6 ms·

They are very regressive unless there are income-based credits, which adds administrative complexity. Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought. For t

They are very regressive unless there are income-based credits, which adds administrative complexity. Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought. For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet.

survirtual 11mo ago
Correct. Tolls are a regressive tax on the working class. The rich don't even need to use the roads as much because they have other people delivering for them. When they need the road system, the tolls are nothing to them. The working class, which are generally required to be driving to survive, are left holding the bag for tolls. In places with bad public transit, tolls are just a forced wealth transfer from working class to private firms managing the tolls.
- nfw2 11mo ago
  All the statistics I've been able to find point to higher toll road usage among higher income people, not less.
  - nosianu 11mo ago
    Which may already be a sign of ability to pay? Not that I will argue against the right of US Americans to have a country that gets more and more divided by "class" defined by money, an interesting if not very ethical experiment for sure. The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerecht.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?") Being able to get to places by car is one of the most basic needs in the US. I think it leads to cementing the monetary status quo and monetary class affiliation when that becomes even more dependent on how much money one can spend on it. A nicer car being more expensive is fine in that regard, it does not get you from A to B much or any faster than the cheap one. Being able to choose roads or lanes that will take you there much faster is different. It removes one's personal "hard work" contribution to success if more and more of it is out of your control - after all, how much money you start the game of life with is nothing one has control over. Maybe making that kind of mechanism worse is not the best idea in the long term. Unless we are really aiming for what all the dystopia movies and anime have been showing us. There are also tons and tons of indirect effects. For example, I would make the claim that wealthy shareholders benefit a lot more from roads than poor people, even when they don't drive, since the companies they own and the entire economy needs them. The poorer people driving to work "paying their share" does not look so clearly justified to me, unless one believes that their salaries are perfect indications of their role in value creation.
    - orthoxerox 11mo ago
      > The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?") Canadian stand-up comedian Casually Explained (I don't actually know if he stands up to record his videos) had basically the same joke a few days before them.
      - anon84873628 11mo ago
        It's a joke people have been making for years.
  - SoftTalker 11mo ago
    Because the cost is not an issue for higher income people. The poor either sacrifice something else to pay the toll, or they take a (likely longer, slower, or more congested) alternate route to avoid the tolls. This ends up costing them more time, which of course is a fixed quantity per day, so they again end up sacrificing. In a way it's regressive even if they avoid it.
- metalman 11mo ago
  Tolls and public transit fares are regressive. We have removed all tolls here in Nova Scotia,including for small car ferry's , were not rich or populous,but are building out our infrastructure bit by bit to facilitate ease of transport and the prevention of accidents and traffic jams. The other thing they added are info signs accross the main hyways comming in, giving times for the main transit routes, making it easy to redirect , 45 MIN!, yikes! sounds like coffee and grocerie shopping to me! It has realy made a huge difference getting around the city and has opened up options for travelling rural routes that have ferries.
- pclmulqdq 11mo ago
  The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. It doesn't matter if that makes it a "regressive" tax. If you are a daily user of a road, you should pay more for its upkeep than someone who doesn't use the road.
  - thfuran 11mo ago
    >The people who use something should pay for its upkeep Why? That doesn’t seem like a good way to run society.
  - axiolite 11mo ago
    Why should a delivery driver pay the toll for the road to my house, and not me? Why should I be able to exploit flat-rate product pricing like that and skim some money from all customers of the delivery service? Why should I pay the toll to drive to a friend's house? They're the one getting the benefit out of having easy access to transportation. What if my taxes pay for all the roads in my town, while the neighboring town chooses to implement tolls instead? Why should I get double-taxed? Prisoner's dilemma and race-to-the-bottom? Why should I have to deal with having my license plate stolen, and police time wasted (who are paid out of taxes), because of people who don't pay the tolls?
    - tshaddox 11mo ago
      Why stop there? Why should I pay for my own food, given that my employer, friends, and family benefit from me being well nourished?
    - hdgvhicv 11mo ago
      Delivery driver passes that costs of delivery on to you, so you do pay.
  - hoppyhoppy2 11mo ago
    >The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. Fee-for-service city parks? Public libraries? Fire departments? Sidewalks? What about investing in the "public good"?
- kcplate 11mo ago
  This is a strange argument that leaves out some important considerations. You could easily say that because the rich don’t need to use public transit the fares charged for riding public transit are a regressive tax on the working class that use it. Shouldn’t you also argue against public transportation ride fares enriching the private companies that build turnstiles and ticketing machines?
nfw2 11mo ago
Edited because I admit original statement below is incorrect. "You could say they are a flat tax since every driver pays the same per usage. You could even argue it is a progressive tax since richer people use toll roads more. The only way you CAN'T describe a toll is a regressive tax. Words have meaning."
- kelseyfrog 11mo ago
