Posted on 06/11/2017 11:05:39 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Now that the construction around DFW airport is complete, my commute to work is excellent, takes me 30 minutes to go 25 miles each way.
My time is worth far more than the extra buck or two I might have to pay for a toll.
“Private enterprise beats government at almost everything. Management of critical infrastructure is not one of them.”
You’re just a Socialist. LOL. Be ready for the tolling shills (you know, the ones that think you can have 10 companies each running parallel toll roads between city pairs, so that you can have ‘competition’ on a level playing field). If you don’t support handing MONOPOLY CONTROL of our highways to foreign interests, you are a SOCIALIST - at least by their ‘reasoning’.
Bottom line: 90% (or more) of the value of a highway is the right-of-way, it is NOT the concrete - that part is very cheap (usually less than 2 cents per mile, in most areas). The reason tolls average 20 cents to $1.00 per mile for ‘private’ highways is that they control the right-of-way...and can charge market rates for it (along with charging for the tolling systems, bond holders, sending money to Australia, government/executive revolving door types, cronies, and lobbyists).
We might as well hand over all our airways to United (I don’t know, maybe for $100 Billion) - let them charge what they want for 50 years, and then call it ‘free market’ and ‘capitalism’, because it would meet the definition promoted by several people here.
“One big advantage - it means that politicians and lobbyists can’t redirect the money to non-road-related pork projects.”
Why not. They auction off the Interstate for the right of foreign companies to toll at whatever level brings them the most revenue. For the longer Interstates this is worth many billions of dollars. What’s to stop the states from spending all that money on ‘mass transit’, for example in Philadelphia? Money is fungible - give it to people in government - they’ll get to their ‘friends’, either directly (i.e., straight from Cintra), or indirectly - Cintra money goes to DOT, state money for DOT is reduced and re-directed to big-city mayors. Perhaps I’m missing something, but all that I see is Trump wanting to wash his hands of the Interstates - he doesn’t seem to care where they end up, and where the money flows.
“One other issue - this begins to take the “highway money” club away from Congress so they can’t use it as a tool to force compliance with an unpopular agenda”
Don’t worry, they’ll have plenty of other ‘tools’ to force compliance. You can bet your house on it.
No, Houston’s tollroads were partially an earlier experiment that didn’t work and partly the result of finding out they couldn’t expand the non-toll ring roads due to the nature of the ground they were built on. They had to make a separate ring road to add capacity and since they had no money in the budget to create it, it ended up a toll road.
As an out of towner, I found it incredibly annoying. I suppose if you live there you get used to it.
“...they might not be adequately answerable if they fail to maintain it or charge excess tolls”
Here are the rates for the 407 ETR (private highway) in Canada, comes out to 35 to 50 cents PER MILE (the US gas tax is about 2 cents per mile, by the way). There have been lawsuits against the operator for gouging, but their contract is iron-clad. But don’t despair, in another 65 years or so, the ‘contract’ will be up for bid again.
http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/407-etr-announces-2017-rate-schedule-608782365.html
Great model to follow...but what the hell, if we call it ‘capitalism’, then only ‘Socialists’, like myself, could object to it.
1. Some of the toll companies are American.
2. The politicians only get to sell the rights once and the proceeds from that don’t come from the taxpayers. It’s not a continuing income stream that they can regulate and increase when they need to meet a budget hole that they created.
3. I fully expect them to waste the one-time payment - but once it is gone there will be no more and they can’t stealth-increase a tax they couldn’t levy. This is unlike gas tax, road tax, registration and plate fees, etc.
4. The toll levels can be set by state or local governments (which don’t get the power to tax them). Check out how the North Texas Tollway Authority works.
“How is this different from a company that gets long term control of a large section of interstate highway?”
If you don’t paying 35 cents or so per mile to drive on their monopolized highways, you always have the option of walking (unless they choose to charge pedestrians too, of course). That’s your ‘free market’ ‘competition’.
LOL.
Well, they’re not total competitors for their whole length, should they both go forward. More like a dozen miles or so of one will parallel the same distance on the other at a distance of a couple miles. It will be interesting to see what happens with that.
“C) in CA at least, some of these operators are only investing in the toll taking equipment on existing, unimproved road (I-680 from Walnut Creek south is an example)”
The price point for monopoly-controlled roads is much, much, different than for freeways. Once a single, money-making, entity controls the right-of-way, it is obviously MUCH MORE PROFITABLE to simply jack up the tolls, than to add lanes...both accomplish the same - ending traffic jams.
