Talk:Toll road/Archive 1

message: Acheron vs. Styx (mythology) .... I see references to both vis a vis where Charon plied his trade.  Can someone provide evidence one way or the other (Wikipedia itself seems in conflict). dml 03:08, 8 May 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Acheron'' vs. ''Styx (mythology)''

message: I am considering writing an article about private highways (e.g. the Dulles Greenway). The Cato Institute has a lot of info about this subject. Anyone interested in collaborating? There is a fascinating article at  called Highway Aggravation: The Case For Privatizing The Highways, by Peter Samuel. The argument can be summed up here:
:In Russia communism's failure was epitomized by constant shortages in stores. Empty shelves in supermarkets and department stores and customers in line, wasting hours each week, became the face of the system's failure, as well as a source of huge personal frustration, even rage. Communism failed because prices were not flexible to match supply and demand; because stores were bureaucracies, not businesses; and because revenues went into a central treasury and did not fuel increased capacity and improved service. We in supposedly capitalistic America suffer communism--an unpriced service provided by an unresponsive monopolistic bureaucracy--on most of our highways. Our manifestation of shortage, our equivalent of Russian lines at stores, is daily highway backups. There is no price on rush-hour travel to clear the market. There is no revenue stream directly from road users to road managers to provide incentives either to manage existing capacity to maximum consumer advantage or to adjust capacity to demand.
Rad Racer | Talk 04:58, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Private highway

message: :I'm pretty sure U-Turns are illegal on most freeways in the US, whether or not they are toll. On some freeways, like the Garden State Parkway (toll), service areas in the median make U-Turns possible to be done without going through any Emergency Vehicles Only sign. In fact, signs for Northbound and Southbound are often adjecent. I think most roads have emergency U-Turn breaks in the median all along, but like you said, this is usually illegal. What I don't understand is how making a U-Turn can reduce the toll. On the New Jersey Turnpike you end up paying the maximum possible if you U-Turn. --Chris 23:44, 4 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's to prevent people going opposite directions from meeting up at service areas and swapping tickets. --SPUI (T - C - RFC) 11:22, 8 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  U-Turns on Turnpikes 

message: Anon comments. — Omegatron 21:30, 18 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Moved from [[Turnpike]] 

message: I changed the order of the Tollroads in... part to be alphabetical. I made an exception with regard to the US/UK as this the English Wikipedia.
It would be good to organize this under a separate subheading, I think, but I have not the nerve to write a general text for this now, sadly.
Only trouble that i see with the alphabetical order is the reference to singapore in Norway. --Madcynic 13:27, 27 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Alphabetical order

message: I have added an entry on Croatian toll-roads based on the information contained on http://www.hac.hr/modules.php?r=o_nama and the documents listed there. EurowikiJ 16:33, 10 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Toll roads in Croatia 

