“He has a legitimate point. How is it that we’re OK with “tolling” when it comes to electricity and gas, but not when it comes to highways? “
Because, at least until very recently (if even), the tolling for utilities was not used to try to control behavior. For example, I can turn on my air conditioner at 4 in the morning, or 4 in the afternoon...and beyond that, my electricity rates are controlled, as opposed to these ‘contracts’ which often have NO RECOURSE when the private operator decides to ream the users (429 ETR in Ontario is a great example...something like 50 cents per mile now, way, way more than it costs to operate).
We went through utopian idea here in Texas and TOTALLY REJECTED IT...you’d think Pencil Neck could learn something from our reaction.
Exactly. I get ~32 MPG in my car on the highways. It's closer to 25 for city driving. Given the taxes here in TX, at most I'm looking at about 2¢/mi. Yet, when I get on tollways, it's anywhere from 50¢/mi to almost 75¢/mi. It's crazy.
Tollways are nothing but scams, and we rightly reject them whenever we can. If they actually spent our gas taxes on roads, I'd have little problem with the cost/benefit of the equation, because the roads would be reasonably maintained. However, they are always diverting our highway taxes to mass transit and other boondoggles. (Amtrack - I'm looking at you too). There is also the fact that from what I understand your average automobile causes very little 'wear' to roads. Not so, the big rigs that share the road with us. However, they also get a lot worse MPG than my car, so they are paying more by virtue of that. Additionally, I know that tractor-trailers pay craploads of additional fees. I'm also not really interested in jacking up what they have to pay in any case, as any additional costs would just be passed along to consumers via higher prices. I figre that overall, the system we have is at least moderately fair on the revenue side.
It's the spending side that has to be looked at more closely. Spend the money on the freaking roads, and you can get your graft from the construction companies. (road construction is a huge bucket of fraud that should be more carefully monitored.)