From: jmorriso@ee.ubc.ca (John Paul Morrison)
Subject: Re: Anyone want to buy a used country?
Organization: University of BC, Electrical Engineering
Date: Sun, 22 Nov 1992 01:04:50 GMT

In article <1992Nov21.213123.7529@news.columbia.edu> gld@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu (Gary L Dare) writes:
>golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Gerald Olchowy) writes:
>>
>>For example, why should property tax or income tax pay for highway
>>construction...we should just put up toll booths on the highway.
>
>No, go for gas taxes ... scale them higher on the highway or something
>(you gotta stop for gas at some point even if you tank up downtown).
>If you've ever had the pleasure of sitting at a toll booth (one of the
>bigger culture shocks you'll ever have leaving Canada) you'll see.
>Really.


Gas taxes are high enough anyway, and the revenue colected from a gas tax
would give no idication where demand is.

Our transportation system has been neglected for a couple of reasons:
1. it is easy to neglect. Normal repairs and contruction can easily
   be put off to save money. But wear and tear increases imperceptably at
   at first, then later accelerates until it is too late.

2. There is no way to coordinate supply and demand. A toll would provide
  an obvious market incentive to planners. If a certain road has high revenue,
  then obviously there is excess demand, and that demand driven revenue
  from the tolls would provide money to build new roads etc., increasing the
  supply. The Economist magazine had an excellent editorial on this. Everyone
  in the government should read it!

  basically, the current, non-toll system relies on the most inefficient means
  of allocating services: queuing. It is ironic that we accept this sytem,
   which is basically  the queuing system that the Soviets used to allocat
  ALL goods and services, not just roads and infrastructure. WE should scrap
  this in favor ifof tolls, and let the market prevail!


AS for the delays of waiting in lines for toll booths: this is a red-herring.
Complete non-issue! There are a number of systems being tested where you 
put a sticker or something on your car, and a scanner at the toll booth
deducts the toll as you go by.  No waiting there. (testing in Houston I think)

These tolls and gas taxes should be collect by an independent transportation
dept. To be fair, the revenue must be used to pay for the roads and other
services built, and to pay for building new ones as demand increases.

And of course the usual  NDP critics regurgitated their usual nonsense:
user tolls on roads etc. would be "regressive", etc. Poor people wouldn't
be able to pay tolls for roads etc. The usual ban the market and regulate
attitude. The NDP forgets that food, rent etc. all operate on market
principles. Does this mean that the NDP wants to freeze the cost of food,
and subsidize and regulate it? Scary, but the one implies the other, so they
must want that. The NDP types forget that we have a system of
income transfer and assistance payments which could be modified to 
compensate for the affects. Just as the GST credit to low income people
compensates for the "regressive" affect of the GST.



>
>gld
>--
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Je me souviens ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>Gary L. Dare				Jesus Saves!
>> gld@cunixd.cc.columbia.EDU 		Gretzky gets the rebound -
>> gld@cunixc.BITNET			he shoots, he scores!


-- 
__________________________________________________________________________
 John Paul Morrison                     |  
 University of British Columbia, Canada |  
 Electrical Engineering                 |   .sig file without a cause
 jmorriso@ee.ubc.ca              VE7JPM |  
________________________________________|_________________________________
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