I’d rather see private entities run our transportation infrastructure. Then at least the employees they had wouldn’t be a lifetime obligation for us all. Government “agencies” primary reason for being is to provide jobs for people who don’t really want to work.
And as far as paying tolls or paying taxes, you do have to have money to build and maintain, so either way the “user/taxpayer” pays. But in the case of tolling, only the user pays, which is a whole lot fairer way to approach the financing problem.
“I’d rather see private entities run our transportation infrastructure. Then at least the employees they had wouldn’t be a lifetime obligation for us all.”
Actually the vast majority of employees involved with road work are contractors, at least in Texas.
“And as far as paying tolls or paying taxes, you do have to have money to build and maintain, so either way the “user/taxpayer” pays. But in the case of tolling, only the user pays, which is a whole lot fairer way to approach the financing problem.”
I guess it depends on the definition of the word “fair”. In Houston, they now divert money from our toll roads to the city of Houston - they simply collect way more than they’re able to spend on the mostly-built system. In Pennsylvania, the feds let them put in a proposal to toll the now-free Interstate 80. The only catch was that any money collected in tolls could only be used for the highway. The state responded with a plan to collect tolls at ‘market rates’, which meant huge amounts of money - and then send that money to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh for their mass transit systems. The feds, under Obama (believe it or not) REJECTED the application since most of the toll revenue would have been diverted, contrary to the law’s requirements. Pennsylvania was invited to re-submit, but didn’t bother, since the tolling rate for simply maintaining I-80 would have been so low as not to be worth it (and it would have made their really, really, expensive Turnpike have some explaining to do).
In both of the above cases, the “users” would have been the only ones paying for the highway, but they would have been paying (and are paying, in Houston), for a lot more than just ‘the highway’. That doesn’t meet my definition of fair...to say the least.
agreed - full privatization of nearly all infrastructure. no BS concessions or public-private partnerships. Sell the assets lock,stock, and barrel. Use the money to pay off gov’t debt.
Let the free market work its magic. You’ll get lower prices & better quality