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(this is not directed to you, StAn)

Hmmm, let's see.

Now the supporters out there are starting to make me think a bit more, and that can be dangerous to you guys. You may just want to back off, since you've already have the legislation you need, the Constitutional Amendments you need, and the governor you need. You really have no reason to keep trying to sell this idea - you can just shove it down our throats and tell us that we all agreed to it, both directly by approving the Constitutional Amendments (in 2002), and indirectly through our legislature. As long as you keep supporting this, I will come up with new reasons to oppose it - and believe me, the right people are reading these threads.

But, if you keep insisting on trying to support this measure, I will have no reason, but to not back down.

So, here go. Consider this scenario: Cintra builds their new toll road, and it operates pretty much as planned. To start with, they build it with 3 lanes each way, with cars and trucks sharing the same concrete. Tolls, for the sake of argument, are 20 cents per mile for cars, and 50 cents for trucks. The road gets some usage, but not a whole lot.

Cintra then decides that they want to exit private road business. The will sell the road to the highest bidder. (can't happen - we don't know, or at least I don't know - I have seen nothing regarding what Cintra can do or not do with the highway)

A group of trucking companies that are sick of paying 50 cents per mile to drive on Cintra's highway, and also paying high costs to piggy back on trains decide that they will buy the highway.

Since their primary business is shipping as cheap as possible, rather than necessarily maximizing revenue from this one toll road, they decide that they don't want so many cars on their highway - since cars are the cause of something like 80% of the trucking accidents in this country, and are just a royal pain in the butt to truckers. So they decide to charge exactly the same toll for cars and unaffiliated trucks - 50 cents per mile, while letting their trucks travel for free (relatively speaking).

All of a sudden, this new highway becomes nearly a truck-only highway, and all you people who dreamed of sailing along at 90 MPH in your SUVs end up having to save up your money months ahead of time - for that one experience.

Can't happen here. Yea.

Well something very similar (I know, I know, not the same) did happen in Europe. Over there they sold out their air traffic control system to a private bidder. You know who the bidder was. It was a bunch of airlines. You know what the first thing that those airlines did was. They essentially shutdown non-commercial air travel (i.e., small planes), by charging them horrific rates. You see those small planes just got in their way.

In this country, the FAA still owns the air traffic control system and is prevented, by law, from doing what happened in Europe.

Now, I'm not saying whether that's good for this country, overall, or not. I'm just saying to anyone who says it can't happen here: WHY NOT. Who's to stop Cintra?

There is already talk of fleet discounts (from some insider, can't remember in this case). Once those discounts are in place, the money has to be recovered from somewhere (i.e., private cars and independent trucks). What does that mean - the non-discounted people, who may wind up being charged a lot more than 20/50 cents per mile could be pushed off into our crippled freeways.

Can't happen here - PROVE IT. But I can prove it will never happen with a gas tax, or a per-mile tolling (with the controls that I mentioned earlier).