06-17-2017, 09:33 AM
(06-16-2017, 10:02 PM)tomh009 Wrote:(06-16-2017, 06:07 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: Not this again. I feel like I’m in bizarro world where something can be called “user pay” even though there is no tolling mechanism.
Until somebody points out to me the fee that motorists qua motorists pay to use roads, what I said is obviously true. (...)
Yes. But the question is exactly what government services/facilities SHOULD be charged based on usage? Roads? Sidewalks? Transit? (Yes, that one is, somewhat.) Parks? Education? Health care? Clean air and water?
You are strictly speaking correct but the follow-up is not so clear.
Exactly. It’s hard to get to the interesting and potentially fruitful discussion while somebody is still claiming that roads are paid for by their users. I find a lot of discussions to be like this: there are interesting questions to discuss, significant areas in which I’m not even sure what I think, but it’s hard to get to them when basic ground facts aren’t shared by everybody in the discussion.
To look at your question, which I think is excellent, my personal opinion is that expressways definitely should be fully funded by their users, with the toll changing based on how busy the road is to spread out the heavy use to more periods of the day. On the other hand, while in principal I would be OK with charging some sort of per-km fee for use of minor residential roads, I just don’t like the idea and am not really in favour of it. In between, I have the idea that road users should pay for the additional lanes on any road with more than one lane in each direction, but I have no idea how that is supposed to work. I’m also sensitive to issues like how much tracking we do.
So overall there is a lot of discuss.