“Improvements in fuel economy, to be expected over the next decade or so, will only further weaken the link between road use and fuel consumption, making fuel taxes a less suitable finance instrument.”

In fact, oil usage has been rising and is projected to do so for the next 30 years. That means gas-tax receipts will increase, not decrease.

I’ve heard this spin before and it can only come from someone who is laying out the industry line to the ignorant.

It was always explained to me that tolls were a way to pay for the road and that once paid off the road would become free of tolls. Toll roads have been in place for decades in the north but are relatively new in the south. I was looking at the financial statements of the Sam Houston Tollway here in Houston and noticed that the operating costs were exactly the same as the tolls received (therefore the road will never be paid off).

And now traffic has gotten so bad on the tollroad that I sit in bumper to bumper traffic and pay extra. Usually the EZ Tag lanes are the worst. Unfortunately, other than side streets, I have no other options.

The state DOTs that are supposed to be using our fuel taxes to build and maintain roads have stopped doing their jobs – usually quite deliberately. Depending on your state, most or all fuel tax money is being wasted on rail systems and other phony congestion solutions. Sometimes this is quite deliberate. The Sacramento Bee recently published a piece bragging about how area planners (SACOG) are deliberately creating congestion, especially downtown, to try to force drivers out of our cars.

Somehow the Environmental Impact Reports for these groups’ grandiose plans never reflect all the extra pollution from cars that are forced to sit idling or take less direct routes — let alone the road rage deaths caused by all that deliberate congestion. The planners should all be in jail.

Privatizing the road business is the only way to take matters out of the planners’ untrustworthy hands and get road building going again.

All the problems cited in the article that started this thread are problems of not enough privatization, not of too much.

You can’t possibly be serious.

Do you honestly think that fuel taxes are less politicized than highway tolls?

Tolls and taxes should exist in combination, each financing a share of the roadway network. Highways, especially urban ones, are congestible, and hence good candidates for tolling. Lower-level networks cannot identify and exclude users as easily — hence some form of tax financing is necessary.

Gas taxes are highly politicized, which is why they cannot be adjusted regularly to account for inflationary pressures. In Minnesota, where I live, we saw a bridge collapse because of this.

It is not true that existing roads are most likely to be tolled. The only cases of this have been conversion of HOV lanes to HOT status — arguably an improvement. The only possibility for new toll roads will be where new capacity is needed (and governments cannot meet the financial needs).

Improvements in fuel economy, to be expected over the next decade or so, will only further weaken the link between road use and fuel consumption, making fuel taxes a less suitable finance instrument.

Finally, roads are never really ‘paid for’. They incur ongoing operations and maintenance costs, and they need to be periodically rehabilitated or replaced. Failure to recognize this leads to poor highway policy.

IS ANYONE SURPRISED ?? THIS IS JUST ANOTHER EXTENSION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE MOTORIST AS A PROFIT CENTER.

SHOW ME THE MONEY BABY !!!!

MY FAVORITE LINE FROM THIS ARTICLE: “NEW MONEY…FROM THE SAME TIRED OLD WALLETS”.

WELCOME TO AMERIKA 2008.

(OR IS IT “1984??)

RICK GOLD