Will the Highways of the Future Primarily Benefit the Rich?

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/economy/will-highways-future-primarily-benefit-rich



It could be said that Robert Poole, the Searle Freedom Trust Transportation fellow and director of transportation policy at the Libertarian Reason Foundation, has never seen a toll road - or, more precisely, a privatized toll road - he didn't like. Exhibit A: his newly released Interstate 2.0: Modernizing the Interstate Highway System via Toll Finance.

Poole calls his project "Interstate 2.0" to signal that Reason's agenda is something that cool, leaning-forward folks will want to support. But the bottom line is that Poole's proposal offers nothing innovative: just another proposition for the kind of relentless privatization that has stricken cities across the country, rolled into a highway-long package.

Ken Orski's highly influential Innovation Briefs for September 17, 2013, reviews the challenges Poole's proposal faces and then sums up the next steps Poole must take to see his proposal bear fruit:

So, we hope that Mr. Poole's study will be brought not just to the attention of the Beltway audience and the toll-advocacy community where it will predictably meet with plaudits, but, more importantly, to the attention of governors, state DOTs and state legislators. Their collective judgment will be decisive in whether Congress votes in favor of lifting the current legislative restriction against Interstate tolling or leaves it in place. A presentation at the upcoming AASHTO annual conference on October 17-22, followed by presentations at the next annual conferences of the National Governors Association and the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) would be a good way to start the dialogue.

[LuvNewcastle]

1. I think this is why they're allowing our infrastructure to go to hell.

They're letting it get to the point where we're all desperate to have it fixed so they can push privatization through. That's one of the reasons why they didn't pass Obama's jobs bill. They're not going to allow anything to get done unless it has first been privatized.

[Fumesucker]

2. We edge ever closer to the America depicted in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash"

In Snow Crash the Interstate Hwy system is a corporate entity known as Fairlanes.

“When it gets down to it — talking trade balances here — once we've brain-drained all our technology into other countries, once things have evened out, they're making cars in Bolivia and microwave ovens in Tadzhikistan and selling them here — once our edge in natural resources has been made irrelevant by giant Hong Kong ships and dirigibles that can ship North Dakota all the way to New Zealand for a nickel — once the Invisible Hand has taken away all those historical inequities and smeared them out into a broad global layer of what a Pakistani brickmaker would consider to be prosperity — y'know what? There's only four things we do better than anyone else:
music
movies
microcode (software)
high-speed pizza delivery”
― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash

[LuvNewcastle]

3. I see a lot of profound observations from writers about American life these days.

Unfortunately, no one reads anymore, so few people have any greater perspective about what's happening. We're all steadily getting fucked, but most people are too busy texting each other and playing video games to notice.

[Laelth]

4. This is important. k&r for exposure. n/t

-Laelth

[srican69]

5. Hell no!!... The rich fly in their lear jets .. roads are for little people

[A HERETIC I AM]

12. Learjets are for little people. The real rich fly Gulfstreams.

Learjet 31;


Cross section;


Gulfstream G650;


Cross section;



And yes, I'm being a bit silly.

[onehandle]

6. In Atlanta, they converted the HOV lanes, from number of passenger based, to fee based.

Now only you only see single males in luxury cars riding in those lanes.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

7. and they fucked, in particular, the residents

of Gwinnett county... and for shits and giggles, see if you can track down the monthly average daily toll rate. it has gone from about 4.00 to over 7.00 in very short time.

gives a whole new meaning to 'highway robbery'...

sP

[Fumesucker]

10. That's not true

How do you know none of them are married?

Sometimes you see lone females in luxury cars too.

[Nye Bevan]

8. Highway tolls are very environmentally friendly,

especially when they are used to subsidize public transportation. The marginal cost of prvate vehicle journeys needs to more closely reflect their negative environmental impact.

[Fumesucker]

11. And remarkably popular with the wealthy

Keeps the riff raff off the roads don't you know.

[davidpdx]

9. I live in South Korea and some of the roads are toll roads here

Mostly the major interstates, but also the major loop highway around Seoul. When I go from where I live up to Costco I pay 900 won ($1=1070 won) each way. Fortunately I don't drive much. They also tax you up the wazoo for having a car. I pay $350 a year.

[FarCenter]

13. The gas tax hasn't been raised to keep up with inflation.

Gas tax should have been legislated as a percentage of the price, not in cents per gallon. Then, like other sales taxes, it would go up as prices inflate.

Of course the other problem is that lawmakers keep grabbing gas tax revenues for other purposes, like mass transit.

Now that gas consumption is dropping, gas tax revenue is dropping.