Agree - tolling would be a huge benefit to business, as it would clear off the ‘lower priority’ users (like people going to see a movie), and leave the lanes open for businesses users. For them, having their hardware stuck in traffic is way worse than paying a toll to keep their stuff moving.
But society would change drastically, and if I were a Leftist, getting tolling imposed would be right up there with Cap-and-Trade - which is to drive up the cost of certain products so only the ‘more essential’ users could afford them.
So don’t be surprised if the Left, and maybe even the Dems, do get behind Trump on this. It’s a GREAT WAY to shut down the country, or at least drastically control its growth. Just in Houston, having a toll road less than 10 miles south of downtown set growth there back 20 years...land sat empty for decades because people just didn’t like having to pay to go buy a bottle of milk. Only now, after all the freeways areas fully built up, are people now moving into that area.
Controlling our activity is the unavowed purpose of tracking devices and replacing fuel tax with a mileage based use tax.
South Houston, about the only place left to go that is cheap to develop. The North in the woods along Grand Parkway is not fodder as well as is Katy Prairie that was once protected from becoming the new airport (a rational place to build one). I recall 30 years ago asking a reator why South Houston was not a good place to live, wrong color he said.
Instead of Katy Prairie for a new airport they cleared hundreds of acres of pine forest and shoe horned in the new runways to build about the oddest major airport in the country with some of the worst highway access. The road in from BW8 is like driving over tilting ice flows. As for the terminal, no matter how much lipstick you put on a pig it still squeals and looks like a pig.