alt Hacker NewsNot 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.
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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.
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.
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)