[BobL]

"3. Although the idea of investor-owned highways strikes people as odd, because it's unfamiliar, it is no more radical than investor-owned electric utilities or investor-owned telecommunication firms."

If that were true, the country would be crisscrossed with private highways. This is one BIZZIARE concept, and I just wish the druggies at Reason could find another state to try out their experiments on (like California). Until recently Texas did quite well with its freeway system.

As far as the comparison to investor-owned utilities are concerned. That's fine, I would only wish they'd complete the analogy by explaining that utilities that are given monopoly protection are also highly regulated. The utilities are not free to charge their customers whatever they can squeeze out of them, while this insane toll road scheme could give Cintra full authority over the tolls it charges to drivers - just like they have in Canada.

[ken21]

i was thinking about this today, driving down the freeway:

how much would you have to increase the gasoline taxes to pay for this? bonds issued, etc.

why do we have to make some people richer at the expense of taxpayers.

what if the gasoline was $3.50 a gallon? $4.00?

fine.