Slashdot Mirror
Every Road a Toll Road
Great Britain is looking at a couple of different proposals for "universal road pricing", making every public road a toll road via GPS and black boxes in vehicles. There are also articles by the main proponent of universal tolls, and an editorial from the paper suggesting higher gas taxes instead.
In the US, we pay for roads with taxes on fuel. This is advantageous in that it encourages economy as well as correlates with the amount of driving a person does. Heavier vehicles generally do more damage than smaller vehicles...so there generally is a direct correlation between fuel consumption and road use.
As for the every road is a toll road concept. This currently exists in trucking. Truck drivers fill out logs showing which states they cross. (You notice how trucks always have to stop at ports of entry). State troopers audit these logs and the trucking companies pay taxes according to the miles driven in each state.
Basically, the current system gives us everything we need. The only problem I see is, if in the future, we introduce electric or alternate fuel vehicles that could avoid fuel taxes.
Well, I think this is a good idea, as you would only end up having to pay for the roads that you actually use, instead of having to pay (out of your pocket) for the all of the roads. Before (and still) there was no way to figure out what roads people used, so there would never be any practical way to privatize roads because you couldn't charge people for usage of them. It's the old free rider problem, there is no way to make it so that people who don't pay for it don't use it.
On the flip side, there are problems with this. Of course as someone mentioned it does hit the lower income people harder, but current taxes do that as well, because almost all taxes except for income tax are regressive taxes, which mean that lower income people pay a higher percentage than higher income. Sales tax, Gas Tax, even the lottery are all regressive taxes. At least with this system, you would only pay for what you use.
This will, I'm sure, provide much debate, however at this stage it seems rather impractical to employ, especially with the current road system the way it is.
I'd also be afraid of the privacy issues here as well... but that's a whole other topic.
"We shall show mercy, but we shall not ask for it" -- Winston Churchill
The U.K. has some other qualities the U.S. doesn't have, all that must be considered. Their population density is high, yet they still have loads of rural areas. The way they do this is through strict zoning and green belts around cities. A city gets so big, it stops growing, it has to grow up or within. This helps transit, unlike in the U.S. where it's suburban sprawl everywhere and therefore it's near impossible to design a transit system that goes everywhere, like you said...)
They are also heavy on social programs. You can get benefits for just doing some care for a disabled relative, for example. With that comes loads of taxes. They are taxed to death.
Disclaimer: I am from Western Massachusetts (west of 495 for over a decade, west of Worcester for about 9 years, and west of the Quabbin for two), where various proposals have been floated that would make the people west of Boston pay for the Big Dig, a massively expensive (and arguably necessary) highway reconstruction project which, at any given moment, is not being used by many people west of Worcester. I'm also somewhat of a road geek. As a young child I would spend hours sketching out designs for highway interchanges. There are few things I find more enjoyable on road trips than studying the design of the roads and watching their construction and rebuilding.
Under the Interstate Highway and Defense Act passed in 1956, the states would receive a sum proportional to the amount of federal gasoline taxes taken from the state. Originally, those funds could only be used for building highways. As a result every state, through about 1970, went on a highway binge. By 1972, save for major portions in Northeastern cities (Washington DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston) most of the system had been built. Why? Because state politicians knew that construction brought good union jobs for free (the Feds were paying 90% of the cost).
In the 1970s, Congress allowed Interstate funds to be used to build public transport systems. With many states having finished their interstates, save for useless spurs that are still built to this day, the party was over. But now that they could build public transport, they started with a vengeance.
Nowadays, very little of the gas tax money goes to construction or maintenance, because the construction has been done and most of the maintenance is cheaper, but the gas tax money has increased dramatically as the number of miles driven increases.
Thus, in many states, the legislatures have gotten addicted to the road money. If their state has lower gas consumption, less money goes to the State House. So it's no surprise that nowadays, public transport gets cut (because the more driving gets done, the more money flows in for political pork projects (stadiums, etc.)). It's also no surprise why the States are perfectly willing to roll back emissions standards, as an Excursion generates some 3 times more gas taxes than a Saturn SL1, and some 5 times more than a Toyota Prius. So few states really encourage their citizens to buy non-SUV's.
