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> For example, tolls make basically no sense ever. Once you've paid for the road you might as well get as much use out of it as you can. What about maintenance

> For example, tolls make basically no sense ever. Once you've paid for the road you might as well get as much use out of it as you can. What about maintenance costs? Those are dependent partly on the level of use a road experiences.

MertsA 10y ago
Yeah but a toll doesn't accurately reflect the amount of damage done to a road. A light econobox will do just about no damage to a road whereas a huge F350 with a curb weight of over 3 tons is going to do a great deal more damage even though it might only weigh twice as much. Adding to this, a large truck is going to make passenger vehicles look like a rounding error. Tolls could be made to reflect the estimated additional wear and tear on the road but effectively this would mean that passenger cars just pay a toll for the initial construction costs of the road and large vehicles pay the same plus an additional charge to cover all of the wear to a road. http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776...
- sethrin 10y ago
  That PDF is one of the worse documents of any kind that I have seen. Given that you're just giving general info about road wear, you could probably have simply stated that road wear is typically proportional to the fourth power of axle load. A cursory internet search pulled up the following document which seems to give a good overview of the topic: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/TSWwp3.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/TSWwp3.pdf
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> What about maintenance costs? Those are dependent partly on the level of use a road experiences. Maintenance costs are dominated by weather. Typically this argument is the last refuge of someone who wants tolls because they hate cars (or are a company that collects tolls), because it's technically true but practically ridiculous. It has the same basis as claiming we should charge tolls to pedestrians for the damage they do to the sidewalk with their boots. In some hypothetical world where the transaction costs and privacy costs and other overhead didn't exist it's technically true that you might want to charge someone the 3/8ths of a cent worth of additional maintenance they cause, but in practice those costs do exist and you end up paying a dollar to collect a penny.

MertsA 10y ago

Yeah but a toll doesn't accurately reflect the amount of damage done to a road. A light econobox will do just about no damage to a road whereas a huge F350 with a curb weight of over 3 tons is going to do a great deal more damage even though it might only weigh twice as much. Adding to this, a large truck is going to make passenger vehicles look like a rounding error. Tolls could be made to reflect the estimated additional wear and tear on the road but effectively this would mean that passenger cars just pay a toll for the initial construction costs of the road and large vehicles pay the same plus an additional charge to cover all of the wear to a road. http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776/776-roads-handout.pdf http://facweb.knowlton.ohio-state.edu/pviton/courses2/crp776...

sethrin 10y ago
That PDF is one of the worse documents of any kind that I have seen. Given that you're just giving general info about road wear, you could probably have simply stated that road wear is typically proportional to the fourth power of axle load. A cursory internet search pulled up the following document which seems to give a good overview of the topic: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/TSWwp3.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/tswstudy/TSWwp3.pdf

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> What about maintenance costs? Those are dependent partly on the level of use a road experiences. Maintenance costs are dominated by weather. Typically this argument is the last refuge of someone who wants tolls because they hate cars (or are a company that collects tolls), because it's technically true but practically ridiculous. It has the same basis as claiming we should charge tolls to pedestrians for the damage they do to the sidewalk with their boots. In some hypothetical world where the transaction costs and privacy costs and other overhead didn't exist it's technically true that you might want to charge someone the 3/8ths of a cent worth of additional maintenance they cause, but in practice those costs do exist and you end up paying a dollar to collect a penny.