Date:         Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:19:33 -0700
Reply-To:     Rob <becida@COMCAST.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Rob <becida@COMCAST.NET>
Subject:      Re: tolls (was RE: I-90 Freeway help)
In-Reply-To:  <039001c699f6$2da04300$647ba8c0@MAIN>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed

At  6/27/2006 07:30 AM, Robert Fisher wrote:
>--snip--
>>    Actually tolls are a reasonably fair way to pay for roads
>>- those who use them pay for them.  As opposed to using general revenue or
>>something, in which case people who don't use them still have to pay.
>--snip--
>
>I've always had an issue with this idea- everybody 'uses' the roads. I don't
>care if you're stuck in an iron lung, you still use the roads in the sense
>that all of those things and people that fill your needs and wants use the
>roads.
>In that sense it's inequitable that drivers are primarily burdened with the
>costs of maintaining roads via tolls and fuel taxes. I'd bet there are more
>non-drivers than most of us would guess there are, particularly as the
>population ages, and there are all kinds of activities in which the end user
>benefits from the use of the roads whether they were involved with the
>driving for that particular thing or not, and regardless of whether they
>drive otherwise-

Roads & easy of transportation are one of the big things that allow
the USA to be great.  It's like the tax to support public schools,
you may not have kids in school but all of society benefits from
having educated adults.
Putting tolls on already 'free' roads is just another way to raise taxes.

>one that comes to mind is all of the kids that live on or
>near campus while in college and primarily walk to everything three-quarters
>of the year. There's a whole microcosm of infrequent or non-drivers whose
>activities are of course supported by others driving. Of course for
>commercial driving the costs of being on the road are factored into the
>costs of goods, so there is some downward distribution, but there's still
>going to be a gap there for various reasons.
>
>I was reading an article about how states are bracing for the loss of
>revenue due to loss of fuel taxes from alternative energy/fuel vehicles,
>reduction in driving habits due to high costs of fuel (which apparently
>hasn't happened yet) and a whole list of other related issues. One of the
>proposals that many of the states were considering was dropping the fuel tax
>altogether and rolling it into the sales tax, the idea being that it would
>more fairly spread the burden around and still guarantee revenue flow. They
>seemed to figure it would equal out overall in economic terms after the
>'sticker shock' effect was absorbed because the rather substantial fuel tax
>would be gone. It seemed a little optimistic to me to assume that Joe's
>Trucking was automatically going to drop their rates because they were
>suddenly 'saving' the fifteen-cents-per-gallon from the repealed state fuel
>taxes, but who knows.
>
>This kind of goes along with the argument about 'free' radio and TV... which
>are not only not free, but are in fact very much the opposite of free- but
>that's a gripe for another day.
>
>Cya,
>Robert