5 ms·

They're wrong on multiple fronts, they're regressive. The poor bear the brunt of them. Despite the bad press, a well run government highway is much cheaper, ge

They're wrong on multiple fronts, they're regressive. The poor bear the brunt of them. Despite the bad press, a well run government highway is much cheaper, generally 30% or more of that toll goes directly to maintaining the system and it's profits, there's more efficient funding methods out there. They're natural monopolies, they fill up with traffic regardless of how much you rip people off.

Alupis 10mo ago
> The poor bear the brunt of them. Going to need a citation for that, because it seems the wealth(ier) and/or business-classes would bear the most significant burden of toll roads. Typically, in my experience, tolls are assessed at boundaries of cities, regions, and intra-region/city transit is toll-free. Businesses that use the toll road (think trucking/freight, etc) pay tolls because they come from outside of the boundary. Wealthier individuals may commute into the boundary for work, also paying tolls. One can live inside the city of San Francisco and never pay a toll - but someone that lives outside and commutes in for work or business pays tolls every day. Other states, such as Illinois have a vast amount of toll roads - where tolls are trivial (typically) but also still only assessed at boundaries. The roads are often much more well maintained than government roads, since the toll collector has a direct financial interest in maintaining traffic on the roads.
- mikewarot 10mo ago
  Here in Chicagoland, the major tollways aren't boundary oriented, they're just charging effectively per mile. The same is true of my home state of Indiana. They were supposed to be free once the bonds were paid off, but, of course, that never happened.
  - Alupis 10mo ago
    When I was in the Chicago area, I paid no tolls when I entered and exited the tollway within the same region. Perhaps that has changed within the last 10ish years? It doesn't seem practical to charge tolls at every onramp.
    - bbarn 10mo ago
      It was very much on and off for many years. It was intended to cover the costs then go away. Instead they installed stream lined overhead tolls to not have to wait at the toll booth anymore and now it's just a perpetual tax. It's also partially owned by outside investment (specifically the skyway from Indiana)
      - Alupis 10mo ago
        Very interesting. That still doesn't imply the "poor bear the brunt" (the original GP's assertion). Likely the inverse - since again, businesses and wealthy individuals are going to travel by vehicle vastly more than "poor" individuals.
        ceejayoz 10mo ago
        Plenty of poor people drive, and the tolls aren't really adjusted for income.
    - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
      Ha ha, definitely changed in the last year or two. I've been to Chicago a few times only to get a nice bill in the mail for tolls (I live two states away). When it's all done electronically, you sometimes have no idea you've had your pocket picked. ;-)
    - ocdtrekkie 10mo ago
      It is zone-based. If you are close enough to a plaza, you won't be tolled getting on, if you're just after a plaza, you won't be tolled getting off. The toll for each ramp is more expensive the further it is from a plaza. It's possible for you to hit only one ramp toll in a short run, but if you were to math the total paid on any given route it will work out to be roughly linear with your distance.
  - potato3732842 10mo ago
    >but, of course, that never happened. Because there is no consequences for the peddlers or the supporters. You wouldn't take seriously someone who advocates with a straight face for reinstating prohibition or segregation yet it's perfectly socially acceptable to say "no, it will be different this time". It's not just toll roads. You see this with every recurring bad thing.
duxup 10mo ago
Yeah work from home, but all the jobs for the less well off require driving.
scoofy 10mo ago
The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Roads aren't free to build and/or maintain... in fact, it's extremely expensive to build and maintain them. It's just that all levels of gov't have allowed revenues from the gas tax get inflated away by both regular inflation and increased fuel efficiency. Determining who pays to maintain these systems is a political decision, but it certainly makes sense that we should really be charging people who use them. Adding a luxury tax to folks who want to skip traffic seems like a free lunch for everyone else. At the end of the day, suburbanites want to force the rural and urban dwellers to subsidize their primary mode of transportation (large, dense highways), but it's becoming more and more politically untenable. I think the most important thing to think about here, is how this affects long term real estate values and development patterns. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  >. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago. We incentivize density in this country by having a ton of compliance hoops that increase cost on a per-building basis. People might just decide that they love suburbs so much that they vote for politicians who tell the Strong Towns crowd, the environmentalists and the trades and engineering groups to shove it and we go back to the 1980s and slap up street after street of chap AF single family homes on septic with nary a site plan in site.
