenon called traffic evaporation, when a major roadway is closed or diminished (even unexpectedly), people adjust their travel behavior such that travel times stay relatively constant.
Los Angeles has many such examples, one recent and well studied one was the closure of the 10 freeway after a fire.
It totally is. Demand can be induced. You can build more highways/roads, you can build more transit options, you can decide how to design roads and handle zoning, affecting how far people go (where are their jobs and stores?), you can decide to build protected bike lanes or build prioritized bus lanes, etc.
All of these factors and more affect demand for transportation.
There’s no more toll booths. It’s a big step function change in viability of toll roads.
And Americans still don't get it: cars are not a natural fact of life, a birthright endowment.
Driving a car imposes costs on everyone. It requires public infrastructure, pollutes the environment, endangers lives, etc.
Cars are a private privilege, and toll roads are a way to make people aware of that.
But I wonder how the country that hates socialism will see this privatization of costs.
Suppressing car usage isn’t about punishing individuals; it’s about correcting urban systems that made car dependency the default in the first place. The Lewis–Mogridge position is well established, and making driving less convenient while improving proximity and alternatives is a core principle of sustainable urban planning.
A lifestyle that requires burning large amounts of fuel just to buy groceries, or maintaining water-intensive lawns at scale, only works under very specific economic and environmental conditions. As those conditions disappear, cities have to adapt—even if the cultural shift feels uncomfortable at first.
I'll take my sprawling suburb with a big yard to grow ample food any day over a densely populated and carefully planned cityscape. With the advent of cheaper solar panels and electric vehicles, it's not a big issue.
I don't even give a shit about the yard. Frankly it's a pain in the ass.
It's about getting away from "the wrong kind"[1] of people.
[1]calm down that's not who I'm talking about.
Honestly? Good. Puts them on a more even footing with other infrastructure. If trains aren't free neither should highways be.
Sydney has an extensive network of toll roads, and it's a nightmare. The state government has outsourced the initial infrastructure development to a private company (Transurban), who pay off their development costs through collecting the toll. It costs taxpayers a fortune. Sydney's road network is so poorly designed that it's difficult to get anywhere without crossing a toll road if you actually value your time. People allege that the state government is deliberately designing bottlenecks into the road network to funnel traffic into toll roads (e.g. westbound traffic on Parramatta Road) and it's difficult to disagree with this assessment. I live in the city and most of my driving is for leisure, yet somehow I still paid $850 in tolls over the last 12 months. Just in case anyone is wondering, there's no 'toll plaza'. Our toll roads have an automated collection system which operates via ALPR.
1. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.
2. Fooled you! It's not getting better.
Taxing only the users of a good or service sounds reasonable
There are many indirect users of roads.
If you rely on businesses, services, emergency workers, etc., you rely on roads.
Traditional taxes are democratic -- if the legislature raises a tax, they can be voted out.
Creative revenue approaches sound efficient, but you don't want efficiency with spending. Efficiency means that spending will grow unabated.
In my state they've had record revenue for 12 years (until just lately). Regardless of each record, they continued to outspend revenue into a deficit.
Commercial enterprises are bounded by revenue (and debt). Public agencies used to have a feedback loop (losing the next election), but in many states there is little consequence for deficit spending.
Don't give spendthrifts more ways to spend money. They will always exceed the revenue they generate.
On the other hand, private companies have no accountability to the public whatsoever, and as long as their grift is revenue positive they can exist forever regardless of how damaging they are to the lives of everyone around them. Private prisons and toll road companies are great examples of parasitic private companies that absolutely must not be allowed to exist.
I agree that may occur, though we likely disagree on how representative it is.
Regardless, 2 wrongs don’t make a right. Moreover, most of the public spending goes into what you would likely consider to be grifter enterprises.
I had a very negative view toward toll roads untill I found the Road Guy Rob youtube channel. His video on the Oklahoma toll roads completely changed my perspective.
Very odd, an article about America, but mostly using British spelling except for prices in $.
This is normal for the Economist. I don't really understand why -- they clearly have an American edition (I get their print version in the US and its headlines and organization is totally different than the same edition in the UK), yet they leave all the "colours" and "boffins" in there, when it would be pretty trivial to regionalize the language same as they do the currencies and structure. My assumption is that being a bit eccentric and foreign-seeming is part of their brand.
Perhaps payback for tourists using the word 'dollars' in London :P
Aside from money, I think one of the major issues I had with toll booths was... Well the booths. Stopping, having to fish out exact change, planning ahead to make sure you had enough change, etc.
