India built a bus-rapid transit line, but put the bus stops on median strips in the middle of a busy highway. Since it opened nearly a month ago, there have been This energy will allow you to take the medication in the first place. buy levitra wholesale Most of cialis for women the adverse reactions have been reported shortly after sexual activity. You need to have the correct facts when you are using order levitra online kamagra. Men suffering from ED no prescription viagra go into worst conditions. three to four pedestrian accidents a day.
Maybe it was just poorly designed. But maybe spending $52 million on a seven-mile bus-rapid transit line wasn’t such a good idea anyway.
SUVs regularly jump the newly installed dividers into the bus lane to avoid jams in the car lanes
Why am I not surprised…
So you hear a story about India and it’s terribly congested and dangerous roads (which I’m sure are not financed through user fees), and you think, “They shouldn’t have built that bus!” Wouldn’t a more logical conclusion for a libertarian-minded person be, “They shouldn’t have built all those roads!”? I mean, if there was really such a demand for them, surely the market would take care of that, right?
The market will happily build roads, if you let them. Given the amazing level of opposition from certain quarters to toll-road concessions here in the US, it is not surprising that they aren’t building private roads.
Toll-roads, even ones that are built by private firms (as opposed to roads that were built by the government and then leased to private firms), can’t really lay any claim to being market based. While they themselves might be profitable, they are only useful because of the hundreds of thousands of miles of local, feeder, and arterial roads which are paid for by taxpayers (and from the general fund, not out of user fees). Not only that, but many of those “privately-built” toll roads are built on land that was acquired with eminent domain. And, furthermore, road companies often receive subsidies from the government in the form of guaranteed low-interest bonds to finance construction. (Disgustingly/ironically enough, Koch Industries – the brainchild of the libertarian evangelizer who funds Cato – actually has a road-building division which has taken these distinctly un-libertarian government handouts.) I’ve written about these pseudo-private roads in my own blog. Sources for all claims made in this comment can be found there.
Stephen,
You should review your arguments about India’s roads more carefully. Many cities in India are centuries old. There would be roads whether or not there were cars, and at one point, there were. There are no proposals to privately finance India’s urban roads because identification and exclusion of users is next to impossible. Additionally, improvements to traffic flow and safety in cities of less-developed countries generally have enormous benefits in terms of reduced crashes, emisssions, etc. This alone provides a strong rationale.
By the way, many interurban roads in India are being privately financed. Governments generally cannot raise the funds to build such networks, yet the benefits to users are quite large. This trend should continue for several decades.
Also, more generally, three to four crashes per day sounds bad, and by our standards, it is. However, for India it is basically par for the course. I recently heard a news report mentioning that 13-14 people per day die on India’s railways. This says something about the value of life in less developed countries.
You should review your arguments about India’s roads more carefully. Many cities in India are centuries old. There would be roads whether or not there were cars, and at one point, there were.
Right – I forgot about the Mughal Empire’s love affair with the eight-lane highway. And about the magical property of Indian roads which makes them impossible to alter in any way, except to pave over for use by cars.
There are no proposals to privately finance India’s urban roads because identification and exclusion of users is next to impossible.
Bullshit. There are no proposals to privately finance India’s urban roads because there is no way anyone could make a profit running them. Only highways can earn profits – even in the West, where such technology is available, there are no instances (that I know of) where local, arterial, or feeder roads can be profitable. But perhaps you’d like to provide an example of a community where all of the roads are privately-owned?
Additionally, improvements to traffic flow and safety in cities of less-developed countries generally have enormous benefits in terms of reduced crashes, emisssions, etc. This alone provides a strong rationale.
Rail transit generally has enormous benefits in terms of reduced crashes, emissions, etc. This alone provides a strong rationale. (Not!)
By the way, many interurban roads in India are being privately financed
See my above post on why privatizing heavily-trafficked main highways does not mean that the system is market based. (Hint: Interurban highways are only useful because of the free local roads that they give way to. That’s like giving away free crack cocaine and then claiming that skyrocketing sales of crack pipes are due to natural market demand.)
rationalitate,
Let me get this straight. You feel that because we haven’t worked out a pricing scheme to privately finance local roads we don’t need them and they shouldn’t be built? It is going to be interesting to see how we do without the buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks and private automobiles going to the places that are not served by mass transit.
You feel that because we haven’t worked out a pricing scheme to privately finance local roads we don’t need them and they shouldn’t be built?
