Hacker News Reader

Comment by ksdale | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, here's me totally getting hung up on the chosen analogy - I find it somewhat interesting how fervently some people dislike private toll roads.

"Road I have to drive on and pay for" also describes public roads, it's just not as obvious when you're doing the paying. For the most part, I just have to suck it up and drive the places I need to go, and unlike the private road, I have to pay for public roads even if I don't use them at all.

Besides that, "expensive and well-maintained good/service that everyone is forced to use" basically describes the ideal in government provisioned anything, does it not? I mean, cheap and well-maintained would be better, but I'm not sure that exists anywhere...

View on HN

Everyone benefits from public roads even if they don't use them, though.

Since the pandemic, I barely use the road network personally, but all the physical goods I buy are transported over the roads, as are all the people who are employed to make them. From a financing perspective, I'm still an indirect road user.

While it's certainly possible to levy pay-per-use charges for roads, so businesses would pass indirect costs onto their customers. However, it's debatable whether the economic costs of doing so much bookkeeping, as opposed to just funding the road network out of general taxes, is worth the trouble.

Further, pay-per-use road pricing would involve serious invasions of privacy, and income equality impacts, for which the social costs arguably exceed any possible economic benefit.

For public goods that literally everyone benefits from, it hardly seems to be worth the trouble to make sure everyone pays only their share down to the cent.

FWIW, we ALREADY have a pay-per-use system in the US (even if it isn't fully 1:1):

Petrol/Gas taxes are paid at both the federal and state levels as a proxy to usage.

Commercial trucks must pay for a Heavy Vehicle Use Tax, which again has both a federal and state component.

And of course, there are many new highways and a bridges that are financed with tolls.

And in the places like the UK there are congestion taxes for city centers.

The difference (as I see it) is that taxes are paid relative to how much you earn/are worth, while road tolls are the same for all. Everyone (outside of major metro areas where you can use public transit) needs roads, and driving to work on a tolled road will hurt the wallets of poor folks a lot more than it will rich folks.

yes, one person's equality may just be a regressive tax to someone else.

Public roads are paid for via gasoline taxes, eg a flat usage tax, and are thus nearly exactly as regressive as a toll.

The only difference is that a poor person could choose to drive an economy car, or an electric vehicle, in order to avoid paying their share of use tax. But so could a rich person.

The other difference is that the usage tax is a hidden cost and tolls are not.

Only about 40% of spending on roads in the US comes from tolls and fuel taxes [0]. It's not correct to call them "nearly as regressive as a toll": in terms of regressiveness, they're halfway between funding them from tolls and funding them from income/property/sales taxes.

[0] https://taxfoundation.org/states-road-funding-2019/

Toll roads are fine as long as other routes exist to go to the same place, otherwise you artificailly restrict movement:

a) To those wealthy enough to pay

b) to those the toll road agree to let pass

And you have no choice but to increase the toll road's wealth each time you use the road. Moreover, it's a monopoly, which means that the toll road operator has no incentive to keep the road cheap nor well maintained, as long as there is not enough incentive for the public to open a new road.

A slightly better situation to be in is when there are multiple operators with multiple alternative toll roads, unfortunately:

c) That's a waste of duplicated efforts

d) It only works as long as there is no price collusion occuring

e) It doesn't solve the previous points.

And I think this is the point here. Are there viable paths with no tolls on them? We also need strong regulations for basic public service, and ensure that there is no monopoly.

Roads are non-rivalrous (to an extent). Meaning during off-peak times a private toll road would likely be under utilized if it were not regulated/subsidized. Another reason is that if a road happens to be the shortest path between a populous area and an in-demand destination it would likely be something close to a natural monopoly. This could potentially lead to high prices, too many billboards, etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rivalry_(economics)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly

> Roads are non-rivalrous (to an extent). Meaning during off-peak times a private toll road would likely be under utilized if it were not regulated/subsidized.

Arterial roads may be non-rivalrous in the same sense as the internet backbone, but the last mile to your home is definitely a natural monopoly for both roads and ISPs. How would you feel about ubiquitous toll roads that start at the end of your driveway?

The entire point of the toll road in Cancun is to keep locals away from the tourists. The toll didn't exist to pay for the road, it existed to create a perfect bubble that Americans could enjoy. That's why it cost three times more than the golden gate bridge.

i hated cancun because of that weird desire to recreate an american beach destination in mexico, where, in addition to dollars and english, they also accepted pesos and spoke spanish. just go to florida, ffs.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com