White House slams carpooling, new road fees better (children, minorities hardest hit...)

Reuters ^ | February 12, 2007 | Tom Doggett

[weegee]

Hybrid, vegetable oil, and electric cars pay lesser or no road taxes. The future will have to find new revenue streams to pay for new road construction.

[Ben Mugged]

It's assuming that population keeps growing exponentially.

No, it doesnt. It uses Empirical (Statistical) Modeling to estimate the population over the 10-year period.

[weegee]

I'd like to see those working for public transportation using more public transportation.

I see them getting around in cars like everybody else. If it works so well, they should be using it.

[Diddle E. Squat]

The idea isn't just to build toll roads. It's to make all the principal thoroughfares toll roads -- and then sell them to high-roller investors. Money-runners are desperate for income opportunities. The Bush Administration has been trying to help them out by e.g. passing that law in 2003 that allows the States to convert the Interstates (which we've already paid for) to toll roads -- and then sell them. That's what it's about. It isn't about taxes for the government, it's about trillions of dollars in rents paid to people who don't need the money, from people who can't afford it, for stuff we already own. It's a Big Fix and a ripoff, catered by Castle Bush. Other than that, you can tell I don't have an opinion about this "pigs at the trough stuff". Which, by the way, is one of the reasons the Reagan Democrats are walking away from the GOP. The Party will be ruined after next year, but that'll be okay -- the GOP will have done its job and will have delivered the goods for its real constituents, the Pigs at the Trough. (Note: "Access capitalism" isn't capitalism. It's just access.)

Complete and total bullshit pulled from your paranoid ass, but that seems to be all that is posted around here these days. Who needs facts and truth when we can all just rant about conspiracy dreams and plug-n-play boogieman. Yeah, its all a communist plot by that evil George W. Bush, the Buildaburgers, Masons, and Mexicans. Yep, every politician is corrupt and wants to record your every thought and keystroke. And of course the tollways are being built so that the Chinese Mexicans can round up your guns and then drive all conservatives to the concentration camps Rudy Giuliani is going to set up at the behest of his secret boss Hillary.

This place has been overrun by the kooks. Congrats, you won.

[savedbygrace]

Hahahahahahahaha. That's rich. Have you found many people who buy your wordsmithing?

[Alberta's Child]

It's important to remember that 2006 was a historic year in the modern U.S. It marked the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the Interstate Highway System (IHS), and there are two simple truths at work here:

1. The system is pretty much built to completion, and won't be expanded very much over the next 50 years.

2. Every segment of the IHS will be reaching the end of its useful life over the next 50 years (if it hasn't done so already), and the cost of rehabilitating/upgrading it -- while at the same time doing normal, routine maintenance, year after year -- will be enormous.

[presidio9]

Here in NYC, litterally hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of women do just that every day.

[blackie]

"Great idea. You walk. I'll wave as I drive by."

That makes two of us!

Love my F-150 Lightning and my old Bronco SUV!!

Ya can't beat a vehicle with big booming V8 engine!!

[ROLF of the HILL COUNTRY]

"The only solution is more freeways."

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

"Automobile traffic will expand to fill all space provided to it." - Buckminster Fuller

Another earlier poster was right: we have to get people out of their cars. Rapid rail works, and very well.

[Lion Den Dan]

Car pooling and new roads are not the solution......the only one that will work. Get drivers out of their cars.

What the heck has happened to the President? You and he are both goofy. Refresh your memory, all the Federal and state tax paid on fuel is our "fee" for driving upon the public way. The fee is simmply being misspent.

[The Pack Knight]

"It is increasingly appropriate to charge drivers for some roadway use in the same way the private market charges for other goods and services,"

That's just it. The roadways are NOT a private market. They are taxpayer-funded public rights of way. If the government wants to do it this way, they should sell the roads to private companies and let them charge whatever tolls they want. I'm for free market solutions to our problems, but half@$$ed pseudo-free market solutions are problematic at best, because free markets don't work so well absent the profit motive. That said, using gas taxes to fund highways isn't exactly "fair" either. My Cherokee doesn't "use" the road any more than a Prius does, but I pay twice the gas tax per mile. The truth is that while our road system is in many ways the finest in the world, it's still a government program, and is just as much a mess as any other.

[mc6809e]

A Republican administration proposing new taxes. Imagine that.

Uhg. More "all taxes is stupit" bullcrap.

Republicans need to take some time thinking about what makes a tax fair and what makes a tax unfair instead of just assuming all taxes are bad.

[sheana]

Well, that would be correct if the taxes weren't schlepped into the general fund and used for everything else. The states do the same thing. IF they actually used that tremendous source of taxes for roads, etc. our highways would be in great shape.

NO MORE FEES OR TAXES!

[weegee]

What do you do when they jack up the HOV requirement to 4+, then 6+, then 21+ (buses only!)? You're screwed. You've let your public servants take away

Your right to travel
Your right to go out of your house (since they "own" all the streets)
Your right to get a living
Your right to go shopping, or anywhere else.

---

A man's home is his castle (for now). The rest of the world is hostile to that notion.

You can now work and shop from home. But the downtown boys still want their money from the property taxes on your castle to pay for their billion dollars in sports stadiums.

[lentulusgracchus]

It is a way to get more roads without increasing taxes.

Like I said above -- it isn't about "taxes". It's about "income" for private interests who are going through the Lobby and the RNC to get their hands on public assets and charge rent for their use.

Google on "NASCO", "Indiana Turnpike", "Austin +toll roads +Rick Perry +Zachry". You will receive an education, after you've read what's out there for a couple of hours.

[ROLF of the HILL COUNTRY]

The German gas tax is more like 4 times ours, and most of it goes toward the subsidization of the rail system, keeping the cost of tickets rather low, thereby encouraging use.

[Malacoda]

AMEN.

SEPTIC is the worst, and I swear, they strike at the drop of a hat. Plus, the fare increases and cuts in schedule are making it harder to stick with public transport.

[weegee]

And the taxes you pay when you renew your license tags.

[Go Gordon]

well I lived in Philadelphia and let me tell ya - public transport stinks, big time.

You don't like SEPTA?

[weegee]

I wouldn't have a problem with paying a fee to use roads IF they cut all the taxes they currently levy for building and maintaining roads.

One upside to such an approach is that the federal government would be halted from forcing through legislation by holding highway funds hostage.

Matters that are supposed to go to the state (including BA 0.08, drinking age at 21, but not limited to alcohol) would return to the state legislatures.