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Toll roads are spreading in America

Toll roads are spreading in America

smurda

Comments (452)

  • arjie
    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.
  • KoolKat23
    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.
  • blauditore
    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.
  • nfw2
    Toll roads are good economics. If a choice has negative externalities (more traffic, more pollution, road damage), tax it.
  • femto
    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, ...
  • ronbenton
    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.
  • jsight
    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.
  • crashbunny
    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.
  • hoppyhoppy2
  • jarjoura
    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.
  • websiteapi
    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.
  • loeg
    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.
  • AnotherGoodName
    There’s no more toll booths. It’s a big step function change in viability of toll roads.
  • ajxs
    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.
  • 1970-01-01
    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.
  • r2vcap
    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.
  • coldtea
    1. It's gonna get worse before it gets better.2. Fooled you! It's not getting better.
  • tonymet
    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.
  • matt3210
    Taxing only the users of a good or service sounds reasonable
  • shkkmo
    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.https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzPPmiKFf5I
  • chiefalchemist
    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.
  • drnick1
    Very odd, an article about America, but mostly using British spelling except for prices in $.
  • fortyseven
    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.
  • foota
    Honestly? Good. Puts them on a more even footing with other infrastructure. If trains aren't free neither should highways be.
  • macinjosh
    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.
  • _DeadFred_
    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.
  • survirtual
    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.
  • josefritzishere
    In the supply-side economic models, regressive taxes are generally understood to contract the economy. Tolls in that model are no different than tariffs.
  • ece
    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.
  • Devasta
    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.
  • billy99k
    I recently traveled to Florida. There are toll roads everywhere. Luckily, I got the unlimited daily toll package when I rented my car.
  • SilverElfin
    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.
  • anorphirith
    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
  • diego_moita
    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.Do I expect Americans to start thinking of making cities for people instead of cars? Will they begin taking public transportation seriously? No, they won't.