Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!paul@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU@dual.UUCP
From: paul@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU@dual.UUCP
Newsgroups: mod.politics
Subject: Road-users paying for it
Message-ID: <12267766288.17.MCGREW@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Date: Fri, 2-Jan-87 14:32:54 EST
Article-I.D.: RED.12267766288.17.MCGREW
Posted: Fri Jan  2 14:32:54 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Jan-87 18:51:23 EST
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: dual!paul@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU
Organization: The ARPA Internet
Lines: 59
Approved: poli-sci@red.rutgers.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.
What kind of benefits did you have in mind? Smog or being maimed and 
injured or killed.

> Virtually every good that you purchase travels some part of its
> journey from field or factory to store via truck
This is currently true, but is no reason why the users of roads should
not pay for them.  The current road subsidy is largely responsible for
the heavy use of trucks.  Without the road subsidies, and particularly
the almost free-to-user "Interstates" much more traffic would move by
rail.

> ambulances, police
> cars and emergency vehicles of all sorts use and require an 
> extensive road network.
Ambulances, police cars and emergency vehicles only really require a
network of local roads.  Given that well over 50% of accidents and
emergencies are caused by or related to automobile traffic anyway, it
would seem reasonable that road-users pay for this too.  Perhaps they
can subsidize non-road users for a change.

> Given that, the road network will exist anyway.  The marginal cost
> per automobile is pretty small.
I am not convinced that the marginal cost per automobile is small.
The road network only exists in the form it does today because it is
heavily subsidised.

> In sum, the roads perform a variety of useful services besides 
> getting people from A to B.
This is absolute drivel.  The ONLY service roads provide is to get
objects from A to B.  In all other respects they are very
unsatisfactory.  They are dangerous, killing ten of thousands a year.
They are the chief cause of pollution in most cities.  How close to a
Freeway would you like to live?

> 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.

Once again little of this is true.  Mass Transit benefits everyone,
even drivers.  Every person who travels by public transit leaves extra
room on road for those who are not travelling by public transit.  Also
in the Bay Area and other real city areas, the "minority" that uses
public transit is far from small.  Certainly the Los Angeles solution
of building ever wider Freeways at taxpayer's expense is no solution.
The result is always the same: the congestion that was to be reduced
by the new Freeway is moved to another section of road.  In the end
you get a sprawling city of clogged roads.

Paul Wilcox-Baker.

-------