In principle, paying for roads via usage fees is a good idea. But it should've been done at the beginning, not after people made their where-to-live decisions and invested 6-figure sums in houses. |
Posted on 11/23/2008 9:33:02 AM PST by Lorianne
An elaborate modeling of housing prices and traffic congestion in cities across the US concludes that financing roads with comprehensive congestion priced tolls rather than taxes rather would provide major benefits in reducing housing prices and sub-optimal densities - 'sprawl' - as well as reducing the familiar delays and uncertain travel times. Moving to tolls or other direct road use charges will significantly improve overall welfare, economic efficiency and standards of living, the study says. Authors are Ashley Langer University of California Berkeley and Clifford Winston, Brookings Institution. The study is reported in Brookings-Wharton Papers on Urban Affairs 2008.
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The overall effect of comprehensive road pricing managed for free flow is likely to be decreased housing prices, higher density living especially in middle suburbs. Pricing encourages people to live somewhat closer to their work.
(Excerpt) Read more at tollroadsnews.com ...
NO to toll roads! Don’t we EVER learn (shaking head)?
Cost of living increase? uhhh no thanks.
BS!
I think they’re claiming housing cost would DECREASE which would mean cost of living decrease.
However, I think they are wrong about the decrease.
Yeah, let’s move everyone into the gerbil cages of high crime, poverty, restrictive city government tyranny and corruption. Save the wide open spaces for our apotheosis styled secular liberal “betters”.
/sarc
clearly, this is nothing but a retroactive tax hike. Areas developed with free roads, and now tax people without recourse to get to work/shop/etc w/o paying a toll. It’s a money maker for the gvt
And what do they mean ‘sub optimal’? If the people like living in their out lying towns, what makes their choices and utility ‘suboptimal’?
So now we’re to have a bad case of high-rise cabin fever?
In laymen’s terms; Cram everybody into big cities where they are easier to control. Then charge more for parking to force them into mass transit.
That’s the driving force behind such nonsense; drive the population into concentrated pockets and they are much easier to ‘manage’.
I think they’re smoking a whole lot of crack.
Sub-optimal density, huh? You know that back yard you have? Buh Bye!
De-populate those "red" areas on the map, and relocate everyone to the "blue" areas.
I could swear it said “urban trolls.” I wondered what they had planned!
I've seen tolls used once with much success: The Denver-Boulder turnpike was a toll road until it was paid for.
In principle, paying for roads via usage fees is a good idea. But it should've been done at the beginning, not after people made their where-to-live decisions and invested 6-figure sums in houses. |
Seems to me, that rather than forcing people into town, it would encourage decentralization even more, as businesses move to where the good people live, leaving more urban blight behind...
Pure social engineering to avoid “white flight” and increase school integration. This is done under the name of congestion tolls and raising capital for inner city infrastructure.
It is based on the assumption that people are indifferent to tolls, lines at toll booths and where they live. I avoid tolls whenever possible and want to live in safe areas and not in or next to the inner city. More government cramdown!
Why do Libs tax?
We know why Libs spend, they spend to buy votes. But why do they tax?
I believe that Libs have almost a psychological need to tax. This need is the natural expression of their primal urge which is, above all else, to control. This urge, in turn, is the natural and secular result of their understanding of God and man. Liberals do not believe in God or rather they are in ceaseless rebellion against any conception which hampers their need to play God. The Bible describes the stiffnecked Israelites in a way which could be applied in modern dress to today's liberals. It matters not whether the egg or the chicken came first, whether liberals are in rebellion against God because they would be God, or whether liberals need to play God because they are in rebellion against God. The end result is the same: Liberals are psychologically impelled to shape the world, that is, to control it utterly.
Hence the need to tax because the power to tax is one of the most potent levers of control. In fact, it has been said that the power to tax is the power to destroy. Do you want to discourage tobacco use because you believe it is harmful? Tax it. Likewise alcohol? Tax it. Are you jealous of rich people? Tax their money away from them and distributed to others more to your taste. Do you think that society is foolish and mis-spends its money on video games and golf memberships? Tax that money and spend it on fighting AIDS in the ghetto. The list is endless. We conservatives tend to assume that liberals tax in order to fund their schemes but I am asserting that imposing taxes is yet another way of imposing their will. Liberals want to control you and your children in every phase of your existence and the imposition of taxes is but one more rein running from their hands to the bit in your mouth.
Have you considered that liberals tend to impose taxes on matters that are otherwise not under their control? Often they can induce conservatives to join with them in imposing taxes on matters which are perceived to cause harm such as alcohol and tobacco. They can get conservatives to join with them to impose taxes to fund matters which are perceived to be beneficial such as road taxes to build roads. In the world of the leftist, however, benefits and harms are perceived through a different prism. To a Lib, that which is not under his control is pernicious.
The liberal's visceral need to control finds expression in policy areas other than taxes. He wants your children in his school system and not at home with you to be homeschooled. He wants to create compulsory national service where he can continue the indoctrination of your children which our well-meaning liberal has commenced in your child's nursery school. He wants to deprive you of the power of armed self defense and force you to submit to the police power of the state. A homeschooled child is a child out of control. An armed citizen is an independent creature, in the liberal's perception, he is out of control.
Here in Germany the appellation "cowboy" is an insult especially when applied to an American. Cowboys make the archetypal figure of a free man. He decides for himself what is right and wrong and defends the right himself, with his own gun, without resort to the state, he mounts his horse and rides off into the fastness of the Prairie without restraint or dependence upon the state. No one knows where he came from, no one knows where he is going, no one dares ask the particulars of his biography, he is anonymous. He is beyond the control of the liberal. Taxes? He don't pay no stinking taxes!
The modern equivalent of the cowboy is a private pilot in civil aviation. He fires up his airplane and flies off and he need not file a flight plan-an omission which always distresses the media in the event of an accident - and while he is in the air, he is as free as the cowboy and his destination is limited only by the range of his aircraft. Liberals favor commercial aviation where we are all herded into these flying capsules like cattle onto a truck whose departure and destination as well as altitude are all controlled by the apparatus of the state. Similarly, liberals would prefer to see us in trains or buses rather than in our own autos. An SUV, gasp, can even drive off-road and is thus even more out of control. An all-terrain vehicles and snow machines are more capable of ranging free. A mounted rider can explore yet more of our national forests. Only a backpacker -virtually the only visitor liberals would welcome to the backcountry of our national forests- can get into more remote areas but he is limited in his numbers by the practical limitations of carrying his kit. One can predict the degree of hostility to modes of transportation by the degree of freedom they represent for the masses.
So taxes are one more tool which liberals use to bring us to heel, or, to redemption and salvation although it would never occur to them to use those words. Taxes not only move money around in ways that liberals like, tax schemes also change free men's behavior.
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The housing market is in the tank. So here come some liberal Democrats with a plan to decrease housing prices (except in the areas where they live, i.e. urban condos and townhouses, the prices of which will increase.)