- JKCalhoun 10mo ago
  > The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Sure, but the point of a regressive vs. progressive tax is who bears the brunt.
  - scoofy 10mo ago
    The problem with a progressive tax for a service is that there is no pricing mechanism to direct it. If fewer people drive, and more take the train, how is the state compelled to shift funding? This is one of the hard problems of politics, and it’s one of the reasons markets have been successful, but most people entirely ignore it. Again, the point of the article is that we already do not have enough budget for road infrastructure, and the roads are already significantly subsidized by federal highway spending. Any solution of “more taxes on wealth and earnings” is theoretically doable, but practically very difficult. Taxing use seems entirely reasonable.
lokar 10mo ago
They don't have to have any profit, they can be 100% public infrastructure. And the excess revenue can be used to subsidize transit. Tax what you want less of, subsidize what you want more of.
Gigachad 10mo ago
A well run public transport system is significantly cheaper.
- Alupis 10mo ago
  Public transit systems are only effective in highly-dense, urban settings. Toll roads are often not within dense urban cities - usually on the outskirts, suburbs, highways, bridges and more. Public transit simply doesn't work in these places because of how large and spread-out the US is.
  - Gigachad 10mo ago
    You’re forgetting how this is all interconnected. Creating the large freeways creates sparse housing that requires freeways. Creating public transport does the reverse. Before all these massive road developments it’s not like people just sat at home and couldn’t go anywhere.
    - Alupis 10mo ago
      So what's your proposal? Go back in time 200 years and create a public-transit system? The US is huge. There is no feasible way to support public transit for 95%+ of it's land-mass. That's not going to change anytime soon, or ever. Also, most mass-transit systems in the US operate at significant loss, even with government (ie. taxpayer) funding and collecting rider-fare. A lot of public transit systems are in complete disrepair and are severely lacking. Buses and lightrails are never going to be "cheaper", as convenient or accessible as roads and vehicles are.
      - stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
        I subscribe to the opinion that there are probably some good reasons why people in the US tend to spread out when they have the option. I think the problem of collective human action is complex enough that optimizing at the individual level is probably the best we can do. I would rather spend time thinking about how to serve people in ways that they actually want instead of “big idea” approaches.
themafia 10mo ago
It's the traffic jam at the toll plaza that I completely fail to understand. It massively slows traffic town, creates hazards, it's uniquely unsafe for the workers, it ruins engine and roadway efficiency, and causes engine breakdown on unseasonably hot days. I cannot imagine that this is the best way to fund roads.
- fma 10mo ago
  I dont like privatized highways or HOV, but...people still have toll roads? Georgia and Florida and surrounding states have electronic passes and pay by toll if you dont have that. I have thrown coins into a bucket in at least 15 years.
  - encrypted_bird 10mo ago
    "electronic passes" "pay by toll" These are still toll roads, just a more modern iteration. Toll road ≠ physical cash
  - The_President 10mo ago
    I liked the coin bucket because there was a skill about how an efficient driver could toss the change into it without even stopping.
- scoofy 10mo ago
  The vast majority of the tolling infrastructure no longer uses plazas. In California and in Texas, the tech exists to prevent you from even noticing. That's not deployed everywhere, especially in areas where they do rate-limiting, like the Bay Bridge, where they need you to slow down and stop when the bridge traffic gets too high, but most areas you wouldn't even notice. This is also causing problems with people using fake plates and magnetized plates. There's an entire growing industry around it. We're going to have to eventually start requiring some kind of transponder that repeats your plate number for sensors that can't be trivially covered... or you know... just raise the gas tax. https://youtube.com/shorts/HTVBMPGvZJw https://youtube.com/shorts/HTVBMPGvZJw https://youtube.com/shorts/lKXv_bA4lYs https://youtube.com/shorts/lKXv_bA4lYs
stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
It’s probably necessary long term as gasoline taxes are yielding less per mile as total fuel efficiency improves. The dedicated funding source is necessary because if DOT construction budgets (which are huge) were in the general fund, they would be looted by lawmakers to fund patronage programs and the entire surface transportation network would be unfit for service within 20 years. TxDOT loves NTTA because it’s a huge cash cow and hits non-residents hard. If I have to go to Dallas, I expect to spend at least $25 one way. Usually someone else is footing that bill. By extension, I consider myself very lucky that I don’t have to live there.
- yurishimo 10mo ago
  Question, where are you usually going where a toll is favorable in Dallas? I haven’t lived there since 2022 but I grew up there and learned to drive in Dallas. There are only a handful of places that require taking the toll to get there and save massive amounts of time. Many times, the access road is almost as fast (especially outside of rush hour). But yea, I guess if you drive the entire length of George Bush/DNT to save 10 minutes, it might cost you that much for a day trip…
  - stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
    It was George Bush/DNT. Usually coming from out of state to Plano or downtown Dallas
wtcactus 10mo ago
I'm curious, do you have any data for that (and of an actual "a well run government highway)? In my country, there were several "scandals" (altough I don't think anyone ever got arrested) about highway construction and how they massively went over budget. I can also say that when they are new, they are great to ride, but, since the budget only thinks about construction, after a couple of decades they start degrading badly until a new massive budget is again used for major work on them.
kcplate 10mo ago
> The poor bear the brunt of them But consciously, at least where I live. There are definitely optional non-toll routes around me. Toll roads come at a financial cost to offset a time cost. Non-toll roads come at a greater time cost vs financial cost. If someone chooses to use a toll road regardless of their personal financial circumstances because the value to them is worth the time savings…so be it.
- zamadatix 10mo ago
  All roads and their usage comes at a cost, toll roads just at more of a cost due to their additional overheads. What you end up with is a more expensive path that disincentivizes a public path there. Drivers on it pay the overheads of the tolls, drivers avoiding it continue to pay more in gas and wear. Everyone would pay less if it were just a public path.
  - kcplate 10mo ago
    Seems to me you are focused on money rather than time here. However, people using these road are not in alignment with that metric. What’s important is not the cost, but the value. Why choose a toll road over a public path from A to B? It’s all about saving time—that’s the value the transaction provides those users. If a toll road becomes public, its value goes away because traffic increases on it, eliminating any benefit of traffic reduction that provides time savings that the gate keeping of the charging a toll provides. Also this notion of “everyone now bears the cost of the road” creates damage. That cost now hits the folks who don’t want to use it currently because they do not see its value. All you have done is hurt both the drivers of the road and the drivers who do not use the road by “sharing the burden” and making it public.
    - zamadatix 10mo ago
      I'm not sure money and time are cleanly separable metrics for this in that changing one changes the other, which is why it's not as simple as looking at the toll roads' dynamics in isolation. If a region spends more on transport infrastructure then the average transit time is going to be less (and conversely the opposite) for pretty much any method of buildout except fraud. The notion of "everyone now bears the cost of the road" causes the roads to be optimized towards the average public good. This is not to say it's without tradeoff to anybody at all - just that it's geared towards the best tradeoff for everyone as a whole. The notion of "those able to bear the cost and extra overhead of the toll road bear its cost" certainly still causes a reduction in time for those willing and able to pay, but only for the able who now have no interest in their public infrastructure funding duplicating a path they already have for the common good. That's where the shift in burden to the poor so the rest can have shorter commute comes from. If everyone had the same opportunity cost to use the toll road then it wouldn't have the shift in burden as much as a pure shift in utility. Of course it doesn't have the same opportunity cost, so who benefits from the toll road is more slanted than who benefits from the public road. Whether or not the shift of burden is acceptable/ideal is a matter of opinion on public policy, but it's there.

