Posted on 05/23/2017 1:09:11 AM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Money losing govt transportation projects are not the way to go either. This website seems to prefer those. They show the photo of the VA fast lane moving while the other lanes are stalled. EZ pass was like that, too, when it started in the Northeast.
Considering that the highway is wide enough to expand to at least 5 lanes in each direction (probably 7 lanes, actually), there were other options besides jamming all the traffic as shown, with the option of paying a dollar per mile to be in the middle.
Agreed—both are losers for the US.
Public-private partnerships are crony giveaways.
The question is whether such an arrangement for transportation infrastructure project can ever really be implemented effectively. I'm not so sure about it, and the article doesn't address the biggest flaw in these arrangements: they tend to have a hard time attracting investment because are usually terrible investments for the private sector.
If a transit line is not generating revenue it means that people in a free democracy are voting with their feet and with their money for other alternatives.
Can we allow people to vote the wrong way with their feet? and with their money?
Should voting be limited to voting for the politicians?
Should the academics who have developed the perfect models of human movement not be allowed to engineer the movement of people who vote against their own best interest?
That’s not necessarily so bad, but the privatization of roads is criminal.
It's basically Fascism.
There is a high-speed tollway in the Austin, TX area that opened to big publicity as a private/public deal. Now it has gone bankrupt in just a few years. However, these things keep being agreed to.
Yep—corporatism.
Much like the announcement this week of the Saudis putting tens of billions into an infrastructure fund run by the head of Trump’s business advisory council.
(Or, for that matter, the Saudi’s and UAE putting $100M into the president’s daughter’s pet fund at the WB after her husband strong-armed a $100M break for them from the private company they are buying weapons from.)
Tolls.. that’s like taking the milk carton back and paying full price after you pour a glass, and the next glass,until it is gone. How about despising of unions and crony bidding. Live within your means government.
Yes, simply removing unions from government contracts and employment would save enough to make this easily “affordable”—though of course a massive shrinkage of government is in order too.
On that note, I will say I very much like Trump’s budget priorities of getting illegals off the dole (though I’d get them out of the country pronto too) and adding more work requirements for the able bodied.
The GOP as a party is of course totally exposed now, as they’ve gone from “we can’t cut anything because Obama won’t approve it” to “Trump can’t cut anything because we won’t approve it!”
Toll roads fail because after they are paid off, the tax remains. Imagine after your last house paymemt, you still gots bills.
Scam.
Additional number of highway lanes fail because it creates incentive to build tall apartment buildings, clogging the new highway. Now instead of 4 clogged lanes you have 8.
Monopoly, you cannot win. The Government club, you ain’t in it.
Toll roads are a scam whether in private or public sector hands. The Mass Turnpike was supposed to be paid off decades ago. Now that two terms of the liberal Democrat Gov. Malloy has brought CT to its knees they are talking about bringing tolls back to route 95, which is also a critical local road for poor working stiffs.
If one looks at public transportation investment as a way of paying other people to ride a train or bus so that I can drive my car in less traffic, it becomes more palatable, to me at least.
Wait.. illegals off the dole? Didn’t he say a few weeks ago that dreamers need not worry. He is proposing amnesty, on some level. So that magic means non illegals on the dole, because they wouldn’t want to worry dreamers.
Of course, being illegal means paying no taxes, i have to say it literally pays to be illegal. Imagine your bank account if you had 20 years of untaxed income.
Oh, I so agree—get them all out of here!
(The national GNP would take a dip, but be spread among far fewer—and those it belongs to.)
Express lanes or no express lanes, they should add another free lane to I-95 in each direction from Va. 123 to the 95/295 split just north of Richmond. Of course, now VDOT will have to pay some additional money to Transurban to do that, due to supposed resulting loss of toll revenue in the express lanes.
Dang, don’t YOU sound like an arrogant lib! :-D
It’s the Toll 130 extension that runs through the boonies between Mustang Ridge and Seguin, TX. Because this PPP runs through the boonies, instead of a heavily populated area, it did not attract enough users to pay its debt.
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