General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

I'm not sure its fair to say that there is just "some external benefits" that apply to everyone.  You could make everyone who drives pay but even people who don't drive benefit by having roads for ambulance, police, fire, utility and other services.   And even if you're not a driver, you will likely use commercial services requiring roads - to have large items like furniture delivered, etc.  The drivers of those vehicles could pay fees.   And out of fairness, if you are going to charge fees to drivers to cover the costs of roads then you should also charge users for the costs of sidewalks, trails, etc.    Given all this, I think its fair that the cost of roads come out of taxes, including gas taxes.

You didn't really understand what I said, imjorlan made it more explicit. Yes, there are benefits, and we all reap those benefits, but to get those benefits we only need a road to exist, a narrow two lane road would be just fine, an ambulance, fire truck, even shipping doesn't require four lane, six lane, even ten lane wide roads. Those roads are only required when huge volumes of car traffic (mostly single occupant commuters) arrive. And those roads are the enormously expensive ones to build, and the ones that incur the larges social and environmental costs. But the benefits of those roads go exclusively to car drivers (commuters mostly) who choose to get around in the most inefficient way possible, and who we subsidize doing so.

I'm not sure I would go so far as to argue for imjorlan's solution, but the vast majority of the costs (financial, economic, and social) are incurred to benefit *only* single occupant vehicle commuters.