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Automation May Make Toll Roads More Common
bfwebster writes "Here in Denver, we have E-470, a toll section of the 470 beltway, that uses the usual transponder attached to your windshield. Fair enough, and I make use of it, particularly in driving to the airport. But they've just implemented new technology on E-470 that allows anyone to drive through the automated toll gates. If you don't have a transponder, it takes a photo of your license plate and sends a monthly bill to your house. As a result, the company that runs E-470 plans to close all human-staffed toll booths by mid-summer. And as an article in this morning's Rocky Mountain News notes, 'Such a system could be deployed on other roads, including some that motorists now use free. The result: a new source of money for highways and bridges badly in need of repair.' You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned."
...where everyone can be trusted and no one uses false plates to
1) not having to pay
2) just playing a prank to someone.
It will happen the same as with the red light cameras. People will use false license plates or even no plates at all.
Onda Technology Institute
Ontario has been doing this for a decade on highest 407.
This technology was very recently deployed in Ireland. There have been severe problems with it, including both the video and tag system simultaneously billing some customers. Funny thing is a lot of people forget there's a toll there at all any more - there used to be constant protests about the motorway in question.
They have been doing this in Toronto with 407ETR for a long long time. Wonder why it just started in US?
The result: a new source of money for highways and bridges badly in need of repair.' You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned."
Why is this a bad thing? If the users of the road have to pay a little extra to maintain the road they're using, I don't have problem with it. If the money is being poured into some politician's slush fund, sure that's a problem, but reasonable use fees are exactly what's called for her. It sure beats the "selective billing" process of red-light cameras.
seriously.. if I rent a car- I'm going to be back billed later by the agency?
yeah- that's not an issue at all...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
"People still aren't comfortable with tolling,"
People are uncomfortable because of the unknown. Each town may have a different company managing the roads with different costs and fees associated. As a tourist am I hope I don't get 50 different bills in the mail for a nice road trip. Each bill with a $5 administrative fee.
the ability to charge tolls without prepaid accounts or coins.
Hopefully there will still be one lane open for coin/cash transactions.
Makes me glad I only put the required registration tags on my car, and keep my license "plate" in my wallet. Still, if I had mounted it, That's one hell of a camera if it can read that tiny text from a safe distance.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
What is to stop someone from making sets of fake plates with YOUR number on them and running through these toll roads or red lights?
already being done by kids here
I like microcars
First Canadian to post we have had this in Ontario for years now... called the 407.
It's not a bad technology. However here, there is a crazy charge for the photo portion that basically makes it impractical not to have a transponder. Each time you don't have a transponder and get photoed... the charge is like 6 dollars or something. A monthly transponder is 2 dollars. So I just keep a transponder even though I don't use regularly.
The only advice I would give is to make sure the 'toll' period is reasonable. In the 90s recessions, our government signed the highway away to a private company for a 99 year lease. Most other places in the world, it is common to see 10-20 year lease.
Of course isn't this what the gas tax supposed to be for :) Oh the joys of non-dedicated government taxation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ez_pass
same system, 1993
Isn't the purpose of the gasoline tax in the United States to account for the wear an tear that your vehicle causes to the roads? If we start implementing tolling on nearly every major highway, we should start to see a reduction or removal of the gasoline tax. No way in hell should we be paying for something twice.
Warning: Corny karma killing post above.
Toll-booth operators taste just like veal.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
As one other Canadian has noted in this thread, this technology has been deployed around the Toronto area for a while and works quite effectively. However, it's not correct for the author to say that Red Light Cameras are going anywhere soon; Toronto is already pushing to use this system instead. Some basic math can tell you that a driver who makes it between an on-ramp and an off-ramp in less than the maximum legal time it should take to travel that distance is speeding - the Ontario Parliament is already taking steps to use this to bill speeders instead of red light cameras because of the significantly higher volume on the highways as well as the dual usage of billing people for the toll road. It's a great system for raising funds for the repair bill of a road that's used often, but it will start to replace frequently sympathetic traffic cops with a trial-less ticket mailed to your door sooner than you think.
Almost every toll booth in australia is automated. Just recently, the Sydney harbor bridge become completely automated. The biggest problem is that when you don't have an "E-Tag" on your car, the bill gets sent to your house with a $10 or more Administration Fee... So your $3 toll becomes $13 everytime you drive through
Gee, it's nice to see the government is getting busy creating new jobs.
At least it's not nefarious and illegal like red-light cameras. If enough people get annoyed with it, they can petition to have them removed or banned... unlike moving violations, which you can't hold a referendum on.
I rarely drive. Why should I subsidize the people who drive 100 miles a day to commute into the city from their faux-rural home? Toll roads are a great way to pass the cost along to those who benefit from the service. In fact, instead of a blanket tax, it makes sense to bill people for their annyal road use (assuming a perfect world with tamper-proof odometers, of course). It would encourage people to drive less and drive home the true cost of public infrastructure. We live in a strange political bubble where universal medicare is viewed as dangerously "socialist" (somehow invoking fears of dictators waving red flags), whereas multi-billion dollar tax funded road networks are seen as a panacea. Bloody odd.
You obviously don't live in capitalist america, it's not about jobs - it's about market efficiency.
This is old tech. It's been in place in Toronto, Ontario for ages and is used for the express highway. You can take the normal highway, or you can rent a transceiver and use the express. If you don't have a transceiver, cameras will snap your license plate and you will be billed at a higher rate.
I've read the above article and then the German highway toll system come in my mind. It works in a similar way. However, it is only used for trucks right now, but the system can do more. First, all trucks need a special computer unit built-in for booking. However, because not all trucks have such system and of course to check if everything was booked in the right way, they installed cameras on mostly every on and off ramp. These cameras read license plates and detect if the vehicle is really a truck or a normal car. They also detect if the truck has one or more trailers, because more trailer cost you more money. The company running the toll system, also sells tracking information to companies and they can detect traffic jams. Theoretical they could also offer traffic jam prediction, but I am not sure if this would be legal. Also it is possible to calculate the average speed of vehicles. And I guess it is only a question of time that the state realizes this feature and uses it instead of speed traps. Also, the German minister of the interior, Mr. Schaeuble, (he reminds me sometimes of Dr. Strangelove) already thought about using the tracking data of this highway system to track people movements to capture terrorists of course. Luckily this idea was dismissed of other ministers so no total road observation right now.
This needs to be taken to the next level.
Monochrome LCD display; Instantly display any number you like with a few key stokes.
Bonus points if it runs linux.
All roads in the U.S. and Canada are toll roads. You pay the toll at the gasoline pump through the ~70 cent per gallon tax. As it should be. If you're going to make use of government-paved roads, it makes sense to pay for that usage. Places with "extra" tolls are typically high-expense areas like tunnels & bridges where the gasoline toll is not enough to cover costs.
Alternatively you could get a horse-and-buggy and pay nothing, like my Amish neighbors do. ;-)
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
Wont having RFID tags on the license plates make it much easier? It could complement photographing of license plates.
I have an EZPass (the east coast automated tag thing on my car). I go to school in Washington, DC, and I live in South Jersey. When I drive, I don't notice the total cost of the tolls, and I think it's because of tag. I asked a friend to pick me up at a train station near the end of the MARC (Maryland's train system) line, and I ended up costing him $13 that he paid out of his wallet, and that's just on the way back from the train. I paid him back, but I didn't realize how many tolls there are on I95.
As far as the idea of turning roads into toll systems, I'd prefer the tags. They're a bit more anonymous than a license plate, which could easily be traced by DMV records. I know many people who own one or two tags and just put it in whatever car they're taking for a long trip. My big worry is the day that the politicians realize you can use these things to track how fast people are driving by comparing the time into the system to the time out with the distance driven. I did read an interesting article the other day about an economist proposing we solve our traffic congestion and road funding problems by implementing a dynamic tolls system on all the major highways. A busy road would have a higher toll than a less crowded road, encouraging people to take the cheaper route, and at the same time, providing funds for the highway system. Usually in my travels between DC and home, or between home and my friends in Delaware, I take either 295, a bit longer of a drive, but less crowded, or the New Jersey Turnpike, which has an exit that is a few miles closer to home, which is more direct but seems to be more crowded when I drive it. With some well placed electronic signs, I could tell which route will have more traffic, and the state would make money on both routes, not just the turnpike.