I am a capitalist. I feel that if something can’t be built by private industry, it ought not be built at all. Like the Antiplanner (at least in theory), I am opposed to government plans. And, by the way, there are many pricing schemes out there to privately finance local roads. RFID, GPS, license plate cameras, etc. And then there’s the model that’s been used for a long time: real estate developers cross-subsidizing transportation in order to raise the value of their land (sort of like how when you rent an apartment on the 20th floor, you don’t have to pay to use the elevator). This requires no direct user fees, and is very amenable to the sort of difficult-to-meter transportation needs of human beings. Of course, there’s always the chance that rather than building roads, developers would build other sorts of transportation, as they did around the turn of the century when they built the mass transit systems that are still around today.
It is going to be interesting to see how we do without the buses, garbage trucks, delivery trucks and private automobiles going to the places that are not served by mass transit.
If you look back to the period before the government decided that roads are what we need and basically all we need, you’ll see that private mass transit served urban areas very well. While contemporary mass transit is very poor and would be woefully inadequate for people’s transportation needs, it would grow and adjust (if given the opportunity) just like it did when it was first built. Furthermore, humans would move to places that are better-served by whatever form of transportation that the market builds – be it mass transit (not public, but mass) or individual transport.
Antiplanner wrote:
“Maybe it was just poorly designed. But maybe spending $52 million on a seven-mile bus-rapid transit line wasn’t such a good idea anyway.”
Thanks for raising the article. But that’s only $6m/mile, compared to $80m/mile for LRT.
What they do next, I don’t know. One option is to put in footbridges, although if the bus users decide to cross the road on foot…? (Which is why footbridges are deprecated in the UK these days).
Russia also has the same problem, since their trams also run in the middle of the roads.
Rationalitate brings up some very good points, though going back to those cost between BRT & LRT the thing to keep in mind is the time span. BRT is great in the short term, long term LRT costs less.
In North America with our loaded deck Transport Policy that goes to roads no wonder things are they way they are.
I recall reading a Reason story where a private toll road operater had gone under and the writer was glad that the government was able to buy the road at a great discount. What gets me here was why was he happy? Shouldn’t he have been up set? Shouldn’t some other company buy the road or it shouldn’t have the land been sold off? Given the suposed libertarian mind set.
Now compare this to how many rail lines that have been ripped up? By being over taxed and that had to compete with free government provided roads?
Ok now I’m a conservative, to me 90+ years ago if the government wanted to improve roads(just remember that the good roads movement started with people riding bikes) and thats fine. Though to rob Peter to pay Paul way of doing things, is a double standard.
“If you look back to the period before the government decided that roads are what we need and basically all we needâ€Â
My looking glass can’t reach back beyond all of recorded history. Kings, pharaohs, emperors and chieftains have been building roads, well, forever.
Communal transit is just a hint of a sliver of human history. Faith in the power of communal transport by any funding scheme seems like pining for the return of piston-driven biplanes. Or unicorn-drawn chariots.
The common law worked out easements a few centuries ago. Seemed that people liked to access their property by a network of paths before the first omnibus c1840. To assert that local roads are non-market is essentially meaningless without context of place and era.
Kings, pharaohs, emperors and chieftains have been building roads, well, forever.
Don’t take it so literally – think relative trends. Road expenditures in 1930 vs. road expenditures in the 1800s, in cities, and you see a dramatic difference.
Communal transit is just a hint of a sliver of human history.
American cities have relied on privately-financed (mostly) communal transit in some form or the other from between about 1850 and 1910. First came the horse-drawn omnibus (as you point out), and then came the streetcar. Neither were perfectly market-based by any means (horses, as you point out, went on some public paths; streetcars were often given monopoly rights based on patronage), but compared to the subsidies that roads received, they were downright libertarian. Woodrow Wilson himself remarked that road expenses were the nation’s biggest problem (obviously before the Great Depression), and expenditures really shot up around that time. Without this government push, private made-for-automobile roads likely wouldn’t have come into such widespread acceptance.
Faith in the power of communal transport by any funding scheme seems like pining for the return of piston-driven biplanes.
I didn’t call for communal transport by any funding scheme. Unlike you (presumably), I don’t think that the government should pick winners. I called for an end to road subsidies, so that the market can decide what transportation/land use patterns are best. These are subsidies and regulations that you and the Antiplanner do not see and do not recognize and do not care to discuss with me, but that doesn’t make them any less real. I’m just predicting, based on how it was right before the great expansion of government in the first half of the 20th century, that “communal transit” as you call it will probably win out in the free market (rather than the vulgar libertarian crap that passes for the market these days).