Alupis 10mo ago

> The poor bear the brunt of them. Going to need a citation for that, because it seems the wealth(ier) and/or business-classes would bear the most significant burden of toll roads. Typically, in my experience, tolls are assessed at boundaries of cities, regions, and intra-region/city transit is toll-free. Businesses that use the toll road (think trucking/freight, etc) pay tolls because they come from outside of the boundary. Wealthier individuals may commute into the boundary for work, also paying tolls. One can live inside the city of San Francisco and never pay a toll - but someone that lives outside and commutes in for work or business pays tolls every day. Other states, such as Illinois have a vast amount of toll roads - where tolls are trivial (typically) but also still only assessed at boundaries. The roads are often much more well maintained than government roads, since the toll collector has a direct financial interest in maintaining traffic on the roads.

mikewarot 10mo ago
Here in Chicagoland, the major tollways aren't boundary oriented, they're just charging effectively per mile. The same is true of my home state of Indiana. They were supposed to be free once the bonds were paid off, but, of course, that never happened.
- Alupis 10mo ago
  When I was in the Chicago area, I paid no tolls when I entered and exited the tollway within the same region. Perhaps that has changed within the last 10ish years? It doesn't seem practical to charge tolls at every onramp.
  - bbarn 10mo ago
    It was very much on and off for many years. It was intended to cover the costs then go away. Instead they installed stream lined overhead tolls to not have to wait at the toll booth anymore and now it's just a perpetual tax. It's also partially owned by outside investment (specifically the skyway from Indiana)
    - Alupis 10mo ago
      Very interesting. That still doesn't imply the "poor bear the brunt" (the original GP's assertion). Likely the inverse - since again, businesses and wealthy individuals are going to travel by vehicle vastly more than "poor" individuals.
      - ceejayoz 10mo ago
        Plenty of poor people drive, and the tolls aren't really adjusted for income.
  - JKCalhoun 10mo ago
    Ha ha, definitely changed in the last year or two. I've been to Chicago a few times only to get a nice bill in the mail for tolls (I live two states away). When it's all done electronically, you sometimes have no idea you've had your pocket picked. ;-)
  - ocdtrekkie 10mo ago
    It is zone-based. If you are close enough to a plaza, you won't be tolled getting on, if you're just after a plaza, you won't be tolled getting off. The toll for each ramp is more expensive the further it is from a plaza. It's possible for you to hit only one ramp toll in a short run, but if you were to math the total paid on any given route it will work out to be roughly linear with your distance.
- potato3732842 10mo ago
  >but, of course, that never happened. Because there is no consequences for the peddlers or the supporters. You wouldn't take seriously someone who advocates with a straight face for reinstating prohibition or segregation yet it's perfectly socially acceptable to say "no, it will be different this time". It's not just toll roads. You see this with every recurring bad thing.

duxup 10mo ago

Yeah work from home, but all the jobs for the less well off require driving.

scoofy 10mo ago

The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Roads aren't free to build and/or maintain... in fact, it's extremely expensive to build and maintain them. It's just that all levels of gov't have allowed revenues from the gas tax get inflated away by both regular inflation and increased fuel efficiency. Determining who pays to maintain these systems is a political decision, but it certainly makes sense that we should really be charging people who use them. Adding a luxury tax to folks who want to skip traffic seems like a free lunch for everyone else. At the end of the day, suburbanites want to force the rural and urban dwellers to subsidize their primary mode of transportation (large, dense highways), but it's becoming more and more politically untenable. I think the most important thing to think about here, is how this affects long term real estate values and development patterns. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago.