This is a total non-issue.
First, making it stick will be practically impossible. If they have the plate, a car that matches your model (down to the year, since there will be differences), AND you have no alibi, then maybe a judge will make you pay.
Second, there are solutions to this, such as increasing the penalties for having fake plates on a car or photographing the driver to increase the likelihood counterfeiters are caught.
Third, toll booths already snap a picture of your car if you run the booth resulting in a bigger fine than just paying the toll. (So this method of payment will actually cost you LESS money if someone fakes your plate.)
Fourth, they would have to run through the toll many, many times to make you pay a significant amount, each time risking the consequences and each time providing you with an opportunity to present an alibi.
Making every single person slow down and just about stop on the highway is completely idiotic. Here's how Wisconsin does it, since toll boths are illegal here. We charge an extra high tax on the gasoline that's sold everywhere in the state. So there you go, the more you use the roads, the more you pay for them to be repaired. And compared to other states, we have really nice, well upkept roads so I guess it works, doesn't it?
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I completely support this technology. Right now, you pay for roads whether you drive on them or not, through your taxes. If the every road could be made a toll road, then the people who drove on the roads would pay for them, and people who take public transportation or choose not to own a car wouldn't pay. Even if you drive a lot, there are possible advantages. The road operator has an incentive to keep the roadway in good condition and clear of congestion, since they maximize tolls when the roads are free flowing and accident clear. Also, there would be fewer cars on the road since there's a disincentive to take unnecessary trips - you don't want to pay the toll. So your commute time would almost certainly go down in this scenario, and I imagine that if you are spending an hour in the car to get to work now, and that drops to 45 minutes, the time saved would be worth more than the toll. Overall, automated tolls would result in LESS driving and LESS congestion, which seems like a good thing.
That I already pay taxes to maintain the roads. I pay a federal tax on gasoline, which is supposed to be used to maintain the interstate highway system.
I find it kind of unsettling that after taking my tax dollars to build and maintain their highways, certain states believe they can now charge an extra fee simply because the road passes through their state. If they can send me a bill for driving on a highway built with my tax dollars, perhaps I should be allowed to send them an invoice for reimbursement of the fuel taxes I paid while in their state.
The idea behind having federal funding of roads is that you create a system of roads by which everyone is allowed to travel, free of charge. If individual states want to get into the toll-road business, we're going to end up like we were in the 30's and 40's, where there was no consistency in road quality and signage from one state to the next.
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There's no way to pay manually. Sections that are toll aren't well marked. Cost isn't clearly defined and changes as a function of time and/or traffic density. So when turning in the rental car there's no way to determine the charges for tolls.
Months after the trip I got a bill from the car rental agency: cost of tolls + several taxes + surcharge by the car rental agency + a billing fee.
Can you tell I'm not a fan of this technology?! Car rental agency added costs were more than twice the cost of tolls.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
I went through one of these in Texas awhile back.
The toll was something like 50 cents.
They tacked on a dollar for a mailing fee because I didn't have a transponder. This is on top of charging more per mile if you don't use the transponder.
I called and they waived the fee as a courtesy but it was still a waste of my time. I should've taken the free road.
Eventually, it will start at the end of your driveway, and continue to wherever you're going. Too many tolls now. I finally canned the idea of going to Atlantic City this weekend because... not the price of the motels... and not the price of what I might lose at poker... but because of about $38 or so, if I remember right, for the tolls to get there. Bridges, tunnels, turnpikes - it all adds up. Screw it. Stay here and chop some weeds, go shopping, haul stuff that's taking up too much room to the Goodwill store.
Figure that will be one way to sell it. Hello carbon tax.
Yes it is not reasonable to you or me, however there are many who would like nothing more to "punish" people who drive cars, after all only the rich or those who don't care if they are destroying the planet will drive cars. Honestly this is how it will come to pass. We have toll roads that were supposed to expire (ga400) when they paid off, guess what, ain't happened and won't ever happen.
Once a government gets a tax in it will take a change of government to remove it. I seriously doubt it will be republican or democrats that will help us.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Instead of having politicians fight over which bridge to nowhere to build from tax dollars collected thousands of miles away, infrastructure gets paid for by the people who actually use it.
Sounds good to me. I hope it gets as widely deployed as possible.
That's exactly what's been done in London for nearly 6 years - the congestion charge for driving through London is completely automated - no toll gates, no transponders or RFID, just camera based license plate scanning. I expect you'll be seeing this everywhere - a hell of a lot easier than having to carry cash to pay tolls.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/roadusers/congestioncharging/6718.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_congestion_charge
New Jersey is considering such a system for the Atlantic City Expressway
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I live in Austin. We recently got some new toll roads. The money for them was already allocated, but city counsel approved the decision to make them toll roads anyway. Then I learned that the company that has the maintenance/operating contract, Cintra, is a Spanish company. So we're not only paying for these roads twice, the profit leaves Texas. I'm boycotting the new toll roads, I hope the choke on them. I'm not opposed to toll roads in general. I recognize that the money for road maintenance needs to come from somewhere, but Austin is an example of the worst way to go about it.
-Chris (aka Lenwood)
In the middle age every road or bridge had a toll, and it is considered by many historians the one thing the kept their economy in the gutters. It was just too expensive to ship anything anywhere ! Think that France had extensive forests, but Louis XIV couldn't carry its wood from the center to the shore at affordable prices because of all the tolls. So the wood used in warship construction was purchased in Spain ! Well, the flip side of the coin is that France still has plenty of forest while Spain is mostly a desert since that time. The main roman advance is the construction of roads. Not the construction of tolls ! It kept the empire in one piece for half a millennium.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
What is to stop someone from making sets of fake plates with YOUR number on them and running through these toll roads or red lights?
Sooner or later, transponders will simply get integrated into license plates, and those will be a lot harder to clone.
Just make sure you take your plates when buying a new car.
What if someone takes your plates during the night and ran through several toll booth before you notice your plates gone.
There was an article out of Houston, TX where someone was running through the toll booths for 6 months and never paid. The bill was sent an elderly women in Austin,TX. The elderly woman sold the car with the plates and someone else bought the car with the plates. Some how it was never got updated in the system and took months to get it corrected.
Just one example.
So, I foresee problems.
Why can't all ETC systems link up with ez-pass? so you don't have to have 2-3 transponders and accounts so you don't have to pay the higher non transponder rate?
I can use my I-pass on all EZ-pass systems and get the lower transponder rates so Why Must I also get a sun-pass, TxTAGnetwork, C-Pass, Cruise card, EXpressToll, Fastrak, Good To Go!, K-Tag, MnPass, PalmettoPass, Pikepass, and Tolltag to use all toll systems in the us.
Is tolls at the RI/MA borders of I-95 and I-195. This isn't going to fly since a good chunk of the RI population drives back and forth on those highways into MA every day for work. And I'd be likely to replace my license plates with a LED display that changes the plate numbers on the fly. Wouldn't that be fun.
I just got back from Atlantic city and the last time I went, I didn't have EZPass and I got so annoyed at stopping EVERY 5-10 MINUTES to pay another freakin' 50 cent toll!!!! This time I had EZPass and although I didn't usually have to stop, each toll plaza I thought - can't they just charge me $10 at the start and be done with it? What is the percentage of "take" NJ ends up with after paying for all the electronics, toll booths (they still have TONS of manned booths), salaries, benefits, overtime, etc that they have to pay? I'll bet it's less than 50% of what they bring in? NJ toll system is the most pathetic I've ever seen.