To assert that local roads are non-market is essentially meaningless without context of place and era.
Well that sure was the trend the last time we had a climate that even remotely resembled a free market. You can go back since the beginning of civilization and decide that on average people have usually traveled on publicly-maintained roads and therefore it must be how we must always organize ourselves, but I don’t know why you’d make such a silly assumption. Especially in light of the history – the amazing coincidence in the period of intense pro-automobile government action, the intense adoption of the automobile, and the intense changes in American land use patterns.
“But perhaps you’d like to provide an example of a community where all of the roads are privately-owned?”
Hard to do that with a system that doesn’t allow such things to happen. It’s like asking someone to show a hockey player that scores a dozen goals a year using their skate. The rules just don’t allow for it. Even “private” toll roads are commonly set up so that the private entity doesn’t outright own the road nor the land with control reverting to the state after 20-30 years.
More so it’s the wrong question in implying that the road in and of itself needs to be profitable. No shopping mall that I know of makes any money off their parking lot. It’s an expense. Yet, even if not required by law, would any developer dream of building a shopping mall that didn’t have a parking lot? Local roads are part of the bigger picture. They don’t have to be profitable in and of themself to be worth doing.
I too would like to exactly how roads are funded both in terms of construction and ongoing maintenance.
“I am a capitalist. I feel that if something can’t be built by private industry, it ought not be built at all.”
Adam Smith just threw up in his coffin. I hope your happy. When did capitalism become so distorted?
“But perhaps you’d like to provide an example of a community where all of the roads are privately-owned?â€Â
We’ve got private roads in the UK, other than the famous/infamous M6 toll road.
When a developer finished building a housing estate, they ask the local council to adopt the roads. The council then maintain the roads, at the council expense.
Sometimes, though, the developer doesn’t get the roads adopted. One reason is that the roads are finished off in a certain way, e.g. cobbled or flagstones. When a utility company digs into a council road, their only liability is to fill the hole in, so that you get a cobbled road with a splodge of tarmac in the middle of it. Under those circumstances, the developer may decide to control the resurfacing more closely, by retaining ownership.
Hard to do that with a system that doesn’t allow such things to happen. It’s like asking someone to show a hockey player that scores a dozen goals a year using their skate. The rules just don’t allow for it.
While it’s certainly not possible now, it was possible in the early 20th century. Plenty of suburbs (then called suburbs – now we’ve expanded so far that those once suburbs are now downright urban) were built around trolley systems and received no tax breaks or free land. There were not, however, as far as I know, any such private plots with roads.
More so it’s the wrong question in implying that the road in and of itself needs to be profitable. No shopping mall that I know of makes any money off their parking lot. It’s an expense. Yet, even if not required by law, would any developer dream of building a shopping mall that didn’t have a parking lot? Local roads are part of the bigger picture. They don’t have to be profitable in and of themself to be worth doing.
Sure. Leaving aside the question of profit, just give me some examples of communities with privately-financed and maintained roads (and not just the “last mile” kind of development). Streetcars were rarely profitable – they were usually cross-subsidized by real estate development. But, as far as I know, no developer ever cross-subsidized roads with real estate.
We’ve got private roads in the UK, other than the famous/infamous M6 toll road.
Nominally private, but not private in actuality. The highway is only feasible because of the multitudes of publicly-financed local and feeder roads which provide access to the highway. And, given that developers can expect the state to buy out the road at some point (according to you), it doesn’t sound like developers are actually expecting to have to manage the road privately the road for very long.
I too would like to exactly how roads are funded both in terms of construction and ongoing maintenance.
I’ve asked the Antiplanner directly by e-mail a few times, but though he’s been in touch before, he hasn’t felt the need to provide statistics or insight into that matter. The most he’ll do is tell me that 88% of highway funding in the US comes from user fees, but does not wish to address the question of how the rest of the roads are financed.
Rationalitate you again bring many things to light and I congradulate you there. Though for me I what frustates me with libertarian people is their sheer hypocracy.
Personaly I have no problem with puting money into roads, I’d just like see rail/transit to get the same amount too and level the playing field.
“communal transit will probably win out in the free marketâ€Â
But, wait, there ain’t no such thing as a free market. Be sure to keep your unicorn fed.
