2 ms·

You've never been stuck in traffic on a toll road? And you do pay to use Freeway lanes, through vehicle registration fees and gas taxes.

BurningFrog 3y ago
Vehicle and gas taxes cost the same when driving on an empty road at 2am and a rush hour LA freeway. They're completely irrelevant for this discussion.
- theultdev 3y ago
  well no, you burn more gas sitting in rush hour than driving on an empty road, thus you pay more taxes. it was mainly a side point though that it's not free, every legal driver has prepaid via vehicle registration AND pays on usage basis via a gas tax. my main refute was toll roads get just as congested.
  - BurningFrog 3y ago
    OK, we have to take a step further into microeconomic theory. For demand to match supply, it's not enough to charge any non zero price. If cell phones cost nothing, they will always be sold out. If they cost $1, they will also always be sold out. This does not disprove microeconomic theory! With some experimentation you can find the "equilibrium price", where supply meets demand, and you can always find a phone to buy. For road pricing, it's true that the driver pays a bit extra for gas in rush hour traffic. But if it's just going from 1% to 2% of the equilibrium price, there will still be gridlock. Toll roads are a better cause for you, but even if thery try to set equilibrium prices, that is pretty hard, since conditions vary every 10 minutes. If prices are set politically, it's bad for reelection to set the prices high enough. If you do succeed in setting equilibrium road prices - and to be fair, I'm not aware of anywhere that has been done, which weakens my point - we would see freeways that today crawl at 15 mph go at full speed 65 mph traffic 24/7, which - and this is the huge payoff - means vastly more cars could travel on them, and they'd be much more useful than today.

BurningFrog 3y ago

Vehicle and gas taxes cost the same when driving on an empty road at 2am and a rush hour LA freeway. They're completely irrelevant for this discussion.

theultdev 3y ago
well no, you burn more gas sitting in rush hour than driving on an empty road, thus you pay more taxes. it was mainly a side point though that it's not free, every legal driver has prepaid via vehicle registration AND pays on usage basis via a gas tax. my main refute was toll roads get just as congested.
- BurningFrog 3y ago
  OK, we have to take a step further into microeconomic theory. For demand to match supply, it's not enough to charge any non zero price. If cell phones cost nothing, they will always be sold out. If they cost $1, they will also always be sold out. This does not disprove microeconomic theory! With some experimentation you can find the "equilibrium price", where supply meets demand, and you can always find a phone to buy. For road pricing, it's true that the driver pays a bit extra for gas in rush hour traffic. But if it's just going from 1% to 2% of the equilibrium price, there will still be gridlock. Toll roads are a better cause for you, but even if thery try to set equilibrium prices, that is pretty hard, since conditions vary every 10 minutes. If prices are set politically, it's bad for reelection to set the prices high enough. If you do succeed in setting equilibrium road prices - and to be fair, I'm not aware of anywhere that has been done, which weakens my point - we would see freeways that today crawl at 15 mph go at full speed 65 mph traffic 24/7, which - and this is the huge payoff - means vastly more cars could travel on them, and they'd be much more useful than today.