BTW-I have absolutely no idea how much the tolls cost me since I won't see the bill until next month. I guess this is part of their plan!
The law, I'd imagine.
Fourth, they would have to run through the toll many, many times to make you pay a significant amount, each time risking the consequences and each time providing you with an opportunity to present an alibi.
It's not enough to present an alibi on your own whereabouts, you have to have an alibi on your car's whereabouts.
Otherwise, law enforcement will just say, sure you were at a friend's house, but you probably lent your car to someone....
Sooner or later, transponders will simply get integrated into license plates, and those will be a lot harder to clone.
This will encourage a new crime, called stealing someone else's legitimate license plate.
And replacing the victim's legitimate license plate with a legitimate-looking fake one, unbeknownst to the victim.
4) Quite a few of the companies running such systems are run by European companies that take all the profits back home rather than reinvesting in this country.
While I agree with the rest of your post, why is point 4) a bad things ? Shall we now boycott all US company in Europe on the ground that they bring the money back in the US, instead of Europe ? Don't you think it is a rather dumb argument , especially knowing how mostly bad can be protectionism in some case ? Because sooner or later it falls down in a tit-for-tat fight.
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Tolls are better than gasoline taxes since you can have flexible pricing for road usage depending on the time of the day or other criteria. Making people pay more in the rush hours will reduce congestion dramatically and as economics tells us will ensure that the roads are employed in the most efficient way. One can also argue that current system is unfair since people who don't use highways or some other expensive roads are paying for those who do. So why not reduce (abolish?) gasoline taxes in favor of tolls? These stories with kids printing license plates seem to be an extremely rare exception, moreover as far as I know, here in Germany they get your face visible on the photo as otherwise you could argue you rented your car to your neighbour who broke the speed limit so he should pay.
I didn't realize that Texas had the ability to elect the President of the US all by itself.
Sooner or later, transponders will simply get integrated into license plates, and those will be a lot harder to clone.
Like the tags in passports have?
I don't read AC A human right
I'm an old fart. Knowing my car is going to be tracked gives me the willies, just as knowing the NSA is reading all my emails and IMs, listening to all my phone calls, and watching all my web surfing.
But look. It can't be prevented. Cameras are getting to be so small and cheap, and computing power is so ubiquitous, that it won't be long, a decade or two at the most, before 90% of the population has a full time camera as their collar button, broadcasting to a public server and archived for posterity, and every bozo that wants to will be able to see anything desired.
I am serious about this. It cannot be stopped.
But rather than gripe about something that cannot be stopped, I think about the consequences, and I tell you what, I think it will end up in greater freedom. Let's take this to an extreme. Suppose they can issue automatic speeding tickets to every car which passes cameras too quickly. They'll be issuing speeding tickets to half the cars out there. This obviously can't be handled the same as now -- they'd be suspending every driver within days or weeks.
They will have to come up with an alternative, which I guess to be raising speed limits to something reasonable such that much less than 1% of licenses are suspended every year, and speeding will turn into minor revenue sources -- you want to get somewhere faster? Pay a buck or two more, or $5 more, and no points, no fines, no problem.
Or consider the privacy problem. I sure don't like knowing I will be tracked everywhere I go. But consider what happens when everyone is tracked by everyone's cameras. It will apply to **everyone**, including the rich and famous, not just ordinary blokes. The billions of publicly available fully archived webcams will quickly outnumber politically controlled government cameras.
Remember, there will be public broadcasts of billions of webcams, nice high resolution ones, with plenty of archival storage. Want to know who met with your local politician just before that vote change to help a huge contractor? Programs will abound which will search archives for specific individuals or cars, or just go to the politician's and contractor's houses, go back thru the archive til you find them, follow them backwards -- when they disappear off one webcam, there will be dozens or hundreds already picking up the trail.
Just as the gun equalized "might makes right", eliminating the advantage of lots of idle time for sword practice which peasants didn't have, this ubiquitous surveillance will equalize anonymity. Ordinary people don't have much of it now; the rich and powerful do. In a decade or two, they won't have it either.
When there are billions of webcams to choose from for your own idle pleasure or to target your computer search programs on, who would you rather see -- your neighbors who you already see all day, or Donald Trump? The rich and powerful have far more to lose than ordinary folk.
We will *ALL* live in a small town where nobody can hide anything. I relish that thought and think it a damned fine tradeoff for loss of privacy.
Infuriate left and right
Problem is, when you have everything automated the only people with money to pay the tolls will be the owners. Of course, maybe that's the point. I mean who wants all that traffic congestion? In fact, who wants all that population?
Seastead this.
Why divert tax money being used to secure political power for infrastructure when you can simply find a new avenue to tax? Behold your government, Sheeple!
This will encourage a new crime, called stealing someone else's legitimate license plate.
And replacing the victim's legitimate license plate with a legitimate-looking fake one, unbeknownst to the victim.
Yes, yes, and then people will start making masks that look like your face and robbing banks with them. And they'll steal some loose hairs from your keyboard at work, Gattaca-style, and plant those at the scene. And they'll replace all your friends and relatives with body-doubles who will lie about your whereabouts on that day.
Just look at how well that went with the Big Dig compared to, oh -let's pick something that cost about the same, the Chunnel.
As a Midwesterner, I loath traditional toll roads for the high level of moronicity stopping and going entails. True, these automated systems modify the equation some but I still think our roads are part of the commons. Part of the "change" I would look forward to is a return to _less_ contractor influence and a little more sanity that we all have to pay for the various infrastructure we individually use now and then. Which is to say I oppose anything that makes toll roads seem less annoying at _first_ glance.
The current issue of "Reason" magazine's cover story goes over this, toll roads and parking, among other approaches to traffic congestion.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Initially the E470 toll road was envisioned as a loop around the entire Denver metro area, allowing easy access for people in the suburbs to the airport, the Denver tech center south of town, and the interstate roads toward the ski resorts. By bypassing all that traffic around downtown, they would ease congestion significantly, especially during the winter months.
Unfortunately the residents of Golden, an upscale suburb slightly off the beaten path west of Denver, didn't like the idea of the plebians being able to access their town without having to jump through hoops to get there. They torpedoed the completion of the loop to keep the rabble out of their isolated, upscale community. The result of this is that any skiers coming from the heavily populated areas north of Denver are routed through the center of the city on their way to the slopes, causing congestion and traffic misery for both the tourists and residents.
Meanwhile, not content to make up for massively cutting their operating budget by no longer having any toll collectors, thus slashing their payroll and ongoing operating costs to a bare minimum, the governing body of E470 implemented a toll raise to pay for the new automated technology that will save them millions yearly.
Now that they've put people out of work, hopefully greed for the lost revenue in skier tolls they're missing out on every year will drive the owners of E470 to use that extra money to lobby various legislative bodies that will mandate the completion of the loop.
The residents of Golden delayed the rollout of HDTV in Denver for years by blocking the construction of upgraded antennae, until finally it required a federal mandate to push things through. Let's hope that the E470 governing body's lust for capital is enough to trump the isolationists in Golden.
Sometimes the only way to beat nakedly greedy, corrupt elitists is to sic other nakedly greedy, corrupt elitists on them.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
The OP fails to mention some things about the C470/NW Parkway here in Denver
It's pretty much the most expensive per-mile toll road in the country. And they keep raising the rates on it every 6 months.
I could save about 5 - 8 minutes out of my 35 min commute if I used it. However, that would cost me $120 per month. $3 for 8 miles of road (each way) in my case. And that's *one* toll booth.
And the reason those 8 miles would save me that much time is that no one uses the thing because of the ever-increasing tolls.
I am being completely serious when I say that at 5pm (rush hour) on the northern 1/4 of the toll road, you would be hard pressed to encounter more than 6 - 7 other cars while on it. Meanwhile, the surface roads that run near it are packed with cars.
And don't get me started about how the toll road always seems to be plowed when it snows while the surface streets aren't.
