> Nobody thinks it would be efficient to privatize the federal highway system and turn everything into a toll road. Not sure it's safe to say that. The usual

> Nobody thinks it would be efficient to privatize the federal highway system and turn everything into a toll road. Not sure it's safe to say that. The usual arguments against making the Interstate system toll-based are practical ones: it would be a pain to operate, you'd have to have tens of thousands of tollbooths, you'd create giant traffic jams, etc. (Anyone who's ever driven down the Jersey Turnpike, pre-EZPass, can understand the horror that a lot of people think this would necessarily entail.) But from an economists' view it would probably be very efficient. Right now there's not much of a direct linkage between road users -- those who cause wear and tear to the roads -- and those who end up footing the bill. The net effect of this is a huge government subsidy to over-the-road trucking. Trucks get to drive on the roads for free and, due to their high axle loads, do the most damage to the road. The public foots the bill for maintaining and repairing that infrastructure. It's an externalized cost on the part of trucking companies. Using tolls (based on miles driven and axle weight, perhaps) would force internalization of these costs into the goods being transported, which would be more efficient from a classical economic perspective. You'd be making the price of the widget in the store more accurately reflect the inputs it requires to make it and bring it to market, which is generally regarded as a Good Thing. It might also have the side-effect of making other transportation methods (rail, ship, air) more competitive in certain edge cases. Such a scheme might be impractical, difficult to implement, or prone to siphoning for purposes other than road maintenance, but it's not inherently less efficient. [Edit for punctuation.]