  If you read the literature[1], they're regressive - less regressive than sales tax, but still regressive despite being utilized more by higher income drivers. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/16892 https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/16892
- NietzscheanNull 11mo ago
  This is completely incorrect. A flat tax has a constant tax rate, which is why it's often referred to as a "proportional tax." Under a true flat tax system, everyone pays the same percentage of their income. A toll is absolutely regressive because the burden it imposes is constant, irrespective of income; poorer individuals will pay a proportionally higher percentage of their income than wealthier counterparts. As income increases the "effective rate" asymptotically approaches zero, which is regressive by definition.
  - nfw2 11mo ago
    Good point, I've edited my comment to clarify that it is incorrect
levocardia 11mo ago
This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though. Charging $1/lb for bananas is regressive. Charging $3/gallon for gas is regressive. Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive. Etc...
- MengerSponge 11mo ago
  "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France
- axiolite 11mo ago
  > This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though. Maybe EVERYTHING shouldn't BE "constant prices". Maybe where there are practical alternatives to constant pricing, those should be preferred and used. > Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive. No. Not unless there is only 1 type of t-shirt in the world available. If I'm poor I can go find cheaper t-shirts either less stylish, poorer quality, from a generic brand, from a discount retailer, second-hand (used), packaged in bulk, etc., or maybe wait around for a sale on the t-shirt.
  - derektank 11mo ago
    Besides price signals, what other tools are available to communicate local knowledge through an economy? I can’t think of any that are particularly effective
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  For commodities like that, competition already pushes prices to the zero profit limit. Everyone gets them as cheaply as they can be produced. And for those who can't afford even that we have subsidies.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo ago
  Yes we broadly deal with that via lower tax bands for lower earners, but the problem is hard to avoid.
Tiktaalik 11mo ago
The regressiveness issue of tolls is effectively a nitpick compared to the broader more comprehensive issue of how to we create an affordable transportation system for the working class and how do we raise the revenue to fund that through taxes. The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. The best thing we can do to make transportation more affordable in general is giving people more options aside from the car. Taxing the wealthy in order to raise revenue for public transportation and active transportation options dominates any sort of regressiveness issues around road tolls and less traffic makes buses more effective.
- cyberax 11mo ago
  > The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. The transit ticket price in the US is typically covers just around 15-20% of the _operational_ _cost_ ("farebox recovery rate"). And the capital costs for transit are off the charts. Seattle is going to pay $180B (yes, that's "B" for "billion") for about 20 miles of new lines. And for one mile of subways in Manhattan, you can build 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway. It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
  - bc569a80a344f9c 11mo ago
    “Democracy in the US is failing because of the resources invested into public transit” might be the hottest take I’ve read in 2025. Nice.
    - cyberax 11mo ago
      Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit. And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat. And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization. Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.
thayne 11mo ago
Or if there are practical, affordable, alternatives. If there is low cost public transit available, then a toll could be an incentive to use public transit instead of driving. But if there is no other viable transportation option, then it is effectively just a regressive tax.
ip26 11mo ago
If you have two lanes and want three lanes, you could build the third as public, or as toll. If you build as public, it comes out of taxes, such as the gas tax. If you don’t have enough public money, perhaps you increase the tax. If you build it as toll, you can bond the construction and pay for it with tolls. At least in theory, this means the toll lane accomplishes the same total road throughput, but shifts the entire cost of its construction to its users instead of depleting public funds. It then appears regressive, but is arguably progressive.
jaredklewis 11mo ago
Well if the government raises more revenue from tolls, they can raise less from other regressive taxes or just redistribute that revenue to lower income brackets. During covid the IRS sent everyone a check. No reason this also can't work at a state level and just have toll funds sent out as checks to lower income brackets.
refurb 11mo ago
This approach is why carbon taxes won't work. Tax carbon, then credit it back to a majority of the population because "they can't afford it". Leaving the people who can afford it to not reduce their carbon use. Thus entirely defeating the point of taxing it in the first place. If you want less driving, make it more expensive. Yes, some people will be in unfortunate situations where they can't afford it, but that's the point.
whimsicalism 11mo ago
i think it is funny how this critique only comes out to play when people dislike a thing for other reasons but want to project a high-minded concern for the poor.
kcplate 11mo ago
> For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet Only if there is no other way for them to get from point A to point B. If there is, it’s a time vs $ value question to the driver and not regressive, nor an “obstacle”—it’s simply a decision.
maerF0x0 11mo ago
> Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought What's the problem with that? It's an opt-in tax. Also if it's without a second thought then i'd suggest the price is a touch too low.