It's not that I can't afford $120/mo ... I just refuse. It's the principle of the thing. I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes. Cut my taxes by $120/mo and I'll gladly pay for that road rather than the ones I'm using now.
hat is the first lesson the homeless learn.
Only some homeless. However some homeless know how useful a car is. I used to know some people who lived in their cars. And having the transportation can make it easier to find and get a job.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It's already in use by people pissed off at others - fake license plates attached to your car (usually with someone you hate's license plate numbers and tags), covering their plates, then run red lights, speed through intersections, etc...
Now it will be used to avoid tolls...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
Well, in socialist Russia, there were thousands of utterly useless jobs, were you were paid to do nothing or make up for piss-poor planning and engineering of someone else.
Jobs are not a measure of wealth, efficiency is.
Hiring warm bodies just to keep them from rioting is, well, dumb. Equally dumb as welfare, paying people for doing nothing, but that's another question. But Europe does, so just watch what happens in the next three years.
What is to stop someone from making sets of fake plates with YOUR number on them and running through these toll roads or red lights?
already being done by kids here
That's a problem with operation not the tech. The article you link to even says that: "The private companies that mail out the tickets often do not bother to verify whether vehicle registration information for the accused vehicle matches the photographed vehicle."
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Here in Ontario, Canada there is a highway called the 407 Express Toll Route (ETR) which bypasses most of the awful Toronto traffic on highway 401.
It's been taking pictures and billing you via mail for 10 years and works quite well. The tolls are fairly reasonable for the convenience and you can pay monthly if you use it often (for commuting etc.). And every year, supposedly due to profit from the tolls, it expands a little farther east and west.
Believe it or not, unlike the US, there aren't many toll highways up here.
I say don't drink and drive, you might spill your drink. Before you get behind the wheel just stop and think.
Simple. Money.
They each want their cut, and EZ-Piss doesnt want to give them as much as they want. And it's a monopoly, so they dont need to do anything else other than get paid in lucrative contracts for sitting around twiddling their thumbs.
I'm completely ok with toll access - it targets the people using the project. But if there are tolls there should be lower taxes.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Would you seriously prefer that the poor people of your country start looting and ruining your country? It's much wiser to keep people occupied than to have people starving and rioting. On that same note, welfare should be replaced with the WPA again - but that is indeed a different topic.
I just wanted to say that.
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
Flordia legislators pulled this scam years ago with the lottery. They sold it on the basis that the revenues collected would go to education. What they failed to mention was that they'd reduce other monies going to education. Net result, schools in Florida benefited not at all, while the Florida legislature got more dollars to piss away however they wished.
Yea, I recall that. I was in student government in college when the lottery was being debated. At first I supported it, until I read the whole thing and saw at the end that educational funding may not increase. I then opposed the amendment, and pointed out to a bunch of people what was wrong with it. Mind you I wasn't against the lottery, I think gambling should be legal, just that it was being billed as additional funding for education which it was not.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Heh. I've only lived here in Denver (down in Parker, actually) for about 3 1/2 years, and I've always wondered why 470 isn't a closed loop like most beltways. Thanks for the information. ..bruce..
Bruce F. Webster (brucefwebster.com)
The privacy thing is easy to fix, provided you don't rely on cameras all over the place (end even then it can be taken care of). What you need instead, is that the data of where a car has been never gets into the hands of anyone, while it is still being taken into account for cost calculations.
One way to do this, is to do the entire calculation in the car, and only transmit the accumulated cost, but this requires an in-car device that can do map matching. If those are considered too expensive, there are alternative solutions in which the map matching is done in a central data centre, while still guaranteeing that nobody can use the data to track Mr. or Mrs. Doe wherever (s)he goes. This too can be done.
PS: You do realise that if you use a cell phone, the phone company can track you on a permanent basis? Without this, they'd never be able to route calls to you.
Linux user since early January 1992.
Sooner or later, transponders will simply get integrated into license plates, and those will be a lot harder to clone.
This will encourage a new crime, called stealing someone else's legitimate license plate.
And replacing the victim's legitimate license plate with a legitimate-looking fake one, unbeknownst to the victim.
My brother had a sort of somewhat similar problem when he lived on the edge of Detroit (and had a car, and had a job, but that's another story). People would keep stealing the sticker on his license plate (the one that indicates he's paid his licensing fees for that year). Eventually a cop told him to score it with a razor blade, enough so that it couldn't be removed easily but not enough so that it wasn't visible.
Anyway, I would be surprised if people did anything but steal the license plate (although I could see them yanking the transponder mechanism and leaving the license plate if the implementation leaves that as a possibility). A replacement license plate is too much work for most of these things.
Making masks that convincingly look like someone else's face is pretty far-fetched.
Anyone with a screwdriver in a parking lot can snag license plates off random cards, and hang a fake plate (to divert owner suspicion).
The numbers don't even have to match, not like everyone memorizes their plate numbers.
You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned.
Jeez, first they try to punish red light runners, then wantpeople to pay for the roads they drive on. It's socialism!
Dunno, why don't you ask the dozens of countries which use a system for toll roads, congestion charges, speed camera fines etc? Perhaps you could enquire why the system hasn't collapsed through the use of false plates.
Oh wait, I forgot, 'US Exceptionalism'. Who cares if it works everywhere else, it will automatically fail in the richest country in the world. See: universal health care.
Right, because your friend can establish an alibi for you, but can't say that your car was there.
The fact is, this system has already been in place in many places and yet this "problem" hasn't occured.
Introduction of "random checks" near the tollbooths that prove to have a significant enough number of "bounced" toll charges.
They have a photo of the car, driver and the license plate that "bounced" - they know who to stop.
So, you either end up in some serious trouble for driving a car with fake license plates OR you don't get caught that time (cause you were not using them at the time) but you NEVER get the bright idea do that again.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Probably that would fit 90% of cases.
But the thief might think giving the rightful owner the decoy plate would delay detection and reduce their probability of being caught before they had made a week or two's use of the plate and discarded it -- by attaching the plate to yet another person's car, or just chunking it.
I suppose outright manufacturing fake plates could be costly, more costly than the tolls they'd avoid, but there might be other reasons like evading tracking (while the criminal was committing other bad acts).
... that was a typical, ill-conceived response. You have failed to understand the way the interstate system works.
Having worked in an engineering firm for some years, I can tell you that "interstate" almost never means what it says (I-45 only goes from Galveston to Dallas - at which point it becomes I-35/US-75 and splits off towards Oklahoma. Go figure). Also, major metropolitan areas are generally in control of the sections of interstate running through their respective jurisdictions. They receive little federal funding (if any) directly and instead rely on the state's highway budget.
As a result, the cities involved have total right to make those sections of freeway toll roads. They must fund their on repairs and maintenance and are given the leeway necessary to do that.
Next time you decide to make a retarded comment like that, think it through.
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
Because of course as soon as they bill you and find out you don't exist then they have a description of the car.
In fact it would be much better than that for them. First of all the toll system can look you up RIGHT AWAY, and if the camera is smart enough to determine make, model, and color of car, then surely a mismatch comes up or the plate doesn't exist at all, and 5 miles down the road you're pulled over.
And the fine for a fake plate, well it probably isn't pretty. It sure is a lot more serious than a speeding ticket. I'd be quite willing to bet that it costs more than the toll x1000.
Even if they only figure it out a week later they still know what the car looks like.
Now couple this with extra cameras the fact that it is getting pretty easy to track individual vehicles in real time and I don't think too many people would get away with it for long. They only have to EVENTUALLY bust 1% of the offenders to make it not worth doing. Especially if you get a 90 suspension or something.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Clearly understands that government has never dropped a tax or fee - they just keep adding new ones.
Because cloning RFIDs is so terribly, terribly difficult *cough*
Check out my sysadmin blog!
I think it is sufficient to show the judge that you drive a Hummer but the picture is of a Miata. The only way you're screwed is if it actually was your car, or at least the same model.