If the gas tax were abolished and roads were paid for by who actually used them, things wopuld change for the better, IMHO. If this happens we might actually see states doing sane things like discouraging massive fuel inefficiency (for example, charging extra for registrations of low-efficiency vehicles in urban areas (as a practical matter, restricting trucks in rural areas isn't going to work. The farm lobbies are too powerful). Remember, the problem with monster SUVs are the people in urban/suburban areas who drive them and don't need them). Also, there's this simple fact, which is nice. Those who use the superhighways pay for them. A decent-sized number of Americans drive a lot (thus paying gas taxes), while only utilizing superhighways (which account for the majority of expenditure) rarely. This is a slight inequity.
The reason that more roads, especially in cities, aren't toll roads, is because of the historical overhead of tolls, such as widening the roads and the traffic problems. However, nowadays most toll roads have an electronic option, with EZPass being the most common. By using this option, existing highways can be made toll roads with little overhead.
Look at it this way:
How much are you willing to pay to live in a society where people worse off than you don't hunt you down for food? Don't you think it would be cheaper to spend some of your money on wealth redistribution rather than all of your money on fortress housing, private security, and corpse removal? Isn't it nice to be able to go outside with little to fear from the destitute other than annoying begging and unpleasant odors?
Social welfare programs are incredibly cheap compared to the economic costs of going without. Is there a single country in the world without a social welfare system that you would want to live in for more than a month? What sounds like more fun: Discussing the minutes of the Federalist Society in some income tax (if not protection money) free fiefdom of subsaharan Africa or discussing the features of the latest Nokia phone while drinking aquavit with heavilly taxed Scandinavian babes?
And as you sound like a capital L Libertarian, don't you believe that the capital M Market should decide these things? Apparently, the market for governments has decided that a minimal safety net is a good thing to have. Deal.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
The underlying politics here are that in the UK all taxes go into a central pool. The Treasury has always opposed 'hypothecated' revenues - that is taxes that are tied to specific purposes.
So the reason why the DoT is calling for new taxes on transport is first, middle and last a scheme to raise taxes in a form that the DoT think they could keep for their own ends. The Treasury meanwhile is happy to allow the DoT to believe in this dellusion up to the point where a new tax is created for them to grab, which they will.
If you think about it, a fuel tax is in effect a toll on road use that is indexed to the fuel efficiency of the vehicle and very cheap to collect.
I suspect that the so called government adviser is not going to be one for very long. An adviser's job is to inform policy making, it is not to make it on the minister's behalf. Attempting to bounce the government into a particular policy through the media is a sure way to find yourself out of a job.
The problem with the proposal is that the costs of deploying the necessary infrastructure are vast. Each car would require a certified GPS system that could not possibly be installed for less than #200. The system would have to be certified regularly or people would soon start finding ways to circumvent them.
The other problem is the threat to civil liberties which is taken rather more seriously in the UK than the US. In the US there is often the belief that it is not necessary to block legislative attacks on civil liberties because the constitution will provide protection. In the UK the checks and balances are in the parliamentary process alone. It might well be possible to impose the scheme on heavy goods vehicles since they pay far less than their share of taxes and people are willing to support any proposals that will reduce tailgating by them. Meanwhile the government has not forgotten nor forgiven the antics of the lorry drivers who tried to hold the country to ransom with blockades. A GPS system in the cab would discourage attempts to repeat.
The UK government is not going to be allowed to install spies in private cars any more than the US government is going to be allowed to confiscate all firearms.
There is a similar process at work behind the regular proposals to introduce identity cards. The police don't want them, the social security dept does not believe they will reduce fraud. The home office attempts to corner each new Home Secretary into proposing them, usually in response to some terrorist attrocity.
In each case the 'decision' is announced in the press as a fait acompli, it is going to happen and MPs and their constituents have no ability to affect the process. In each case the proposal is squashed in cabinet before legislation is presented. Typically the last home secretary or transport secretary squashes the scheme. If not representations from the back benches cause the plan to be swiftly forgotten.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/