survirtual 11mo ago

Correct. Tolls are a regressive tax on the working class. The rich don't even need to use the roads as much because they have other people delivering for them. When they need the road system, the tolls are nothing to them. The working class, which are generally required to be driving to survive, are left holding the bag for tolls. In places with bad public transit, tolls are just a forced wealth transfer from working class to private firms managing the tolls.

nfw2 11mo ago
All the statistics I've been able to find point to higher toll road usage among higher income people, not less.
- nosianu 11mo ago
  Which may already be a sign of ability to pay? Not that I will argue against the right of US Americans to have a country that gets more and more divided by "class" defined by money, an interesting if not very ethical experiment for sure. The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerecht.html https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?") Being able to get to places by car is one of the most basic needs in the US. I think it leads to cementing the monetary status quo and monetary class affiliation when that becomes even more dependent on how much money one can spend on it. A nicer car being more expensive is fine in that regard, it does not get you from A to B much or any faster than the cheap one. Being able to choose roads or lanes that will take you there much faster is different. It removes one's personal "hard work" contribution to success if more and more of it is out of your control - after all, how much money you start the game of life with is nothing one has control over. Maybe making that kind of mechanism worse is not the best idea in the long term. Unless we are really aiming for what all the dystopia movies and anime have been showing us. There are also tons and tons of indirect effects. For example, I would make the claim that wealthy shareholders benefit a lot more from roads than poor people, even when they don't drive, since the companies they own and the entire economy needs them. The poorer people driving to work "paying their share" does not look so clearly justified to me, unless one believes that their salaries are perfect indications of their role in value creation.
  - orthoxerox 11mo ago
    > The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?") Canadian stand-up comedian Casually Explained (I don't actually know if he stands up to record his videos) had basically the same joke a few days before them.
    - anon84873628 11mo ago
      It's a joke people have been making for years.
- SoftTalker 11mo ago
  Because the cost is not an issue for higher income people. The poor either sacrifice something else to pay the toll, or they take a (likely longer, slower, or more congested) alternate route to avoid the tolls. This ends up costing them more time, which of course is a fixed quantity per day, so they again end up sacrificing. In a way it's regressive even if they avoid it.
metalman 11mo ago
Tolls and public transit fares are regressive. We have removed all tolls here in Nova Scotia,including for small car ferry's , were not rich or populous,but are building out our infrastructure bit by bit to facilitate ease of transport and the prevention of accidents and traffic jams. The other thing they added are info signs accross the main hyways comming in, giving times for the main transit routes, making it easy to redirect , 45 MIN!, yikes! sounds like coffee and grocerie shopping to me! It has realy made a huge difference getting around the city and has opened up options for travelling rural routes that have ferries.
pclmulqdq 11mo ago
The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. It doesn't matter if that makes it a "regressive" tax. If you are a daily user of a road, you should pay more for its upkeep than someone who doesn't use the road.
- thfuran 11mo ago
  >The people who use something should pay for its upkeep Why? That doesn’t seem like a good way to run society.
- axiolite 11mo ago
  Why should a delivery driver pay the toll for the road to my house, and not me? Why should I be able to exploit flat-rate product pricing like that and skim some money from all customers of the delivery service? Why should I pay the toll to drive to a friend's house? They're the one getting the benefit out of having easy access to transportation. What if my taxes pay for all the roads in my town, while the neighboring town chooses to implement tolls instead? Why should I get double-taxed? Prisoner's dilemma and race-to-the-bottom? Why should I have to deal with having my license plate stolen, and police time wasted (who are paid out of taxes), because of people who don't pay the tolls?
  - tshaddox 11mo ago
    Why stop there? Why should I pay for my own food, given that my employer, friends, and family benefit from me being well nourished?
  - hdgvhicv 11mo ago
    Delivery driver passes that costs of delivery on to you, so you do pay.
- hoppyhoppy2 11mo ago
  >The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. Fee-for-service city parks? Public libraries? Fire departments? Sidewalks? What about investing in the "public good"?
kcplate 11mo ago
This is a strange argument that leaves out some important considerations. You could easily say that because the rich don’t need to use public transit the fares charged for riding public transit are a regressive tax on the working class that use it. Shouldn’t you also argue against public transportation ride fares enriching the private companies that build turnstiles and ticketing machines?