If tolls pay for the roads. There are an abundance of reasons why it makes much more sense to pay for roads with tolls.
It would end the massive subsidization of the trucking industry, which is WAY less efficient at transporting goods than rail/intermodal transport. If the truckers had to actually PAY the full cost (and pass it on to their customers) that would internalize this cost. The result would be lower prices AND lower taxes for the average person.
Why SHOULD I have to pay (and I do, the gas taxes only pay a fraction of road costs) out of my general tax dollar which is now recaptured by businesses getting subsidized delivery of goods? Especially if I only drive say 3000 miles a year and someone else drives 4x that much? Let them pay for all that extra driving they do.
It would certainly encourage the use of mass transit.
Once vehicles get a lot more efficient, or electric, then how is the gas tax going to work? It won't. OK, we could tack the cost onto the price of a vehicle, but that's bad because now it has to be paid up front, which means you have to borrow the money when you buy the car. Plus again people that drive less are getting ripped off.
Tolls SHOULD be the way roads are paid for. Make the user of the service pay for the service. This is what free market economics is all about.
As for all the objections related to 'well they'll just put the money in a slush fund', that's dumb. Corrupt is corrupt. Why would it matter what the source of the revenue is? That's a problem on the SPENDING side, not the collecting side.
I can see SOME argument when it comes to minor surface roads in that there are externalized benefits as well as costs. Emergency services need to be able to use those roads, etc, but the argument still ultimately stands. If the fire dept needs to get everywhere, then allocate that cost to the fire dept! The externalized benefits are then ultimately shifted back to the general revenue and we end up with a much better allocation of costs.
I see NO ultimate downside, except if you live way out in the middle of nowhere you are going to have a problem, but that's only because right now people out in the middle of nowhere pay nowhere near the cost to society of them living there! Its their choice. If its too expensive to live out there, then you can move into town.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
New York City was planning something like this, except they weren't going to bother sending bills. They expected people to keep track of how often they drive downtown themselves and send in their payments. Seemed mostly like a plan guaranteed to rake in a lot of money in fines for people who forgot to pay or calculated their toll wrong.
people that can actually think their way out of a paper bag. Excellently put.
There is of course tons more that could be said on the topic, but you basically hit the nail right square on the head.
Privace IS ALREADY DEAD people. Get used to it. Make the best of it. Fighting it is a loosing proposition.
"Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem." -- Jefferson
Come on... you know the answer to this. You can also steal from vending machines if nobody is around. Is that morally questionable? Yes. Is it worth it? No.
I am sure some of the gates will have, some of the time, officers waiting to scramble after a vehicle that fails the plate check or the machine is unable to read it. They will tail after you, run your plates manually, and if fake / obscured / removed, then $500 ticket or arrest if outstanding warrants, etc.
I would love this system if the savings from not having to pay toll operators $100k / yr in wages+benefits were passed on to the consumer. But, I doubt rates will go down at all.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
Such as these products to "beat" the traffic cameras.
Photo Blocker
Photo Shield
This will be a poorly implemented system and once they realize how many people are driving for free on the road we will be back to having attendants at the booths.
If I can not smoke in heaven, then I shall not go. -- Mark Twain
No method is going to be completely fair, but a flat tax is going to be the only effective method after electric vehicles come about and you can get your fuel from anywhere. It's a better option than trying to bill everyone for every mile they travel.
You may but I don't think a flat tax is a better option. Because the more you drive the more roads and road maintenance is needed taxing by the mile is better.
But if you drive a fairly small amount, you probably live in the city
I don't drive much because I'm disabled and don't work. Even when I did work though I tried to plan my driving so I didn't have to drive as much, and I love driving.
and not the suburbs or a rural area
I used to live in the suburbs and didn't drive much then either. Actually I drove more after I moved near downtown. Everyplace I went to was further away.
and could use a car share or car rental for the times you need to drive
While I like the idea of car sharing I don't know when I'll be going somewhere. Or how long I'll be gone. I love the freedom of being able to jump in my car, go wherever, and take as long as I want. I am willing to pay a little more for fuel tax to keep that freedom.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
These things are inevitable. Ubiquitous *civilian* surveillance is unstoppable, but you, by the government, by lawsuits, utterly and irrevocably unstoppable. It matters not a whit what you or I or anyone else thinks about it personally. Read up on King Canute for further details on the usefulness of trying to stop it.
Infuriate left and right
It has already been done.
http://www.thenewspaper.com/news/26/2632.asp
Just wanted to mention that this camera-based automation exists since 2002 in Israel in Highway no. 6.
Hugs.
hemi
Sending bills by snail mail to a house is not safe, as in case of absence, the snail mail accumulates in the mailbox well indicating that the house is not occupied.
This system came from 50s when people did not lock the houses and did not care about personal security. But now it is the main breach in personal security.
Tell the mailman to suspend the snail mail delivery? To a mailman with a petty salary and a lot of pals in the neighborhood? It is even more unsafe.
Ummm, why would I want to be warned about this? Shouldn't I be excited?
As it stands today, we tax license plates, gasoline, and we have federal highway funds. Each of those makes sense as a component of the funding, but so do usage fees.
When my car sits in my garage, it has very little cost to society. I drive about 2,000 miles a year, yet I pay the same license tax as someone who drives a similar car 15,000 miles each year.
Road use taxes make sense - they couple the consumption of public resources (roads and bridges) with a maintenance fee. Roads are a good public resource, and should be partially funded by society as a whole because of the positive externality of having a sound transportation system. But they also confer asymmetric benefit on some members of society -- those who use the resource most heavily -- and so should be partially funded by those users. It is an excellent example case for hybrid funding - part free market (use fees and gasoline taxes), part community funded (license fees), part society funded (federal highway funds).
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
in Chicago you can go at speed (whatever your speed is!) through the iPass (that's what we call it...) because it is 2-4 lanes separated from the actual booths.
I was told by a somewhat reliable source who is an anorak about this stuff that they have been tested up to 110mph and still work fine.
I like microcars
and what happens if/when Electric Cars end up working out?
Lets throw that into the mix
They won't be paying any gasoline tax, they will have to find some other way to get a revenue stream from all the vehicles using the road and this would appear to be a step in the direction of solving that "problem".
I like microcars
and my new "Electric Car"!
~~~rip! *opens Utility Bill...
hey! what's this new line item on my Electric Bill?!
I like microcars
>>>Next time you decide to make a retarded comment like that, think it through.
Okay. Think. Think. Think. Nothing you said contradicts anything I said. Various interstates have been toll roads for decades. I-76 through Pennsylvania has been a toll road since before interstates even existed.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
London (UK) has had the congestion charge for a few years now. It effectively makes an entire portion of the city a toll road. Your number is tagged when you enter the zone and it's up to you to pay by 10pm that night. You get no warning, no "monthly bill". If you don't pay - you get a fine. Multiple entries in the same day count as one and not all vehicles are liable (which is one reason I drive a motorbike). We also have a number of toll bridges and roads around the UK - not that any use number-plate monitoring (yet). Everyone who pays the congestion charge, pays fuels and road duty as well. Don't expect the government to drop road tax because of a toll.
Seems our friends in Denver, having given us the clamp - are just catching up on some of our ideas.
The 407 Express Toll Route in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, hasn't had a toll booth since it opened to the public in 1997. They've used transponders and licence plate photographs instead.
You can read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/407_ETR, including all the issues around billing and such.
Neil
The fuel tax is not high enough to pay for the roads.
Even if taxes per gallon of fuel haven't risen significantly, it doesn't mean the tax is particularly low, $0.05/gallon is no small amount,
It is too low if it does not pay for the roads. You use the road you pay for it.
The number of cars, and amount of gasoline consumed has dramatically increased over the years, so tax revenues would naturally rise.
First, though the number of vehicles has increased the number of miles driven has decreased. And even if fuel tax revenue has increased it hasn't increased as much as building and maintaining those roads go up faster.