message: The section reads:
: ==Early toll roads==
: Early references include the (mythical) Greek ferryman Charon charging a toll to ferry (dead) people across the river Acheron. Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia.  In India, before the 4th century BC the  Arthasastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes. Tolls were used in the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century and 15th century.
:A good example in the 14th century would be Castle Loevestein in the Netherlands, which was built at a strategic point where 2 rivers met, and charged tolls to boats sailing the river.
IMO this reflects a very simplistic analysis.  I'm not qualified to do a sophisticated one, but i bet that the above falls short of this slightly less simplistic one:
# "Toll" comes from Latin and Greek terms related to custom-houses and taxation and presumably thus applies to situations involving sovereignty, such as the Robber barons. "Fare" comes from the same roots as "ferry", and in contrast to "toll", its modern uses have to do with getting a place on a vehicle (land, sea, or air). Fares and tolls, to the extent they are distinguished, are 
#* (fare) a fairly simple phenomenon of a tradesman, who carries you across a distance in a wagon, or across a bay, strait, or river in a boat, and eithers receives his fee, which provides for his subsistence and the cost of maintaining the vehicle, or chalks it up to the cost of doing business when the passenger is tough enough to insist on traveling free; 
#* (toll) is a more complex and less stable situation where someone with enough military force to seize everything that comes by shows some appreciation for the fact that doing so is killing the goose that lays the golden eggs, and extracts a tolerable toll from the commerce that he would end if he lacked restraint.
# It's not clear from Google searches whether Charon collected tolls or fares (or, honestly,  whether the Greeks made the distinction):
#: For
#:: Charon toll OR fare
#: the "fare" hits run something like 70% of the first few pages, but 
#:: Charon toll 
#: gets about 59K while 
#:: Charon fare
#: gets about 53K.
# Charon is certainly early evidence of fares, but not necessarily of tolls, and Hercules's being carried without fee, simply because he glared powerfully, suggests the tradesman giving up his fare, not the warrior extracting a toll.
# In any case, he is only evidence of the Greeks' knowledge of practices that might be forerunners of toll roads, and not himself a forerunner.
# Real forerunners to cite are 
#: well-established highwaymen and
#: robber barons.
#Presumably modern toll roads began from the recognition that Autobahn-like highways would be cost-effective for their societies, that the additional expense of features aiding collection of tolls was relatively small, and that they could be both affordable to users and self financing. At least in some cases, they've been built with the plan of the tolls lasting only until they pay off the bonds issued to finance construction.
Someone can say that sort of thing much better than i, and can make a much better section than we have by doing so.--Jerzy•t 02:46, 14 & 01:24, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Early toll roads 

message: I have removed the following, as I do not believe it to be correct: 
responsibility rested on three groups, the Crown (the King's Highways), the aristocracy owning the land over which the roads ran and the monasteries. 
:The great land-owning monasteries were the most active in road and also bridge maintenance. The Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII greatly reduced the quality of the roads.  
Medieval Law seems to be largely silent on the subject.  The Laws of Edward the Confessor placed four great roads under the King's peace and the rest under the peace of the Earl, probably meaning that each county should be reponsible for repairs, but the medieval county court in practice probably did little.  Peterkingiron 22:52, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  United Kingdom 

message: Perhaps we should note that some Ferrys charge a fee, that could be likened to a toll
Alexander101010 15:20, 4 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ferrys 

message: I created a gallery of pictures at the bottom of the article. Much cleaner. --Woohookitty(meow) 06:35, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pictures 

message: The following paragraph, located in the United States history section (second to last paragraph), does not match the tone of the rest of the article.
:Occasionally it is mooted that some of the Interstate highways, for example, those in the sparsely-populated states just east of the Rocky Mountains, should have been turnpikes. The reason is to have those cross-country trucking firms that use them pay for them. But there is no movement to do this, especially since trucking companies already pay a fuel tax in each state they drive through.
This paragraph needs to be rewritten or possibly removed entirely. --Geekers 18:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Odd paragraph in United States > History section 

message: I read the following in the article.
"Japan has the most expensive toll system in the world, with toll rates averaging approximately US$1.00 per mile (US$0.63 per kilometer)."
"What's this in yen?" I wondered.  Indeed, why quote the figure in USD at all?  That makes about as much sense as giving the English Channel tunnel toll in South African Rand.  Surely the original figure would have been in yen per kilometre not USD per mile.  Conversion from kilometres to miles introduces inaccuracy.  Conversion from yen to USD introduces inaccuracy.  The latter is made even worse by the fact that exchange rates vary ... but, of course, toll rates vary too.  So I went digging about for Japanese tollway fees and this is what I found.
"Under the scheme of the toll pooling system, toll rates were determined in the redemption principle, in which total toll revenues during a pre-fixed period must cover the whole cost of construction, maintenance, interest repayment, and others. The toll rates as of 2001 were as follows:
"Terminal charge:150 yen per single use
"Light car and motorcycle:19.68 yen/km
"Ordinary passenger car:24.60 yen/km
"Small and medium-sized truck:29.52 yen/km
"Large-sized truck:40.59 yen/km
"Special large-sized full trailer:67.65 yen/km 
"Toll fees for ordinary passengers car are 24.6 yen/km plus 150 yen as a terminal charge in Japan ..."
*Personal automobile usehtml version
*Transport Infrastructure Development in Japan and Koreahtml version
*Infrastructure Database for Asia and the Pacific (Japan)
Jimp 06:55, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Japan 

