With today's technology it would be a no-brainer to set up electronic toll gates throughout the United States. Every time you drove through the tollgate, $1.00 would be charged to your favorite credit card.
The Europeans have been expanding their socialistic ideas for decades. Is it any wonder that Obama and his team are looking to Europe and Canada for the best ideas on how to make government more powerful and the citizen poorer?
Of course, only the top 5% will be taxed.
I wonder how much he'll get paid to suggest putting up toll booths.
It’s cold and flu season — and it’s going to cost you!
Cities won’t like that as it discourages business, i.e. how they get their money.
Batton down the hatches! Chain down everything that moves! Keep your hand on your wallet! They are coming to take your stuff.....
Electronic toll gates? Hell no.
What's more likely is that owners will be required to outfit their vehicles with "black boxes" that track mileage, among other things. Such technology is already installed on tens of millions of cars.
All that must be done is to require auto owners to install a "black box" in their car as a condition of registration...or pay a hefty fine.
Combine them with the power to remotely disable vehicles from central locations, promoted as a means of reducing auto theft and other crimes, and, well, you have part of the foundation for a police state.
IBM CEO Touts Smart Systems, Efficient Infrastructure
http://www.informationweek.com/news/management/interviews/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212001903
Palmisano cited reports that energy grids lose as much as 40% to 70% from inefficient systems and said traffic congestion in the United States costs $78 billion a year. That’s 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons, he said. Stockholm’s smart traffic system reduced traffic by 20% and drove emissions down by 12%, while 40,000 new users take advantage of daily public transportation, he said.
Don’t forget the proposals for GPS trackers on all cars.
The best way to reduce the cost of everything is to clear the Washington DC federal government of at least half its workers.
Roads have limited capacity. After a set number of cars, you get congestion, then backups. But the costs aren't allocated properly. If you could pay some amount to ensure that there wasn't congestion, wouldn't you think about it?
HOV lanes are not an efficient pricing mechanism. 4 unemployed guys driving in one car should not get priority over a single cardiologist. Or even a single businessman on his way to work. With pricing for congestion, the road portion could be "purchased" like most other goods and services in the country.
Yeah, we already pay for roads with gas taxes and such. I know, and hopefully, tolls would all be used to pay for roads (and ideally, all road construction and maintenance costs would be paid out of tolls, gas taxes, and speeding tickets).
I used to work for a company in Canada that had a fairly expensive toll road nearby. And guess what? Some people (programmers) came to work at 7 and left at 3:30 to avoid the high tolls (they'd take surface streets which weren't congested yet). Others would come at 10 and leave at 6:30. Again to avoid the high tolls. So people that were forced to work 9-5 would demand higher pay or a shift in hours, or they'd find a job that didn't require them to clog the highway.
I disagree with the way the Manchester tolls seem to be implemented: a fixed price for the whole day seems more like a revenue collection scheme than a realistic way to reduce congestion. I think to reduce congestion, you need to have prices vary throughout the day. And by a lot. Make it high enough to avoid congestion by giving people an incentive to shift their driving times if possible.
Discrimination through taxation.
Wait a minute, I WANT MY PIE!
B-b-b-but Obama is now planning on taxing us. What happened? He didn’t lie to us, did he? And the MSM didn’t help him lie, did they?
/s
The new programs would be paid for with massive new tax hikes, including a per-mile driving tax that would begin with “proof of concept” trials as early as 2010.
I’m so thankful we elected Obama President. All of these wonderfully creative tax plans would surely have been ignored by the Republicans if they were elected.
With Obama we’ll get to see new groundbreaking tax schemes! Woopeee !!!
Maybe somebody will suggest to 0 that if he taxes travel into cities, there will be less traffic into big cities, which will speed the exodus of businesses from the big cities, which in turn will speed the death of big cities, which are the source of most of his votes.
Or not.
His advisers don’t seem capable of thinking past their singular Big Ideas to actually consider the consequences of them. It’s like they get this Big Idea and it’s so mesmerizing that it freezes their brains.
It’ll be a rude awakening when that socialist MF realizes that the White House doesn’t write traffic laws and parking regulations...
It may likewise be a rude awakening from some of the brain-dead who voted for him.
here comes more light rail . end of the line is at the high-density ,inner city , central planned housing.
paging Willie.
Yes, this is a double entendre...