There would be some needs for increased maintenance of federal roads, but such costs don't necessarily increase proportionally with the number of gallons of gas consumed.
There would be some needs for increased maintenance of federal roads, but such costs don't necessarily increase proportionally with the number of gallons of gas consumed.
But the costs go up with mileage. As I've said elsewhere when someone renews their license plate tags their odometer is read to see how many miles they drive and they are taxed on that.
Toll roads haven't been used in the past, and yet states and cities have still gotten the road work they need done somehow.
Toll roads have most certainly been used. I was on toll roads back in the 1970s. Here's an article from the "New York Times" dated 25 Aug 1918: " ABANDON OLD TOLL ROADS.; Lancaster Turnpike Purchase Frees Pennsylvania of Last Section."
Fuel taxes are not that low, and the tax revenue is enormous, so of course the tax payers are already paying for their road maintenance...
As I said above if they are not high enough to pay for the roads then they are too low. Even the free market institute Reason says "federal gas tax revenues are failing". They want to totally replace the fuel tax with a mileage charge, which I say above should be used.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
It should be pretty easy to pay for roads, tax mileage.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
We already have that, we pay for them via our taxes.
Both via gas taxes and the taxes we pay to get our cars licensed.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Stop acting like society owes you something- civilization is paid for in tax dollars.
More like it's those who tax who are greedy.
you wouldn't be earning anything if it wasn't for the government around you protecting your interests and your rights.
You can protect people and still collect less in taxes. Look at how much these wars like the "War on Drugs" and the "War on Terror" are costing. The US has the highest prison population, and about half of them are there because of the fake War on Drugs. Instead of these people working and paying taxes they are locked up raising government costs. Then there are all of the governmental agencies, authorities, bureaus, offices and others that are not constitutionally authorized. Release those prisoners and get rid of all those things and tax can be cut and government would still be able to protect people.
If anything, the idea of adding tolls is really no different than a gas tax- it taxes usage, so if you have a problem with it don't use those roads as much! Take a train, ride the bus, carpool!
On that I agree. That's exactly how it should be, use user fees to pay for roads. And all other forms of transportation.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Do it like they do in France. The regular roads are "meh", they are drivable, but it's always a bit congested and just a bit back on maintenance. However, the toll roads are quite expensive, but are really the best roads in Europe that I've seen. (Revenues from toll's are only spent on toll roads and vice-versa for road tax) Really good tarmac (National speed limit is 130 KM/h, but I'd say it's safe to drive around 200 KM/h over there if everybody would do that), pretty much levelled roads (they cut through small hills and such). So you either drive on the meh road, or drive on the "premium" toll road. Of course, being from the Netherlands, I rarely use my car. Public transportation is pretty good around here. Buses and trains are clean and drive pretty much on schedule while as the roads are congested to bits in the commute times (8-10 am and 5-7 pm). Also the high tax rates on fuel (I think 65% of what we pay at the pump is tax now) doesn't encourage lots of driving either.
This isn't capitalist, it's corporate welfare.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
They also scan for unpaid tickets, outstanding warrants, expired insurance, etc.
What a goldmine for local municipalities!
I fail to see why toll roads are a bad thing. The license plate photo idea has privacy and authentication concerns, but the economic case is rock solid.
I drive and I have driven on toll roads. Drivers, including myself, need to pay their way, that means as roads (supply) stay static, and demand (drivers) increase, prices to use those roads should go up high enough to either encourage more supply (infrastructure investment and/or private roads) and discourage demand (people realizing that cars suck).
There is a planned parking change in my city to have variable parking pricing. The price will continue to go up, until 15% of spaces are free at any given time. I think it's fabulous and should be applied to all drivers as some sort of traffic/congestion fee. Based on size of vehicle and continually jacked up until traffic decreases to your city's target level.
Everytime I've driving a toll road it's been a pleasure, as the high price kept traffic down and it was immaculately maintained. I would prefer to see all roads toll roads, it would be the fastest way to:
- reducing / eliminating traffic deaths
- reducing pollution
- eliminating congestion
- eliminating noise pollution
- eliminating road rage
- increase health/exercise
Roads, bridges, etc. need to be paid for. There is no way around this. I'd much prefer these projects to be financed primarily by the people who use them most. Of course, we all should chip in something, to have them available for emergency services, etc. but the heavy drivers and commuters that are destroying the environment should pay the bulk of the cost for the maintenance of these roads.
Relying on Wikipedia for the dates to save my overtaxed head, we've had no-booth tolling in Melbourne (Australia, not Florida) since CityLink was opened: "The decision to use only electronic toll collection was made in 1992, when there was no real field experience in the field. The first of the sections opened to traffic in August 1999, with tolling commencing on January 3, 2000".
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
...has every vehicle on the roads GPS tracked wherever it is.
Leading to a whole raft of cost savings for commuters and governments, e.g.: ...vehicle insurances being charged against risk factors, e.g. kilometres travelled, road conditions, locality, congestion level, etc; ...vehicle registration being charged per kilometre; ...toll and congestion charges levied automatically; ...real-time in-dash indication of road conditions, e.g. speed limits, roadworks, school zones etc., removing need for roadside signage.
We all know this is possible using existing and inexpensive technology, but is obviously politically sensitive. From past observation I would bet people will accept the perceived invasion of privacy, probably after a serious reduction in fuel tax, and when they realise they have no real privacy anyway.
OK so you guys should check this out - Lockheed Martin is attempting to build an RFID-centered tracking system on I-35 and I94 called NAFTRACS under the NASCO (north american super corridor coaltion) nonprofit 'front company' aka 'systems integrator' or super-contractor. this system entails dozens of RFID data collection points and the cosntruction of "total transportation domain awareness centers of excellence" (really!) which would integrate all this information.
The whole thing got exposed via Minnesota Data Practices Act @ the MnDOT - it is an extension of the CINTRA 'NAFTA superhighway' in Texas.
This surfaced in my day job - we have 700 pages that spell out everything from PR emails to the grant applications to the whole damn design of the system.
Check it out yourself. As i like to say, "these are the droids you're looking for!" Obviously such a system can be extended to provide total big brother tracking and a mileage tax, as well as competitive advantage for Lockheed, which announced they would resell the shipping data as marketable information (Walmart subscribes to its competitors supply chain dataflow).
VERY big - please pass the word - its a perfect example of the domesticization of military industrial tracking systems (actually a clone of Lockheeds military container tracking sytem Global Transport Network etc). READ this stuff (I even OCR'd it)
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/2008/aug/19/now-searchable-mndot-nasco-nafta-superhighway-document-stash
43 MB PDF searchable! http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/files/nasco-documents-ocr.pdf
--hongpong.com
Hiyo, i posted below the deeper stuff behind the Texas operation
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1128199&cid=26859903
long story short, in MN they want to extend to us this RFID based tracking system, and all the docs got wrenched out of the bureaucracy. 700 pages explaining exactly how this total tracking platform would work. story here
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/2008/aug/19/now-searchable-mndot-nasco-nafta-superhighway-document-stash
PDF (searchable OCR) here
http://www.politicsinminnesota.com/files/nasco-documents-ocr.pdf
Please check this out - thanks
--hongpong.com
If you're in the US, your gas prices are so freakin' low that you SHOULD be charged per km (sorry, per mile).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasoline_usage_and_pricing
Increase the price of gas, or charge per mile.
While one can be correct in saying that those that do not drive should not have to pay for the infrastructure for those that do excessively, defining that line is difficult. For instance we all require some infrastructure to deliver foods and goods, deliver emergency services, and provide evacuation routes.
If road use is taxed, ie the mileage drove is taxed, even those who do not drive will still pay. Those who sale goods, whether food or anything else, will sale at a price that reflects the cost of transportation.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
You pay the toll at the gasoline pump through the ~70 cent per gallon tax.