potato3732842 10mo ago
>. Regardless of whether there are tolls or a higher gas tax, the current suburban development pattern is going to get more and more expensive for the end users, but you could have learned that from Strong Towns a decade ago. We incentivize density in this country by having a ton of compliance hoops that increase cost on a per-building basis. People might just decide that they love suburbs so much that they vote for politicians who tell the Strong Towns crowd, the environmentalists and the trades and engineering groups to shove it and we go back to the 1980s and slap up street after street of chap AF single family homes on septic with nary a site plan in site.
JKCalhoun 10mo ago
> The point of the article is that you're paying one way or another. Sure, but the point of a regressive vs. progressive tax is who bears the brunt.
- scoofy 10mo ago
  The problem with a progressive tax for a service is that there is no pricing mechanism to direct it. If fewer people drive, and more take the train, how is the state compelled to shift funding? This is one of the hard problems of politics, and it’s one of the reasons markets have been successful, but most people entirely ignore it. Again, the point of the article is that we already do not have enough budget for road infrastructure, and the roads are already significantly subsidized by federal highway spending. Any solution of “more taxes on wealth and earnings” is theoretically doable, but practically very difficult. Taxing use seems entirely reasonable.

lokar 10mo ago

They don't have to have any profit, they can be 100% public infrastructure. And the excess revenue can be used to subsidize transit. Tax what you want less of, subsidize what you want more of.

Gigachad 10mo ago

A well run public transport system is significantly cheaper.

Alupis 10mo ago
Public transit systems are only effective in highly-dense, urban settings. Toll roads are often not within dense urban cities - usually on the outskirts, suburbs, highways, bridges and more. Public transit simply doesn't work in these places because of how large and spread-out the US is.
- Gigachad 10mo ago
  You’re forgetting how this is all interconnected. Creating the large freeways creates sparse housing that requires freeways. Creating public transport does the reverse. Before all these massive road developments it’s not like people just sat at home and couldn’t go anywhere.
  - Alupis 10mo ago
    So what's your proposal? Go back in time 200 years and create a public-transit system? The US is huge. There is no feasible way to support public transit for 95%+ of it's land-mass. That's not going to change anytime soon, or ever. Also, most mass-transit systems in the US operate at significant loss, even with government (ie. taxpayer) funding and collecting rider-fare. A lot of public transit systems are in complete disrepair and are severely lacking. Buses and lightrails are never going to be "cheaper", as convenient or accessible as roads and vehicles are.
    - stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
      I subscribe to the opinion that there are probably some good reasons why people in the US tend to spread out when they have the option. I think the problem of collective human action is complex enough that optimizing at the individual level is probably the best we can do. I would rather spend time thinking about how to serve people in ways that they actually want instead of “big idea” approaches.

themafia 10mo ago

It's the traffic jam at the toll plaza that I completely fail to understand. It massively slows traffic town, creates hazards, it's uniquely unsafe for the workers, it ruins engine and roadway efficiency, and causes engine breakdown on unseasonably hot days. I cannot imagine that this is the best way to fund roads.

fma 10mo ago
I dont like privatized highways or HOV, but...people still have toll roads? Georgia and Florida and surrounding states have electronic passes and pay by toll if you dont have that. I have thrown coins into a bucket in at least 15 years.
- encrypted_bird 10mo ago
  "electronic passes" "pay by toll" These are still toll roads, just a more modern iteration. Toll road ≠ physical cash
- The_President 10mo ago
  I liked the coin bucket because there was a skill about how an efficient driver could toss the change into it without even stopping.
scoofy 10mo ago
The vast majority of the tolling infrastructure no longer uses plazas. In California and in Texas, the tech exists to prevent you from even noticing. That's not deployed everywhere, especially in areas where they do rate-limiting, like the Bay Bridge, where they need you to slow down and stop when the bridge traffic gets too high, but most areas you wouldn't even notice. This is also causing problems with people using fake plates and magnetized plates. There's an entire growing industry around it. We're going to have to eventually start requiring some kind of transponder that repeats your plate number for sensors that can't be trivially covered... or you know... just raise the gas tax. https://youtube.com/shorts/HTVBMPGvZJw https://youtube.com/shorts/HTVBMPGvZJw https://youtube.com/shorts/lKXv_bA4lYs https://youtube.com/shorts/lKXv_bA4lYs

