“I’d rather see private entities run our transportation infrastructure. Then at least the employees they had wouldn’t be a lifetime obligation for us all.”
Actually the vast majority of employees involved with road work are contractors, at least in Texas.
“And as far as paying tolls or paying taxes, you do have to have money to build and maintain, so either way the “user/taxpayer” pays. But in the case of tolling, only the user pays, which is a whole lot fairer way to approach the financing problem.”
I guess it depends on the definition of the word “fair”. In Houston, they now divert money from our toll roads to the city of Houston - they simply collect way more than they’re able to spend on the mostly-built system. In Pennsylvania, the feds let them put in a proposal to toll the now-free Interstate 80. The only catch was that any money collected in tolls could only be used for the highway. The state responded with a plan to collect tolls at ‘market rates’, which meant huge amounts of money - and then send that money to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh for their mass transit systems. The feds, under Obama (believe it or not) REJECTED the application since most of the toll revenue would have been diverted, contrary to the law’s requirements. Pennsylvania was invited to re-submit, but didn’t bother, since the tolling rate for simply maintaining I-80 would have been so low as not to be worth it (and it would have made their really, really, expensive Turnpike have some explaining to do).
In both of the above cases, the “users” would have been the only ones paying for the highway, but they would have been paying (and are paying, in Houston), for a lot more than just ‘the highway’. That doesn’t meet my definition of fair...to say the least.
No tolls. No selling out America’s infrastructure to foreign entities for decades. Still super pissed that Rick Perry allowed a bill to pass to toll 17 existing highways in Texas that no one talks about. The damage to the businesses along those routes and to the people who have no choice but to drive on those roads will be extensive. No justification to toll interstate 35 which is in the plans. Private-public partnership is just another euphemism from the 90’s to get us used to German style socialism or fascism. Screw all that.
Here in California, Brown and his RAT clowns, just added 12 cents to the 58.3 cents we already pay. There will be an initiative to repeal this bill on the ballot in November, because people are finally pissed off enough. Basically the RATs here have spent the gas tax money on just about everything but fixing the infrastructure ( Bike lanes, Mass transit and free rides on it for commuters, environmental studies that triple the cost of the projects that they do do). And I imagine a lot of the money goes for “welfare for illegals.” Plus we have our own in-state produced “environmentally friendly gasoline that adds cost because out of state refiners don’t want to make it. On the brighter side, our cars last forever because of our mild climate.