ION - Waterloo Region's Light Rail Transit

[ijmorlan]

You are strictly speaking correct but the follow-up is not so clear.

He's not strictly speaking correct.  

First, there actually are usage fees.  Gas taxes are effectively usage fees.  And we also have some tolls + toll lanes.

I addressed gas taxes, and acknowledged that there is a connection between gasoline usage and road usage, but as I mentioned, this is becoming less of a connection with more diversity in vehicle technology.

For you to mention the few tolls that do exist is just obfuscation. I’m well aware that a very few of our roads are indeed paid for by people who use those roads. This discussion concerns the vast non-tolled majority of our roads.

Second, he said: "Nor do motorists pay to use local streets, or in this backward country of ours, even superhighways.".  Usage fees aren't the only way to pay for something.  The majority of road users are tax payers that pay taxes that fund the road.  (And I'd argue that its a much fairer system to do this then a pure usage fee approach would be - better off people SHOULD subsidize people that are less well off.)

I’m well aware that there is a huge overlap between road users and tax payers. But the tax charged has nothing to do with the amount of road usage, and unlike something like a bus pass, one can’t even opt out of the system entirely (short of living like a hermit somewhere).

Put it this way: suppose the Region decided that it was extremely important for everybody to have bread. So they start baking bread and distributing it to every grocery store, where anybody could just take as much as they want. Who pays for the bread? The tax payers. Do bread eaters pay for the bread? No! Well, OK, there is a huge overlap between “bread eaters” and “tax payers” but the bread is being paid for by the general tax payer, in their role as tax payer, not in their role as bread eater. This is the exact situation that exists with our roads.

As to the subsidizing of less well off people, I actually agree, but it should be a cash subsidy. What’s so special about roads or even housing that it has to be specifically subsidized? Instead of a patchwork of programs we should just have a single guaranteed income paid to everybody (of course for the even moderately well off this would be taxed back and then some). Same comment applies to issues like whether the HST should cover food, home heating, and so on and on. Poverty should not be a jobs program for bureaucrats.

ijmorlan, would like to pretend that roads are some gift given to drivers that are paid for from some magical source of money that has nothing to do with the people that use or get benefit from the roads.  Its an absurd position.  (Note: This isn't to say that roads aren't subsidized by non road-users, which to some extent they obviously are.).

Ok, now I'm done... maybe.

OK, this is just ridiculous. I’m not pretending anything. Instead, the pretenders are those who think roads should just be built everywhere and parking should be free, and don’t even notice that our road addiction is a significant cause of the unaffordability of our tax-supported government services.

But you’re right. The source of money is people in general, not the people who actually use the roads. If I started commuting every day to Toronto on the 401, my taxes would only go up a bit for gas tax and increased sales tax related to car maintenance. Since I currently walk, bicycle, or bus to work about 3km, this would be a huge increase in my use of the road network, both local and expressway, and if roads were a pay instead of free service, then it would result in an increase in my payments.

Anyway, if roads are such a great benefit, then almost by definition their beneficiaries will be able to pay for them. That’s not quite true for poverty-related reasons, but it certainly is true in the case of commuters — if a commuter can’t afford to pay for the full cost of their commute from their income enabled by the commute, then the overall activity of them commuting to work and doing work is costing more than its benefit and should stop. If this would leave them in poverty, then the solution is a guaranteed income, rather than an enormously expensive and inefficient free-roads-to-enable-make-work system.