stocksinsmocks 10mo ago

It’s probably necessary long term as gasoline taxes are yielding less per mile as total fuel efficiency improves. The dedicated funding source is necessary because if DOT construction budgets (which are huge) were in the general fund, they would be looted by lawmakers to fund patronage programs and the entire surface transportation network would be unfit for service within 20 years. TxDOT loves NTTA because it’s a huge cash cow and hits non-residents hard. If I have to go to Dallas, I expect to spend at least $25 one way. Usually someone else is footing that bill. By extension, I consider myself very lucky that I don’t have to live there.

yurishimo 10mo ago
Question, where are you usually going where a toll is favorable in Dallas? I haven’t lived there since 2022 but I grew up there and learned to drive in Dallas. There are only a handful of places that require taking the toll to get there and save massive amounts of time. Many times, the access road is almost as fast (especially outside of rush hour). But yea, I guess if you drive the entire length of George Bush/DNT to save 10 minutes, it might cost you that much for a day trip…
- stocksinsmocks 10mo ago
  It was George Bush/DNT. Usually coming from out of state to Plano or downtown Dallas

wtcactus 10mo ago

I'm curious, do you have any data for that (and of an actual "a well run government highway)? In my country, there were several "scandals" (altough I don't think anyone ever got arrested) about highway construction and how they massively went over budget. I can also say that when they are new, they are great to ride, but, since the budget only thinks about construction, after a couple of decades they start degrading badly until a new massive budget is again used for major work on them.

kcplate 10mo ago

> The poor bear the brunt of them But consciously, at least where I live. There are definitely optional non-toll routes around me. Toll roads come at a financial cost to offset a time cost. Non-toll roads come at a greater time cost vs financial cost. If someone chooses to use a toll road regardless of their personal financial circumstances because the value to them is worth the time savings…so be it.

zamadatix 10mo ago
All roads and their usage comes at a cost, toll roads just at more of a cost due to their additional overheads. What you end up with is a more expensive path that disincentivizes a public path there. Drivers on it pay the overheads of the tolls, drivers avoiding it continue to pay more in gas and wear. Everyone would pay less if it were just a public path.
- kcplate 10mo ago
  Seems to me you are focused on money rather than time here. However, people using these road are not in alignment with that metric. What’s important is not the cost, but the value. Why choose a toll road over a public path from A to B? It’s all about saving time—that’s the value the transaction provides those users. If a toll road becomes public, its value goes away because traffic increases on it, eliminating any benefit of traffic reduction that provides time savings that the gate keeping of the charging a toll provides. Also this notion of “everyone now bears the cost of the road” creates damage. That cost now hits the folks who don’t want to use it currently because they do not see its value. All you have done is hurt both the drivers of the road and the drivers who do not use the road by “sharing the burden” and making it public.
  - zamadatix 10mo ago
    I'm not sure money and time are cleanly separable metrics for this in that changing one changes the other, which is why it's not as simple as looking at the toll roads' dynamics in isolation. If a region spends more on transport infrastructure then the average transit time is going to be less (and conversely the opposite) for pretty much any method of buildout except fraud. The notion of "everyone now bears the cost of the road" causes the roads to be optimized towards the average public good. This is not to say it's without tradeoff to anybody at all - just that it's geared towards the best tradeoff for everyone as a whole. The notion of "those able to bear the cost and extra overhead of the toll road bear its cost" certainly still causes a reduction in time for those willing and able to pay, but only for the able who now have no interest in their public infrastructure funding duplicating a path they already have for the common good. That's where the shift in burden to the poor so the rest can have shorter commute comes from. If everyone had the same opportunity cost to use the toll road then it wouldn't have the shift in burden as much as a pure shift in utility. Of course it doesn't have the same opportunity cost, so who benefits from the toll road is more slanted than who benefits from the public road. Whether or not the shift of burden is acceptable/ideal is a matter of opinion on public policy, but it's there.