The difference being, of course, that in once case we can seamlessly drive between cities very efficiently (freeways), while in the other case, we become like India and Nigeria, where the uber-wealthy can get around via alternatives, but everyone else wanting to trek between cities feels like the stagecoach guys from 150 years ago.
Highway money is their single largest weapon, because suspension of it makes the roads decay without maintenance, which makes people angry, who put pressure on the state politicians to explain why this is happening, who then have to explain that their roads are crap because the Feds are withholding funds to force compliance. The state politicians will then likely concede so they can get re-elected.
Highway disbursements are how we got the double nickel, uniform mandatory drinking ages and a host of other bad centralist ideas. They’re also one of the largest payments that a state gets from the Feds.
“I’d be willing to bet money that at least in CA the contracts for lane conversions will include stuff like “will complete bike trail X” and “will fund segment Y of High Speed Rail...””
ABSOLUTELY - just who do we think runs these states? And then after the conversions what’s to stop them from imposing ‘excise taxes’ on the operators for the same purpose?
One would think that people here would understand leftists well enough to know that they’re going to simply pack up their agenda and leave, just because we’re now taxing people a new way.
If you don’t want to drive on the tolled part of I-635, you can ride in the free lanes. Walking is not required.
There’s your counterbalance. You can go slow on the congested free lanes or you can pay to drive on the higher speed, better paved toll lanes. Toll company gets uppity, people have an alternative and it’s on the same route.
“The theory is that the private companies will tend to run the facilities more efficiently. The Indiana toll road had no toll collectors the last time I drove on it; I’m sure that never would have happened if it was still run by the state.”
Houston hasn’t built a toll road in the past 15 years with toll collectors - it’s all automated. In New Jersey, they are within a year (last I heard) of converting to full automation too.
It’s all the same hardware...doesn’t matter who owns/operates it.
“...full privatization implies the buyer needs to have a 40-50 year perspective. “
Why? Everything other than the toll booths are already there. Why not 5 years and then open it up to re-bid?
I know the answer, of course, but I’m curious to see if you do.
“What this article doesn’t mention is that some of these public-private partnerships have been financial disasters”
Good posting...but in the Libertarian world, there is no such thing as lawsuits, so it doesn’t apply here (that is, until it’s too late).
“Is that why Houston has something of a seemingly similar ring-road scheme of both toll and non-toll roads? If so, it’s horrible.”
Since I live in Houston, I’m quite familiar. The toll roads, of course, were sold to Harris Country residents with the promise to end tolling once paid off. Of course that was a lie.
At this point, they collect so much money (yet are still priced way below monopoly rates) that the county now sends their excess money to the city of Houston to ‘pay’ for their streets (meaning the city now gets to use their property tax money to serve their ‘friends’ elsewhere). They could have simply lowered the cost to drive on these roads...but the tolling they have brings in billions, why mess with it.
...and even given that, it could be much worse. They’ve spent the past decade massively widening Route 8 with toll money - due to huge congestion (on the West and South sides). If the road was privately owned, at least if I were making the decisions, I would have simply doubled the tolls - same result, reduced traffic jams. Fortunately there is still some level of accountability on this highway precisely because it is NOT privately owned.
Sounds like privitizing Air Traffic Control, making the users pay for it and not reducing taxes doesn’t it?
With privatizing and user fees have you ever seen taxes go down in compensation for the new fees? Neither have I.
Public Private “Partnership” for toll roads? Sounds like Texas’ deal with Zachary and their Spanish pimp outfit so that toll roads are now the only way you can navigate Austin, Houston or whatever.
Toll roads like Oklahoma’s that were supposed to no longer be toll roads when the tolls paid for them. Funny how the tolls have never ended and the roads are like washboards, to match all the other Oklahoma roads. It costs $35 in fees for a passenger car to get from Joplin to Lawton. Can’t imagine what they make a day on the Will Rogers / I-44. That one was finished in 1957, apparently it cost a lot because it never has gotten paid for. Oh and still, with all the major traffic arteries as toll roads all Oklahoma can do is piss and moan about not having enough money for roads or much of anything else.
“there are plenty of state highways and alternative routes literally dozens of alternative ways to get anyway without using a interstate.”
Try driving Cleveland to New York City without going on an Interstate...sure it’s doable, but if you’re lucky you’ll average 30 MPH.
To some of us, that is not ‘competition’ anymore than telling people who don’t like a hypothetical United Airlines monopoly that they can take a bicycle.
Please get back with us when you come up with a way to actually have ACCOUNTABILITY after handing over the roads...and there are ways...
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