nfw2 11mo ago

Edited because I admit original statement below is incorrect. "You could say they are a flat tax since every driver pays the same per usage. You could even argue it is a progressive tax since richer people use toll roads more. The only way you CAN'T describe a toll is a regressive tax. Words have meaning."

kelseyfrog 11mo ago
If you read the literature[1], they're regressive - less regressive than sales tax, but still regressive despite being utilized more by higher income drivers. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/16892 https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/16892
NietzscheanNull 11mo ago
This is completely incorrect. A flat tax has a constant tax rate, which is why it's often referred to as a "proportional tax." Under a true flat tax system, everyone pays the same percentage of their income. A toll is absolutely regressive because the burden it imposes is constant, irrespective of income; poorer individuals will pay a proportionally higher percentage of their income than wealthier counterparts. As income increases the "effective rate" asymptotically approaches zero, which is regressive by definition.
- nfw2 11mo ago
  Good point, I've edited my comment to clarify that it is incorrect

levocardia 11mo ago

This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though. Charging $1/lb for bananas is regressive. Charging $3/gallon for gas is regressive. Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive. Etc...

MengerSponge 11mo ago
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Anatole_France
axiolite 11mo ago
> This is just a general argument against constant prices for everything though. Maybe EVERYTHING shouldn't BE "constant prices". Maybe where there are practical alternatives to constant pricing, those should be preferred and used. > Charging $10 for a t-shirt is regressive. No. Not unless there is only 1 type of t-shirt in the world available. If I'm poor I can go find cheaper t-shirts either less stylish, poorer quality, from a generic brand, from a discount retailer, second-hand (used), packaged in bulk, etc., or maybe wait around for a sale on the t-shirt.
- derektank 11mo ago
  Besides price signals, what other tools are available to communicate local knowledge through an economy? I can’t think of any that are particularly effective
SoftTalker 11mo ago
For commodities like that, competition already pushes prices to the zero profit limit. Everyone gets them as cheaply as they can be produced. And for those who can't afford even that we have subsidies.
nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo ago
Yes we broadly deal with that via lower tax bands for lower earners, but the problem is hard to avoid.

