Comments on: Tolling is No Solution for Our Transportation Funding Dilemma

By: BOB2

BOB2 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 17:35:31 +0000

Some of the libertarian congestion pricing “group think” is pure ideological twaddle,it is not a cure all for congestion, it is not a good urban system management tool, and is extremely regressive in urban schemes, but tolling should not be taken off of the table. Tolling is a viable and fair method to pay for much intercity improvement and for inducing private investment into the market for critical infrastructure development.

Public giveaways like the scandalous Indiana Toll Road deal are a public disgrace, but that is a result of poor policy and political game playing. These poor applications of the concept are not an indictment of the concept of road pricing or contracting for operation of roads. Proper policies, including first and foremost above board transparent contracting and franchising, can use road pricing to rebuild our crumbling interstate system, and fairly charge the users. Just becaus people have behaved in a shoddy manner, doesn’t make the concept wrong.

By: EngineerScotty

EngineerScotty — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 19:40:20 +0000

Here’s an interesting followup… if tolling the roads is so bad, because it’s regressive–then what about collecting fares on transit? Why not fund transit exclusively from tax revenues (and non-rider sources like onboard advertising), and let people ride for free? (Or for a nominal charge–say, a quarter–if necessary to prevent abusive consumption of the system?)

It isn’t likely to happen, of course. One of the quandaries facing transit advocates is that the public at large widely views roads as a public good (and supports use of general taxation as a means of funding road construction and maintenance), but frequently views transit as an auxiliary service that ought to be self-funding. Of course, the roads are not a complete free ride for users, who still have to pay for things like the vehicle itself and for fuel, but the mentality is still there.

By: Alon Levy

Alon Levy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 14:50:51 +0000

Jeremy, road wear is quartic in axle load, which means that a 30-ton 18-wheeler, with an axle load 12 times that of a 1-ton sedan, causes 20,000 times as much road wear. Trucks are never going to pay 20,000 times as much as cars in gas taxes (nor in tolls, but that’s another issue).

In countries other than the US, the primary purpose of the gas tax is to discourage people from driving because of the pollution and oil use it causes (e.g. Greg Mankiw estimates $2.21/gallon in the US just to balance pollution, excluding greenhouse gas emissions). Those multi-euro gas taxes help pad the general fund – in Germany, gas taxes are the second largest source of government income, after income taxes. They don’t levy those taxes to build roads any more than the US levies a cigarette tax to help advertise tobacco.

By: Andrew Dawson

Andrew Dawson — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:11:37 +0000

Tolls even at some thing 25 cents a mile on expressways would help put real costs into peoples minds about their hyper mobility.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:29:55 +0000

Every time I try to carpool outside of the city with a car owner, they insist on avoiding the toll road (in this case the highway which could save us an hour). So they drive on local roads, which puts more wear and tear on streets whose cities have less money to repair them.

As others have mentioned, every road should be a toll road. That’s the point of the gas tax. Hence the solution is to increase the gas tax to a level that would actually cover the costs of road repair (rather than forcing us pedestrians to pay for it unfairly through sales/income/property taxes).

But good transit services have to be available before we start telling people that they have to pay if they insist on driving on our roads.

By: Stewart Clamen

Stewart Clamen — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:46:07 +0000

Gas prices rose last summer much faster and higher than any proposed gas tax. The current (temporary, I think) depression in the price of oil/gas is a perfect time to introduce a better (i.e., larger, and indexed) fuel tax.

By: fpteditors

fpteditors — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:29:39 +0000

Road-pricing is a red herring to put you off the scent of improving public transit, which would be best achieved by removing the fare. When the fares are gone, we will benefit from public investment. Yes, there are problems with fare-free transit, but compared to oil wars and global warming, they are minor.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 21:00:33 +0000

I agree with the idea that transit options have to come first, or at least concurrently with an increased gas tax or tolls. Instituting tolls would discourage people from driving and encourage people to turn towards . . . oh wait, there’s nothing to turn towards. When gas prices hit their peak in 2008, people flocked to transit systems, but only in areas already equipped with options. I live in the southeast, where transit just isn’t available in really any city, or between cities. People just had to bear $4/gallon gas and hope it went back down.

I think ramping up the gas tax over a span of years to decades, while at the same time pumping money into transit is the best option. Transit has been shown to be an effective driver of land use change, creating denser communities. I just don’t see increased tolls or higher gas prices having the same effect by themselves. Areas served by transit are attractive because mobility and interconnectedness are assured. That is what spurs development. Higher gas prices or tolls make the suburbs more expensive, and some may move to the city, but it seems to me the overall impact and rate of change would be much reduced. A combination of the two seems the best course.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 20:28:23 +0000

Economically, all roads should be toll roads because the people that use them should be the ones paying for them. However, the logistics of enforcing tolls is not practical. (Toll-booths sometimes cause massive congestion.) So the toll should take the form of a tax or a usage-fee on automobiles themselves.

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 19:47:26 +0000

Gotta disagree with your conclusion, Yonah. Amend it to read: “the fairest, most logical way to fund TRANSIT investments is through the general fund, paid for through an expansion in the progressive income tax,” and then you’re a lot closer to the truth. But without some demand management or scarcity allocation method, roads will always become disastrously congested, to the detriment of rich and poor (and the environment) alike. Until someone comes up with an effective mechanism other than tolling to allocate scarce roadway capacity, it’s premature to take tolling of the table. Improved transit is no silver bullet either; a large share of the nation’s heavily congested highway miles are in low density suburban areas in which it is extraordinarily difficult and costly to introduce a transit alternative that will attract travelers out of their cars.