Ignore most of human history and focus on the winner you root for. Nice. Or, what you can’t ignore, you dismiss off-hand.
Communal transit began dying shortly after personal autos became affordable. Your unicorn can’t provide door-to-door service on an infinitely flexible schedule in a personalized environment. People bought the cars first, then clamored for improved roads and streets. It not as if acres of concrete were laid and then the auto was devised to make use of it.
Pretend it’s 1915. You’re good at pretending, right? You’re the chief administrator of the town’s Communal Unicorn Network Transport system. Would you let private (or non-corporate-owned) vehicles on your unicorn paths? Of course. You probably wouldn’t bother with a toll booth at every driveway. Instead you might offer licenses which permitted personal vehicles regulated access the public (or corporate) right of way.
I admire human ingenuity, but do not see technology offering a better solution for metering the use of urban streets. Most people don’t like to be tracked that closely by corporations (or government). That human yearning for freedom of movement really messes with the vision for a CUNT system.
Would anyone like to explain the Tiebout effect to this buffoon?
Here’s a teaser, Unicorn Girl: Government does not exist outside “the peopleâ€Â. Populations get the government–and government services–they want.
Roundabout 19-teen to WWII, the US population wasn’t too keen on letting conglomerate corporations lead them to utopia. The folks wanted the benevolent state to provide for their desires. We all still pay for that failed shortcut. Yet we still trust the nanny state more than the entrepreneurs to satisfy us.
Your “capitalist neutrality†seems founded on incomplete, distorted and inconsistent readings of history. Maybe the middle–true neutral–just happens to be wherever you and the unicorn are standing?
Prattle on about who you think will “debate†your fantasies to your heart’s content. I’ll send ice cream. With sprinkles!
rationalitate, Local, arterial, or feeder roads can be incredibly profitable…to the state, which is collecting gas tax for the travel on them but is generally only providing half of that revenue to the local authority that owns these roads.
As for “the amazing coincidence in the period of intense pro-automobile government action, the intense adoption of the automobile, and the intense changes in American land use patterns.” No coincidence really. Once automobiles started providing the gas taxes to pay for better roads a vituous circle was born.
As for the comparison of road spending between the 1800s and the 1930s. Have you actually done one? I have, but only for the country I live in. Sure spending on roads was a lot less. But then the roads they were spending on were a lot less too. Gravel or dirt surface, formed to dray width (ie single lane), often impassible in wet weather, appalling per capita drowning rates due to lack of bridges. But, crucially, while they were narrower than the motor roads built beginning in the 1920s they were only 10% longer. 90% of the roads on today’s maps can be found on the maps of 1898 when the first motorcar arrived. The difference today is that half of those roads now have all weather carriageways within their legal rights-of-way. From 1900 to 1930 spending on roads increased with the amount of motor traffic. But once the majority of the busiest roads were sealed real spending levelled off for half a century despite a tenfold increase in traffic.
Sure, it would be better if roads were payed for with GPS tolling or some other method that can achieve the miniscule collection costs of the gas tax.
“The highway is only feasible because of the multitudes of publicly-financed local and feeder roads which provide access to the highway.” In what way is that different from a railway or streetcar line?
“And, given that developers can expect the state to buy out the road at some point (according to you)…”
No, that’s not what I said. I said that local estate roads are generally adopted by the council. The M6 toll road, are far as I am aware, will continue to be private for a long time to come.
Ignore most of human history and focus on the winner you root for.
Ignore the past 80-100 years, in which the government has been heavily involved in the provision of transportation, and you’ll see that mass transit was indeed the market’s favored mode of transportation. The car and the streetcar were invented at about the same time, but the streetcar one. That is, until the car became favored by government. “The happiness, comfort and prosperity of rural life, and the development of the city, are alike conserved by the construction of public highways.”  Woodrow Wilson, 1916
People bought the cars first, then clamored for improved roads and streets. It not as if acres of concrete were laid and then the auto was devised to make use of it.