Nowadays we have those boxes that we can put in the windshield that automatically bill us later. And that's made me far more willing to take a trip via the highway. Removes a lot of anxiety. And, so far, at least in my experience, they work.
In the northeast I regularly see idiots slowing down for the high speed toll lanes that have explicit signage not to slow down. People going 65-70MPH, then as the toll approaches one car brakes down to 45MPH because they’re afraid their transponder won’t be read or something.
Republicans: We love toll roads.
Also Republicans: Toll roads are actually illegal if their intention is for the public good like New York city is doing.
Current prices of "for the public good" in New York City for passenger vehicles:
- Congestion charge - $9 per day on Ez-Pass
- Bridge toll - $10 to $15 per day
What’s spreading is mass surveillance.
Nearly every toll (in NJ or surrounding states) is done via EZ Pass a/o license plate readers.
It’s nearly impossible to travel without being tracked.
In the supply-side economic models, regressive taxes are generally understood to contract the economy. Tolls in that model are no different than tariffs.
Every single lifestyle item of a modern life, whether you have a car or not, depends on the road system.
If you want food, products, or services, you depend on the roads. This means it should be taxed universally and equitably. We should all contribute our fair share to maintain the roads.
Tolls are a regressive tax on low-income people who do the most to make society work, and it is unfortunate that more people do not see this. What's more, they are generally administered by corrupt and inefficient private for-profit orgs. This creates even more overhead which then costs more money.
These orgs generally have slimy deals with city and state governments, while directly profiting from public works that built the road system to begin with.
There are much better ways to fund the road system. Tolls are among the worst.
I don't agree with this perspective. A tax on negative externalities doesn't have to be regressive. It depends on what the tax money is spent on. This is an extreme example, but if you added a congestion tax and then spent the money on a tiny UBI, you might generate $10/person/month, which would be a major uplift to the poorest in our society who don't drive at all. The argument against congestion pricing is further weakened by the fact that those harmed (drivers, pay the tolls) are also those who benefit (drivers, who enjoy less congestion). The ones who are harmed the most are those displaced from driving, who have to find something else to do and don't enjoy the benefits of reduced convention. That's using congestion pricing as an example, but the same argument applies to taxing vehicles in proportion to the wear they impose on roads.
Business owners who pay the tax are free to raise their prices, which is how it's supposed to work. They're currently raising their prices because their drivers waste time in congested traffic and because they pay taxes to the government for road maintenance.
For an analogy, it also makes sense to tax companies who dump their waste in rivers, to the extent that their waste dirties the rivers. If there is some ultra-valuable product that could only be made by dirtying a river (idk, let's say that for some reason insulin had to be made that way), it would be a good that it could still be made, while discouraging people from dirtying rivers for little reason. No one would say "polluting the river should be free because we all use products that are made by polluting rivers." If polluting rivers were free and the government just taxed everyone to clean them up afterwards, we probably all really would use products made by polluting rivers! but that doesn't mean we would be worse off by taxing it directly.
That said, I agree that there's no reason for tolls to fund the road system. Hypothecated taxes are generally not a good idea, despite the fact that they're very intuitively appealing.
As someone who barely ever drives but still has to pay the same yearly car taxes as everyone else I welcome this. We should be making driving more expensive. It’s deadly, polluting, and traffic wastes so many people’s time.
Walkable cities are a luxury good. Care to share what multiple of the median annual household income a home costs wherever you live? 10x? 20x?
I would like to see the ratio of toll prices to public transport available for each state properly normalized. Would be interesting to see a correlation.
I recently traveled to Florida. There are toll roads everywhere. Luckily, I got the unlimited daily toll package when I rented my car.
Stuff like this is common in states with no income tax. If public services in two states are equivalent and one has income tax but one doesn’t, the latter state residents pay the same total tax burden through property tax, tolls, and sales tax.
Yep, people really think they've hacked America when they move to states with lower/no income tax. Meanwhile they pay 5-figure property taxes on a house they've paid off until the day they die.
paid HOV lanes in the bay area are a so enraging. they created a problem by restricting the number of lanes and increasing traffic and offered a monetary solution at the same time by having you pay for the “fast” lane
Not only are they spreading, but existing ones have tolls constantly increased. Some were built with the idea of the toll expiring once the costs of construction were paid off. But instead they just become a new state tax source forever, subsidizing out of control spending.
