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Title: Tolls ration roads for the rich
Source:
www.registerguard.com
URL Source: http://www.registerguard.com/news/2 ... er.0919.p1.php?section=opinion
Published: Sep 19, 2006
Author: Russell Sadler
Post Date: 2006-09-19 17:44:01 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 81
Comments: 4
The Oregon Department of Transportation continues speeding down the path toward toll roads, blithely bypassing warning signs of growing public opposition to the entire notion. The idea of toll roads has been quietly popular in the Republican-controlled Legislature for nearly a decade as a way to bypass tax increases needed to build new highways and maintain existing ones. During the 1990s, the Legislature borrowed more than a billion dollars to repair Oregon's aging bridges and much of the freeway system built in the 1960s. Aside from a token increase in vehicle registration fees and truck taxes, the Legislature promised to repay the bonds from future gas tax revenues. Bond payments and maintenance now consume nearly all money from fuel taxes and fees, and there is not enough money to build new highways such as the Newberg-Dundee bypass and the Sunrise Corridor from I-205 toward Damascus, plus add lanes to the southern end of I-205. The Oregon Department of Transportation has contracted with an Australian firm, the Macquarie Infrastructure Group, to study ways of financing those three Portland-area road projects using tolls. The Macquarie firm says tolls could pay the $325 million to $425 million cost of building and maintaining the Newberg-Dundee bypass, but only if a toll was also imposed on a parallel stretch of existing U.S. Highway 99W to discourage motorists and truckers from avoiding the toll on the new bypass. You will not be surprised to learn the idea of imposing tolls on 99W is going over like screen doors on a submarine in Newberg and Dundee. Signs reading "No Toll Road" are already springing up in Yamhill County. State transportation officials insist legislators have told them that new highways can no longer be financed by the traditional method of state gas taxes matched with federal highway funds. State officials were told to come up with alternatives. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that previous generations of Oregonians built a highway system, while the current generation is unwilling to pay to maintain and enlarge it. It is also difficult to escape the conclusion that toll roads are being introduced as a means of rationing space on already congested highways. Rationing highway space is certainly the motive behind the silly plan to tax Oregon motorists by the miles they have driven every time they fill up at a gas pump. Rationing is also the motive behind the so-called "Lexus lanes" planned for Washington, D.C., and elsewhere. These "congestion free" lanes may have no toll, or a token toll of perhaps $2. But anytime the lane gets congested, a computer changes the sign where motorists enter the lane, raising the toll to perhaps $5. If congestion continues to increase, the computer raises the toll to perhaps $10 or $15 - high enough to discourage all but the well-heeled from using the lane, thereby "reducing congestion." This quaint economic theory gives a whole new meaning to the phrase about "charging what the traffic will bear." This is not merely raising revenue. It is a form of social control. Libertarian economists will surely argue this is fair - motorists pay for the highways they use based on how much they use them. It's the kind of argument that could only fool an economist. It might make sense if motorists could really choose when and where they drive. But they cannot. Commuting causes the most congestion. Most motorists have little to say about the time their employers want them at work. Tolling to control congestion just punishes the poor and rewards the wealthy. The return of toll roads is a deliberate attack on the egalitarianism that every American learns in kindergarten. If you try to go to the head of the line, you are told "no cuts" by your classmates. Libertarian economists truly believe people willing to pay more should go to the head of the line. Most Americans, however, are egalitarian. They do not believe in an aristocracy of wealth. That is why we prefer freeways over toll roads. And that is why the stealthy effort to return to road tolls will be met with angry opposition when people figure out it is simply a scheme to ration space on the highway for the well-to-do. Political commentator Russell Sadler lives in Eugene.
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#1. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
I say they start selling that fine Oregon bud and tax the shit out of it.
"GM is not a car company, it's a bank that gives free cars to its customers when they take out a loan."--Magorn.
I second the notion.
Bond payments and maintenance now consume nearly all money from fuel taxes and fees... *sigh* It's the American way. Don't pay as you go and take your time. Borrow! Borrow! Borrow! and damn the after-effects. After all, the tax payers pick up the tab, not the people that voted to fund a project in such a way that they will end up paying 4 to 5 times what the sticker price was. What gets me is that these roads are built with either public money (read: taxes) or money borrowed in the people's name. And then the government taxes them to use a produce/service that they already paid for.
"The more I see of life, the less I fear death" - Me.
It might make sense if motorists could really choose when and where they drive. But they cannot. Commuting causes the most congestion. Most motorists have little to say about the time their employers want them at work. Tolling to control congestion just punishes the poor and rewards the wealthy. The return of toll roads is a deliberate attack on the egalitarianism that every American learns in kindergarten. Egalitarianism in this context is a euphemism for socialism. The states and the Fed gov should sell off all the roads and eliminate the tragedy of the commons in transortation. People can, and actually do, choose where to live. They will choose to live where road tolls are low, just like they now choose to live in states with low taxes. Many benefits would follow privatization of the roads. Road owners would repair roads to keep them safe, to avoid lawsuits, and they would do so at night, so as to maximize revenue during daytime rush hours. Congestion would be eliminated by the consumers' choices of cheaper alternative routes, as the quicker main route owners charge more for celerity. The alternative route owners would improve their competitive advantage by either charging less, or widening their roads to carry more traffic, or improving their road surface, or perhaps a hundred other improvements a highway engineer would be glad to discuss. The purchase of land for roads would need no longer be accomplished by eminent domain, but by free commerce on an open market, eliminating coercion from the highway industry. The costs of new road construction would be borne, ultimately, by the new road consumers, and not the taxpayers.
State transportation officials insist legislators have told them that new highways can no longer be financed by the traditional method of state gas taxes matched with federal highway funds. State officials were told to come up with alternatives.
#2. To: Indrid Cold (#1)
"I say they start selling that fine Oregon bud and tax the shit out of it."
#3. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
During the 1990s, the Legislature borrowed more than a billion dollars...
#4. To: Ferret Mike (#0)
Libertarian economists will surely argue this is fair - motorists pay for the highways they use based on how much they use them. It's the kind of argument that could only fool an economist.
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