Wrong. Wealthy elites bought cars, and liked them so much that they started agitating for roads to be paid out of tax dollars. Given the relatively low mobility and extremely low speeds at which drivers were traveling around that time, it would have been very possible for entrepreneurs to build toll roads. But, that’s not what happened. In a market, people don’t need to “clamor” for increased services – they are provided by the market. People didn’t “clamor” for streetcars to be built, because capitalists saw the opportunity for profit and built them themselves. Market demand, however, was not high enough for the private provision of roads. Thus, those who wanted them could not find satisfaction in the market, and had to turn to the government to use strong-arm techniques (roads financed not out of user fees, eminent domain, anti-trust laws forbidding power companies from owning street cars, union regulations mandating higher employment for street cars while allowing buses to regulate themselves, low-density zoning laws, mandatory parking laws) to build the roads they so desired. See my comment below about the differences between the government providing something, and the market providing something.
Once automobiles started providing the gas taxes to pay for better roads a vituous circle was born.
Also, wrong. Governments were providing free roads for decades before the gas tax was introduced. The money was not coming out of user fees, and therefore was pure subsidy. The first gas tax wasn’t until 1919 (in Oregon, I believe), and the federal system didn’t come about till the 1950s. Government building of free-to-the-public automobile-worthy roads antedated user fees by a decade in some places, and decades in most. And even these first rudimentary gas taxes were certainly not recuperating anywhere near the full costs of road construction. Generally they only funded the well-travelled highways, leaving local roads to be financed by state and local governments.
Government does not exist outside “the peopleâ€Â. Populations get the government–and government services–they want.
Wrong again! Government provision and free market provision are not one in the same. Just because something comes out of an institutional process that we call democracy does not make it equal in validity to a decision reached by the free market. I suggest you examine the large body of public choice literature to learn the ways in which socialism and capitalism differ.
Captain Unicorn, you’re not listening. Before there were omnibuses, there were either horses or feet. Both are individual and personal transport. Repeating Wilson doesn’t make his view any less wrong.
People were providing free roads before there was government, and after government became an institution. But you only care about that sliver of history that fits your prejudice. Great.
And, who said government provision was the same as private provision of services? You’re arguing with somebody in your head, not anyone posted here. Further, who said anything about which process was more valid? You, not me. I’m tellin’ how it works…people create and shape government to provide stuff they want. Sure, that’s the road back to serfdom, but our lament doesn’t change the pattern.
A more useful, less-Rainbow Brite, line of inquiry might be around the reasonable and practical limits one might put on government. There’s a revealed preference for some above-zero amount of government. Should that amount include planners and transport policy? Why, or why not? Who decides? And given the real initial conditions today in the meat world, when might some proposed change be accomplished?
I feel government should be eliminated. And I would like to see gravity repealed. Neither is gonna happen. Get over it.
At the core, somebody should bust the crappy logic which asserts there can be no true private toll road if any connected road was state-provided. That’s the same socialism which insists that because wealth is created better in society with other men, every man deserves and equal share of all wealth. Or that if one man suffers, we all suffer. Great rhetoric, but a logical non-sequitur. Are you really a capitalist, or just a maverick hippie?
Captain Unicorn, you’re not listening.
Can we lose the childish name-calling, please? If your point were such a good one, you really wouldn’t need to resort to this kind of crap. I haven’t said anything up till now, despite being called a buffoon and a “Unicorn Girl” (I don’t even want to get into the implications of you assuming I’m a woman), but you really do seem to have an attitude problem.
Repeating Wilson doesn’t make his view any less wrong.
Okay, let’s parse that sentence. Me repeating him, doesn’t make him wrong. Which implies that you agree with him and his idea that the government shouldn’t let the market decide what sort of transportation America needs, but rather should impose highways and roads on everyone, because goddamnit, it seems like a good idea! Even if it, you know, involves a massive increase in government expenditures which isn’t covered by user fees.
Before there were omnibuses, there were either horses or feet. Both are individual and personal transport.
Yes, you’re right – before the general adoption of electricity, individual transport was the rule. But if you can’t see why the invention of electricity might change things, then I think you have bigger problems. The vast majority of human history involved very little importance on international trade and a little division of labor. I suppose that since that’s how we’ve lived for so long, we ought to erect trade barriers and force people to make their own soap, right?
You, not me. I’m tellin’ how it works…people create and shape government to provide stuff they want. Sure, that’s the road back to serfdom, but our lament doesn’t change the pattern.
So…you…agree with me that we have a socialized system that is highly anti-market, but you’re just convinced that there’s no way out. So, what’s the point in even talking about it, right? When I criticize the current system, I’m the proud owner of a unicorn. When you do it (“We all still pay for that failed shortcut. Yet we still trust the nanny state more than the entrepreneurs to satisfy us.”), you’re being reasonable. By the way, government-favored roads were a big part of that “failed shortcut” that you’re so critical of. Planner extraordinaire (though I get the feeling the Antiplanner wouldn’t have been so anti his plans) Robert Moses was a huge recipient of New Deal slush funds, which he used to build the present highway infrastructure found around NYC.