As of 2005 the fuel tax in the US was 18.4/gal. On 28 September 2006 it was 24.5 cents per gallon. Of course states have their own fuel tax, but those range from 8 cents in Alaska to 32.1 cent per gallon in Wisconsin.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I did read an interesting article the other day about an economist proposing we solve our traffic congestion and road funding problems by implementing a dynamic tolls system on all the major highways. A busy road would have a higher toll than a less crowded road, encouraging people to take the cheaper route, and at the same time, providing funds for the highway system.
That's done in California right now, as it is elsewhere. We have dynamic pricing where I live in Minneapolis/St Paul.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
But I feel it warrants posting it again.
They sell polarizing films. Unless you're looking at just the right angle, all you see is a black shape where the film covers. Put a piece of this behind your plate holder, in front of your plate, and suddenly the traffic cameras have no way to get a picture of your plates.
Of course, I'm not advocating such a thing. That might be illegal. I'm just sayin' ...
I'd like to point out that the current toll pass systems are vulnerable to cloning.
http://technologyreview.com/Infotech/21301/?a=f
Yes, that's a known problem. Which is why taxation per mile or by toll roads is an option. And as somebody above pointed out - the current gas tax can't pay for much anymore. It's drastically too low. On the flip side, it's political suicide to suggest raising the gas tax to a reasonable amount.
People would be up in arm if we were required to have transponder injected into our bodies. But in our cars, no. First, it is sold as the convienent way to pay the trolls. Then sensors are installed when the cameras on the traffic lights are upgraded.
They have us. Where were you when freedom of movement died? Where were you when privacy ended?
If you don't have a transponder, it takes a photo of your license plate and sends a monthly bill to your house. As a result, the company that runs E-470 plans to close all human-staffed toll booths by mid-summer.
In other breaking news, technology allows tasks that were previously performed by manual labor to be automated. Seriously, how is this news? Do you like the delays and inconvenience of manual toll booths or something?
... and then they built the supercollider.
Federal grants help pay for mass-transit systems too, and yet I still have to pay $2 to the MTA if I want to ride the New York subway.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I do agree that a better approach would be to raise the gas tax instead of implementing tolls. But the current gas tax hasn't been indexed for inflation or increased since 1993, so hardly pays for everything. On the other hand, normal car owners *are* pretty much paying their fair share; it's heavy vehicles like trailer trucks that are being grossly undertaxed. Sure, they pay somewhat more gas taxes due to using more gas per mile, and pay some token registration fees, but they cause exponentially more road damage.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Since the federal gas tax hasn't been indexed for inflation or increased since 1993, revenues have declined approximately 35% in real terms over the past decade-and-a-half, while road-maintenance costs have increased faster than inflation. Some states have increased their state gas taxes to keep pace, but the feds sure haven't.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Want an even better question, why isn't it a toll road from I25 to I70/6th West.
I'm certainly not complaining but it does seem odd that that's the only part of the loop that isn't tolled.
The first thing that struck me about this article is that I seem to recall an inferred right in Constitutional law for a citizen to travel freely within the country. I managed to find something summarizing+confirming the fact, aptly named 'right to travel': http://supreme.justia.com/constitution/amendment-14/96-right-to-travel.html
It would seem to me that a toll in order to make use of public roads would be tantamount to the poll tax explicitly barred in the twenty fourth amendment. This is apart from the obvious point that charging tolls on tax payer funded roads seems redundant.
There is another toll road, the Hardy Toll Road, that runs perpendicular to I-45; when it was first opened, only private vehicles could go on it; it was immensely fast. Then for reasons of greed, the government allowed any vehicle that could pay the toll, and that fucked up the road as bad as I-45, except of course, you are paying for this shitty experience.
No. Golden is still easy to get to, as are the ski resorts, just take I70. Still too close to "downtown" take I76. The real problem with that section of the loop not existing is what a pain it to get from Lakewood/Golden to Boulder, Longemont, Louisville, Westminster etc.
Taking I70 East to I25 then coming back on 36 (essentially making a giant ">" literally half way across Denver) should never be the fastest option, but it is because the only other way to get between 70 and 35 is a collection of surface streets.
You're right, nothing I said directly contradicts anything you said. Taken in the context of the parent comment, though, you are taking a contradictory position. The spirit of this argument is that sections of freeway between cities could be used as tollways which restricts travel. You're just saying that intra-city tollways exist on interstate freeway sections, which has nothing to do with the argument at hand.
Check your arguments. Do they make sense in the context of the problem at hand? If not, DON'T USE THEM. Instead, try making an argument that is clearly in the scope of the conversation.
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
The main problem though, is to proove you didn't go there. There is also a way to prepay tool roads by getting a small RF based device that identifies your car. The bottom line is that there are no reason to stop when you get on the highway and everybody is really happy from these arrangements
Hah! I lived in the states for a number of years,
and travelled reasonably often by car across the eastern and mid west states, and often enough
on the toll roads. The state of those roads was
deplorable!
Oh, sorry - my mistake - those were PRIVATE toll .... You really think your politicians are going to earmark Tolls for upgrading the infrastructure?
roads
A Great Big Nelsonian HA HA! to all of you affected by this. I personally think all of you driving your death mobiles (you are 43x more likely to die in a car crash than to be hit by a car as a pedestrian) should be forced to pay even higher fines and a greater share of taxes. We subsidize car travel far too much in this country. Our foreign policy is geared towards making it economical for you to drive, which means brown skinned people elsewhere in the world need to be bombed to get you your oil. And all I have to say, it is about god damn time you start paying tolls. I hope they put tolls on every road, until it costs too much to drive to work. Then maybe you'll stop living beyond the means of the planet to support. I'm sick of seeing our green earth turned into a parking lot, so you can ride around in your mobile penis substitutes. I for one say it is about god damn time. Hoorah for Tolls! PS. I stopped driving 8 years ago, my wife gave up her car 3 years ago. We walk, take the bus, and started our own businesses we can do from home. Life is much better, and we have hours each day to play with our kid. So let's not pretend you can't live without a car.
Lets put the trackers into shoes too
and charge people to walk on the
sidewalks that are already paid for.
Oh, It won't be abused.
We can trust the government.
They do such a good job tracking the money
flows in Washington
so we can trust them to track car flows
on a foggy highway, or people walking on the
street.
Don't worry about Civil Liberties.
No one in Washington does
unless they are suing for a payout.
Then Civil Liberties are the most important thing.
So what happens to the foreigners from out of state or from Canada or Mexico? Free ride!
In most states, their is already a perfectly good system for raising revenue for roads. An excise tax is charged on motor vehicle fuel. The more you use the roads, the more you pay. Since lighter vehicles are more fuel efficient but also wear the roads less, more efficient cars pay less and big trucks pay more. Fuel for airplanes is exempted from the road excise tax since it implies no use of the roads, and in some cases diesel for agricultural use can also be exempted. The system is fair, and revenue automatically increases and decreases according to the needs of the system.
Basically, this system has every property that would make the automated toll system appealing.
In most states, this system has been gradually destroyed. In times when the gas tax produced more revenue than needed, the "earmark" of the money was violated, and it was appropriated to other uses; sometimes they would promise to replace it later and call it "borrowing" from the road fund, but such promises are generally fogotten in the scramble to share out money among the lobbiests in the next session. In times of high gas prices, their is pressure for the gas tax to be relaxed, at least temporarily.
More importanly, the revenue from the excise tax is not accumulated to fund larger one-time projects. Instead keeping the money, perhaps even lending it conservatively by buying Federal bonds or bonds from other States, and then paying for the large projects, we borrow the money by issuing bonds. Thus we pay interest when a more disciplined management of the money should allow us to collect it.
Given what has happened with the gas excise tax, why should we expect any better from the automated, or non-automated, tolls ? These tolls are also further encumbered by the fact that the bureaucracy and private interests necessary to administer this less efficient system will act to preserve it against all attacks.
