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From: mcgeer%sirius.Berkeley.EDU@UCBVAX.BERKELEY.EDU
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Re:  What does driving cost?
Message-ID: <12253967970.33.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Mon, 10-Nov-86 23:16:29 EST
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Posted: Mon Nov 10 23:16:29 1986
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To: ametek!walton@csvax.caltech.edu

        Foo.  Charging owners of private automobiles the full cost of
building and maintaining the roadways is hardly a free market economy.
The roadways are a classic example of "neighbourhood effect"; every
one of us derives benefit from the roads, whether we drive an
automobile or not.  Virtually every good that you purchase travels
some part of its journey from field or factory to store via truck;
ambulances, police cars and emergency vehicles of all sorts use and
require an extensive road network.  Given that, the road network will
exist anyway.  The marginal cost per automobile is pretty small.  In
sum, the roads perform a variety of useful services besides getting
people from A to B.  All mass transit does is get people from A to B
slowly, and in discomfort.  The only beneficiaries are the small
minority of individuals for whom the mass transit system's service
nearly approximates an automobiles.

                                                -- Rick
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