Should that amount include planners and transport policy? Why, or why not? Who decides? And given the real initial conditions today in the meat world, when might some proposed change be accomplished?
And how is a thorough investigation of the history of transportation and land use policy not in furtherance of that goal? Why shouldn’t we point out all of the anti-market forces at work? Why shouldn’t we look back in history to a time before mandatory low-density zoning? Why shouldn’t we look back to see how the US functioned during a time when market forces were more influential? Are these unreasonable given “the real initial conditions today in the meat world”?
I feel government should be eliminated. And I would like to see gravity repealed. Neither is gonna happen. Get over it.
False choice. Government existed in 1900, and even though it existed, it still wasn’t heavy into building roads and enforcing mandatory zoning and parking regulations.
At the core, somebody should bust the crappy logic which asserts there can be no true private toll road if any connected road was state-provided.
It’s all a matter of degree. A private system of one million miles of road/rail with one hundred miles of connected public road/rail is closer to a free market than a private system of one hundred miles of road/rail connected with one million miles of public road/rail. Similarly, a system with millions of miles of public roads with user fees that cover most of the accounting cost but little of the opportunity cost – half of which are financed largely out of user fees (the large highways) and half of which are not (the local roads) – is much less of a free market than the situation we had before before around 1910, where most of the newly-constructed private rights of way were in private hands. A simplification to be sure, but I just don’t understand why to you something is either “pure market” (worthy of a unicorn owner, in your opinion), or realistic, but there is no in between.
@foxmarks:
By the way, you made a couple of statements that I responded to, but you didn’t mention them again. Do I take it that you realize you’re wrong in making the following statements? I’m not asking just for the gotchya gratification, but rather because it seems to be the crux of your argument.
People bought the cars first, then clamored for improved roads and streets. It not as if acres of concrete were laid and then the auto was devised to make use of it.Once automobiles started providing the gas taxes to pay for better roads a vituous circle was born.
And if you do repudiate those statements, then again – how do you explain the fact that there were no privately-built roads, or even large systems (not one road, but all/most of the roads in one are) built by the government mostly out of user fees, until decades after the infrastructure and mandatory low-density zoning laws were put into place? Because, like I said, it certainly wasn’t impossible – streetcar companies managed.
Rationalitate again you hit the nail right on the head. In my area up untill about 100 years ago on what are now arterial roads there use to be toll gates.
The toll gates were about a mile apart and they charged a wagon 10 cents to pass. It was political pressure from early motorists that forced the private toll road companies to sell their stakes to the government.
rationalitate and the highwayman, May I respectfully suggest you have a squizz at the list of historic documents at my website? The pdf that will give you the best window into the minds of our great-grandparents is the one from 1929 in which the Canterbury Progress League critiques funding of Canterbury (New Zealand) highways. This report provides an interesting view of the benefits that a 1920s provincial community expected from good roads.
Or take this shortcut
http://www.petroltax.org.nz/PDF/CanProgressLeague.PDF
@Kevyn Miller:
Interesting, but a bit long. I scanned it, and this is what I understand: the document kept saying things to the effect of good roads will more than pay for themselves. So, my question: given the low speed at which these cars traveled, and the ease in private entities building toll roads, why did this not happen? If the proposition was, as they say, not only cost-recuperating, but downright profitable, why did we not see large-scale entry into the industry by road-building private entrepreneurs? And furthermore, when the article describes a system in which all costs are borne out of revenues, what costs do these include? How was the land to build roads acquired? Was it already in public hands, or was eminent domain necessary? What was the norm in urban transport in New Zealand before the advent of the automobile?
I love the philosophical debate here. At risk of being labeled a historical relativist I think that the words capitalism and socialism are being misused here. To me, there is a difference between free market radicalism and capitalism. Capitalism actually recognizes the need for government intervention into markets… on occasion.
Also, a liberal democracy in which some services are socialized is not socialism. This argument often gets pluralized, but there is a large grey area. It seems that many of the Antiplanners see the planners as a bunch of communists. Not true! Planners just are aware that there are market failures (mainly in the form of externalities) in which government intervention into markets is needed.