Roads cost money, costs are just catching up to reality. If folks are unhappy now when taxes are at historical lows while we accumulate all sorts of off book debt (in this case, “deferred maintenance”), further sadness is ahead. If one does not care to pay for roads, my recommendation is to live somewhere one doesn’t need roads, or the per capita costs are lower due to density (urban areas, broadly speaking), making paying the costs more palatable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiative... (“In 2021, state and local governments spent $206 billion, or 6 percent of direct general spending, on highways and roads. As a share of state and local direct general expenditures, highways and roads were the fifth-largest expenditure in 2021.”)
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-04-14/unpave-low-tra... (“The U.S. has 4.1 million miles of roads (1.9 million paved, 2.2 million gravel). About 3 million miles of roads have less than 2,000 vehicles a day, less than 15% of all traffic. The paved portion of these low-volume roads ought to be evaluated for their potential to be unpaved.”)
(very similar to how climate costs are causing agriculture and insurance costs to snap to reality, with similar sadness; debts coming due)
We could fund roads (and everything else) using a progressive income tax, so that everyone pays and the wealthiest would pay the largest share.
Not opposed, but to achieve this with the current election cycle cadence will take at least 5 years, if not longer (Congressional cycles). Also, I think Medicare for All is a more pressing use of tax revenue than pouring good money after bad into sprawl infrastructure that will continue to decline in use as rural America hollows out and people keep moving to urban cores. To observe this, overlay predicted rural America population decline with road infrastructure, which you can also use to forecast which road infrastructure we should retreat from maintaining over time.
“Everyone wants civilization but nobody wants to pay taxes” is a hard concept to solve for, most especially when those with nothing or no tax liability (very roughly the bottom 60% of Americans) advocate for the wealthiest from a failed mental model.
As my grandfather wisely observed: there's no such thing as a temporary tax. I have seen this to be true in my own lifetime, as each and every time a "temporary" tax increase would expire it gets extended.
Paying for the road-time you use, like any shared resource, seems fair to me. It would be nice to see decreases in earned income taxes though.
If the retort to this is it impacts poorer people more, then that is a separate problem fixed by redistributing more cash, so that the wealth gap is smaller.
Edit: to respond to reply about trucks causing more damage to road:
Construction costs are one cost of roads, but another cost is time cost due to congestion (and resulting effects of delays due to congestion). A variable rate toll that also incorporates congestion is the ideal way to manage road use, much like paying more for electricity or other resources at peak demand to modulate demand.
> If the retort to this is it impacts poorer people more
We've ended up, though, with a growing wealth gap and more tolls.
The vast majority of damage on the road is caused by vehicles with high axle load, e.g. trucks, especially overloaded trucks. IIRC the damage is proportional to fourth power of the axle load.
As a consequence, personal cars barely register.
It would make sense to collect toll from trucks only, and possibly weigh them all, because overloaded trucks are extra damaging to the road.
To carry this further, of maintenance taxes for roads were structured appropriately, trucks would pay so much that it would be prohibitively expensive to ship across the states in Semis. We'd likely see a resurgence of rail transport.
Rhode Island is trying this. The gantries have been up for years, but it was challenged in court by the trucking lobby. The state prevailed with some concessions, and is planning to reinstate the truck tolls soon.
Probably, due to the small size of RI, it will just cause goods not bound directly for RI to divert along I-395 up through CT and MA, and I-290 and I-495 in MA.
If we only had trucks on the road, we’d need less road, right? The street where I live could be about a third of the width if it were not for personal cars.
Taxes on gas?
Unfortunately, it hasn’t seen a big jump in a while, all cars are getting heavier and electrified, and gas mileage is going up.
Odometry tax when you register the vehicle, with tiers based on the curb weight.
Also higher gas taxes for carbon reasons.
Add a mechanism for folks to file for a rebate for distance driven on private roads (an uncle's driveway is roughly a quarter mile, so half a mile six days a week 52 times each year would equal a 156 mile reduction).
Gas is a different shared resource (e.g. it’s effects on air quality/climate change) than road capacity.
The gas tax is supposedly to pay for roads. Now that they are supposedly paying for the roads via tolls, I guess we can expect that they will not decrease the gas tax but add another tax that supposedly pays for the roads.
The gas tax has never paid for full road maintenance. It's always been subsidized from other funds.
There are still all the roads that aren't toll roads that still need that tax revenue to support.
laughs in New York I-90
Yep. It's great that I have to pay to use this stretch of I-90 and then on top of that if I end up at the wrong rest area on a Sunday I won't be able to access every vendor (because they picked Chick-Fil-A at some locations).
I assume automatic tolls via transponders tend to make tolls a lot less transparent in practice.
Good. Cars only exist as a viableeans of transport due to vast subsidies and a total reorganization of society to suit them. Motorists should pay the cost of this absurd status quo.