There are numerous instances in this country of roads that were built on bonds, and then a toll system installed to "pay off the bonds" after which the road was supposed to revert to free. How many roads paid off those bonds and never had the toll booths removed ?
Toll booth cashiers in my state earn $22+ an hour. What they do is no different then a minimum wage cashier at a store. The only difference is the risk to personal injury is higher, but this is offset by great health insurance, sick time, plenty of vacation, and yes a pension. I would rather throw my money to R2D2 then to have my tax dollars wasted on overpaid cashiers.
Not saying people in Golden didn't "torpedo" the completion of the project, but saying Golden is an "isolated upscale community" is pretty ridiculous. I've never lived there, but I've known plenty of skiers/snowboarders who live there to be close to Summit without actually suffering through life in a ski town. The median income in Golden is (apparently) $50000/year, which means that while there might be some rich folks living there, there are also plenty of ski bums. In all likely hood it was some vocal minority; way to generalize.
Those were pre-existing state turnpikes that were assimilated into the federal Interstate Highway system. For example, that's why I70 through Kansas is free from the Colorado border to Topeka (newly built super-highway), changing to a toll road the rest of the way to Kansas City (the original state turnpike). By the way, the road in question (E470) is not an Interstate Highway. It was built by a public highway authority, not using federal funding. That's why it's called E470 instead of I470, is a toll road, and has a higher speed limit than the I25/I70 freeways. The article hints at the real reasons for doing this: increasing traffic (revenue) by not making drivers without transponders wait at the toll booths (there are three on the route from the airport to I-25), and also cutting expenses by eliminating the employees who man the toll booths.
Like they've done it on the new Orewa-Puhoi toll road north of Auckland:
* don't allow credit cards;
* don't allow any form of payment except cash at the toll booths;
* don't put in enough toll booths;
* make the toll booths hard to get to;
* make it hard to get back onto the motorway from the tollbooth;
* don't allow texting your licence plate number to a short code phone number (this is a particularly egregious omission in a country with more cellphones than people);
* put up far too many signs explaining how to pay, but don't *actually* say which forms of payment are accepted where;
* don't allow people to use their own bank's website to transfer money to you, but insist on them giving you their bank details, and promise to keep it secure.
For bonus points, spend 1.2 million dollars on a bridge connecting two dirt roads on private land, and put a gate at both ends.
--
E_NOSIG
toll booth willy is not happy....
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Nothing new here they have been doing it for years in Houston. Only you pay it is a huge traffic ticket. It seems that sending out traffic tickets makes more money then sending you a bill.
This got modded insightful? Lot of funny bones broken today...
Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny. Free men pull in all kinds of directions. It's the only way to mak
I went to college in Golden, you're more accurate about Golden than the original posters is.
Plus you already have 3 highways already going into the city, so that would never have been the complaint. The problem was space, Golden is small and sandwiched between mountains and mesa's. There wasn't room there unless you stacked 460 over 6. If they bent it around the east side of mesa's they'd bypass the space issues.
The rich upscale folks are in Evergreen, just west up Lookout Mountain, where the productive antenna's are. If they tried installing anything on the Mesa's I'd understand Golden fighting it. Everytime someone tries to build there they regret it (the ground, it moves a lot, ask the houses that fell down on Green Mountain, or those ones sliding on south mesa.) The engineers know not to build anything there (not even a road to the top of the 2 mesa's), there are roads up to lookout mountain, where you can deal with Evergreen people, and just replace their current antenna's that no one can see but provide coverage for all of the Denver area.
and all this time I took the direct highway (93) from Golden to Boulder, who knew I should have gone out of the way the whole time, just to avoid 2 traffic lights.
I think Google maps fucked me. :(
The damage a vehicle does to a road is (broadly) proportional to the fourth power of its axle load for each of its axles. For a more complete discussion click here. That's not a factor of four, that's exponential. Double the weight on the axles and you do sixteen times the damage to the road. That means that a average loaded semi(articulated lorry for the UKers) or a bus does over 1100 times the damage that a ridiculously overloaded (8000lb) Hummer H1 does per trip. A 2500lb Prius is better by about a factor of 105 than the Hummer.
Fuel taxes in the U.S. do not exclusively go to road-maintenance and administrative overhead, some goes to various transportation research and safety research and other things. However, 80% of the federal tax revenue does go to road and bridge construction. 90% of the Interstate Highway System's budget is Federal money. The average gasoline tax is $0.47/gal with a range of 62.8(CA) to 26.4(AK) cents. Diesel is 53.6 average with a range of 70.6(HI) to 24.4(AK). Apparently, Alaska doesn't themselves tax diesel. Obligatory wiki link. Toll roads also get some of this money. While gasoline taxes are slightly lower than diesel taxes (18.4 vs. 24.4, federal) the primary users of diesel are heavies, like semis and buses. This means that automotive users are effectively subsidizing the roads for the heavies, especially as the heavies tend to be more efficient per ton/mile than autos in moving their cargo and tend to stick to the interstates more. The payback is, of course, lower shipping costs for consumer goods. However, and there is always a however, it could also be argued that shifting the cost through an indirect path increases the chance of(read virtually guarantees) additional cost in arbitrage(middle-man suck or, for Civilization players, corruption).
Tolls for commercial vehicles tend to be higher than for automobiles, but not in proportion to their weight, cargo weight, or especially the damage they do to the infrastructure. (See above) The tolls are a tiny percentage of the cost of shipping, especially in time saved which is usually a prime cost factor. The cost of the tolls will simply be rolled into the shipping costs anyways. Lower income drivers will be incentivised to choose alternate routes shifting congestion elsewhere or perhaps abandoning their plans for travel altogether. Even drivers that don't feel the cost as anything but a nuisance may be disincented on principle. Toll roads thus tend to become an infrastructure biased for the wealthy and commercial interests although not strictly to the exclusion of the poor. And everyone pays for them. Just like NFL franchises and operas.
While Eisenhower was impressed by the autobahns that the Nazis built and the speed with which military transport could be carried out on them and sold the Interstate highway system on national security grounds, a knock-on effect was the change it had on society. Suddenly people could have freinds and not just pen pals in other regions. "Those people
Notmysig
People who enjoy broadband because they live in cities.
you ARE already paying for that food, the cost is just hidden in other taxes.
Oh, I agree. Every year the feds give billions in taxpayer subsidies to agricultural businesses. In 2008 congress approved almost $300 billion in subsidies.
I say make things cost what they actually cost. Then people get a CHOICE about what they want to put money into.
Oh, I agree. For years I'll railed about farm subsidies, even here on slashdot. These subsides distort markets.
the costs to society are HUGE and you're making the city people pay for the fact that someone gets to live in the country?
If cities folks don't want to subsidize broadband for rural folks then they can pay more for food.
Now we're going to fork out MASSIVE bucks in this 'stimulous' plan
Oh, don't think I support the "Stimulus plan" because I don't. I didn't support the bailout of banks either. If the banks that bought worthless papers had been allowed to go bankrupt then those who had exercised prudence and didn't buy those papers or made bad loans who of been left standing. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, part of the bailout was supposed to free banks to make loans. What they did instead was hoard the money or buyout other banks. If the banks were too big to allow the fail then the bigger ones are even more of a risk. They're like vampires only the more blood, er money, they get the more they need.
highways so people can live way out of town
And so city folks can have food delivered to them. Or do you think food will just appear on t=city tables without the highways? Or that those big screen TVs magically appear on store shelves? Fact is is cities benefit as much if not more than rural people because of the highway system.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's their choice, one I don't want mandated.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
That's right. Contact your Congressional representatives, your Senators and your state legislators and demand they raise the gas tax.
Someone doing that, Oil refiner CEO advocates for higher fuel taxes. To tell the truth what I like more is to tax mileage instead. When a person renews their license plate tags their odometer is read then they pay a tax on how much they drove. This way even those who make or buy biofuels on the side pay.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?