While our system is not radically oriented to the free market, it is also way off base to call it “socialized system that is highly anti-market†(rationalitate # 23). The truth lies somewhere in between.
Well I’m not saying there should be toll sidewalks, but what we have today is a distorted market(if we can still call it a market).
If any thing the government put should back every mile of streetcar and railroad track that they taxed to death in the first place along with building high speed rail lines down the middle of the interstates.
What government does for one it should do for all;
What government does not do for all, it should do for none.
“If any thing the government put should back every mile of streetcar and railroad track that they taxed to death in the first place along with building high speed rail lines down the middle of the interstates.”
But the interstates were clearly built from gas tax money (ie user fees). Does this mean the same for this magical high speed rail? What happens when it’s users fees come no where near covering the trillions of dollars spent on them? Who gets stuck with the bill then?
Though the interstates were not built with user fees, they were built with tax dollars.
Again thanks for keeping up the “Four lanes good, two tracks bad” mantra.
the highwayman, I don’t which universe you are living in but in this one there is a simple answer to whether interstates were built with user fees, or with tax dollars. That answer is to look at the legislation and see what it tells us and what it tells us is this:
On March 19 1956, the House Ways and Means Committee reported out a bill, developed by Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana, that contained the financing mechanism for the proposed National System of Interstate and Defense Highways . The Highway Revenue Act of 1956 proposed to increase the gas tax from two to three cents per gallon and to impose a series of other highway user tax changes. Acting on a suggestion by Secretary of Treasury George Humphrey, Rep. Boggs included a provision that credited a revenue from highway user taxes to a Highway Trust Fund to be used for the highway program. The Federal Highway Act of 1956 passed the House by a vote of 388 to 19.
AP – do you have a “three links” moderator. Hope so cos there was ahollotta thunking in between the links 😉
Kevyn, that is an excellent exmaple of why I’m really curious what money has gone to whom for what projects. That is, what money has been spent on roads? Freeways? Where did that money come from? Seems in this case the most visible and most expensive ones, the freeways, have been covered by the gas tax.
prk166, Problem is I can see two approaches that need to be considered to answer your question.
1. What effect did the increase in the federal gas tax have on state gas taxes and local property taxes?
2. What effect did the interstate system have on demand for improvements to existing roads and highways?
The impact in California has been well documented. Much of California’s intercity state highway system was reclassified as interstates and the state funding was re-allocated to build urban freeways. That still leaves the question of whether the urban freeways reduced the need for improvements to existing arterial roads and, if so, whether that led to lower property taxes or more money being spent on residential streets.
I suspect many of the least densely populated states simply would not have built their own divided highways.
In New Zealand the introduction of fuel taxes was a response to the changing nature of road use. As traffic became increasingly less local the funding also had to become increasingly less local. While opponents of roads or aspects of roads focus on the costs born by different groups in society our forefathers had the wisdom to account for the benefits enjoyed by different members of society. That latter approach does support using property taxes to fund at least half the cost of local roads but I am alsways mystified by America’s use of local sales taxes to pay for roads. Where’s the connection to usage or benefits?
One final thing that needs to be taken into account is that land and earthworks are the most expensive part of building highways and freeways but they account for very little of what is spent on local roads since that land was reserved for road access when the land was originally surveyed back in eighteen hundred and something. New Zealand’s regional statistics show that population and traffic volumes have a big impact on maintenance costs per highway km but almost no impact per local road km.
Good points.
That latter approach does support using property taxes to fund at least half the cost of local roads but I am always mystified by America’s use of local sales taxes to pay for roads. Where’s the connection to usage or benefits?
We have to chase sales taxes because it is increasingly hard to tax property in this country. Property owners seem to think sales taxes make others pay for the services they want (when consumer spending eventually slows, what then?).
And California is a great example: Proposition 13 limited valuation of property for taxation, and the public school quality has declined and shown no signs of rebound, as have the roads. But you can see auto malls and cr@ppy strip malls crowding seemingly every inch of Interstate 80 from San Fran to Tahoe. Washington State had to pass a huge bond measure to pave roads, as property tax valuation was capped at less than inflation for many years (lifted, now looks like will return) In my city in Colorado, property taxes are very low, as is the road quality; all my external referrals to the school district come back with the District stating they oppose my plat, because current property taxation levels won’t cover their future expenditures to teach the kiddies (yet the politicians approve the plats anyway – let’s see what the bill that requires proof of water does to development…).
DS