Tiktaalik 11mo ago

The regressiveness issue of tolls is effectively a nitpick compared to the broader more comprehensive issue of how to we create an affordable transportation system for the working class and how do we raise the revenue to fund that through taxes. The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. The best thing we can do to make transportation more affordable in general is giving people more options aside from the car. Taxing the wealthy in order to raise revenue for public transportation and active transportation options dominates any sort of regressiveness issues around road tolls and less traffic makes buses more effective.

cyberax 11mo ago
> The dominant automobile oriented transportation system is very unaffordable and requires high costs of entry. Wait until you hear about the true costs of transit. A transit ride in a large city is typically MORE expensive than a car ride. Even when you take into account the cost of depreciation, insurance, financing and other related expenses. The transit ticket price in the US is typically covers just around 15-20% of the _operational_ _cost_ ("farebox recovery rate"). And the capital costs for transit are off the charts. Seattle is going to pay $180B (yes, that's "B" for "billion") for about 20 miles of new lines. And for one mile of subways in Manhattan, you can build 1500 miles of 6-lane freeway. It's THE real reason we have a failing democracy. Thoughtless social experiments with subsidizing transit have led to distorted housing and job markets. You can't just subsidize one facet of life and hope for it to work.
- bc569a80a344f9c 11mo ago
  “Democracy in the US is failing because of the resources invested into public transit” might be the hottest take I’ve read in 2025. Nice.
  - cyberax 11mo ago
    Yep. Increased over-centralization in the US wouldn't have been possible without transit. And it's the main reason for polarization. You have large cities (SF, Seattle, Chicago, NYC) that are the centers of economic growth, and you have thousands of small cities that are slowly dying. These large cities and their satellites are growing at an unsustainable rate, even though the _overall_ population is flat. And then the cities themselves, they have a huge population of low-income workers who can't afford to live there without some form of subsidies. It started with transit, but now the freaking NYC mayor is talking about subsidized grocery stores. This is another source of polarization. Want to see an even starker example? Look at Japan. Tokyo is in a literal housing price bubble in a country with a _shrinking_ population.

thayne 11mo ago

Or if there are practical, affordable, alternatives. If there is low cost public transit available, then a toll could be an incentive to use public transit instead of driving. But if there is no other viable transportation option, then it is effectively just a regressive tax.

ip26 11mo ago

If you have two lanes and want three lanes, you could build the third as public, or as toll. If you build as public, it comes out of taxes, such as the gas tax. If you don’t have enough public money, perhaps you increase the tax. If you build it as toll, you can bond the construction and pay for it with tolls. At least in theory, this means the toll lane accomplishes the same total road throughput, but shifts the entire cost of its construction to its users instead of depleting public funds. It then appears regressive, but is arguably progressive.

jaredklewis 11mo ago

Well if the government raises more revenue from tolls, they can raise less from other regressive taxes or just redistribute that revenue to lower income brackets. During covid the IRS sent everyone a check. No reason this also can't work at a state level and just have toll funds sent out as checks to lower income brackets.

refurb 11mo ago

This approach is why carbon taxes won't work. Tax carbon, then credit it back to a majority of the population because "they can't afford it". Leaving the people who can afford it to not reduce their carbon use. Thus entirely defeating the point of taxing it in the first place. If you want less driving, make it more expensive. Yes, some people will be in unfortunate situations where they can't afford it, but that's the point.

whimsicalism 11mo ago

i think it is funny how this critique only comes out to play when people dislike a thing for other reasons but want to project a high-minded concern for the poor.

kcplate 11mo ago

> For the poor they are yet another obstacle to trying to make ends meet Only if there is no other way for them to get from point A to point B. If there is, it’s a time vs $ value question to the driver and not regressive, nor an “obstacle”—it’s simply a decision.

maerF0x0 11mo ago

> Rich people pay the tolls without a second thought What's the problem with that? It's an opt-in tax. Also if it's without a second thought then i'd suggest the price is a touch too low.