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.
0bama supporters/voters are going to need jobs. They expect jobs. The 0bamessiah said he'd give them jobs, and by golly the Marxist in Chief is going to do it, even if he has to bankrupt and run out of business as many businesses as he can.
There is already a penalty to drive into the city during peak times - it takes longer and requires you to burn more gas. You seem to be saying that people are not smart enough to realize this so the government has to reinforce this idea with high taxes.
If people can work flexible hours they will not drive during the heaviest commute time. I guarantee they are already doing that. I do it myself.
What is galling about leftist transportation policy is it always addresses demand and not supply. Like energy policy, the only thing keeping us from achieving Nirvana is the people’s bad attitude.
“Can’t build our way out of the transportation mess.”
“Can’t drill our way out of the oil mess.”
Sound similar?
We need to start looking at real solutions by increasing supply. Lefty social engineering will never solve our problems.