message: I know that in Massachusetts, there are many roads that are called turnpikes that are not Toll Roads.  Shouldn't "Turnpike" be a different article?(141.157.173.162 (talk) 03:53, 24 July 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There is a separate article in turnpikes in England.  If US turnpikes need a separate article, I would suggest that you write it!  Peterkingiron (talk) 15:58, 4 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Why does Turnpike redirect here?

message: This article has become too long.  I would suggest that most of the USA section should be moved to a separate article on 'Turnpikes (USA)', leaving a relatively brief account of the subject here and a cross-reference.  Similarly the section on the UK, which is largely historical and partly concerned with other issues of road maintenance would be better as a separate article Turnpike Roads (Britain).  I have written a brief article, but the account fo the subject here is more detailed.  Accordingly some fo the section here needs to be merged with that.   I have not attached a merge templete to the section, because there seems to be a fault in Wiki at present.   Peterkingiron 23:28, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought the same thing.  I've made a start on reducing the size of the article.  So far I've split the US section into a new article, Toll roads in the United States.  The article is still too big and overwhelmed by the National toll-road differences section.  Maybe this whole section should be split out (leaving a summary).  I'll continue to split the article up.  Instead of picking through this talk page to split it accordingly I've archived the lot.   The Talk page(s) of the new article(s) can link to this archive. Jimp 15:18, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

text: I've split the article up further into two more new articles: Toll roads in Europe and Toll roads around the World. Jimp 01:12, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That may have been necessary, but you should have summarised each of the other articles in a few sentences, as well as using a "main" template for crossreference.  The article in its present form is a very poor one.  Peterkingiron (talk) 22:26, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Structure of article 

message: *as strongly opposed as one can be I live on a private road that is, in no way, shape, or form, a toll road.  Such private roads are very common in rural areas. i kan reed 20:37, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Proposed merge with [[Private road]]

message: I think this terminology may be too limiting.  I know of one (possibly uniquely anomalous) toll road that doesn't really fit into either category.  The Dulles Toll Road it employs a hybrid system.  There is one main toll plaza (like the "open" system) on the eastern end of the road, but each entrance or exit west of this toll plaza (with some exceptions mentioned in the article) has its own toll booth.  
But, unlike the "closed" system described here, a ticket isn't issued when getting on the road; nor is the fee for exiting the road based on distance traveled.  All fees are fixed.  (For example getting on this road from the DC beltway and getting off in Herndon, VA (~9 mi.) would be $1.25; $0.75 at the toll plaza and $0.50 at the Herndon exit.  But getting on at the first exit past the toll plaza (<1 mi.) would also be $1.25).
It may be this is is so unusual that it doesn't fit into the terminology; but I would like to see a reference for the common use of "open" vs "closed" and see that the common definition matches that put forth in the article.  Occasional Reader 22:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I believe the use of the terms is beginning to shift toward "closed" meaning that a motorists needs to stop for the toll; and "open" meaning that no stop is necessary (i.e. the utilisation of electronic reader technology). --Bossi (talk • gallery • contrib) 23:58, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Closed vs Open Toll roads 

message: How does the sentence The first major deployment of an RFID electronic toll collection system was on the Dallas North Tollway in 1989 by Amtech .  match up to the use of similar technology in Bergen to manage traffic congestion in 1986. Certainly the aims of the schemes are slightly different but the technology seems to be very similar and the wording here seem to make a claim for first use. Velela 19:09, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: First RDI use 

message: I think there should be a crticism section. Don't people hate toll roads? They're like a permenant traffic jam. 69.181.83.29 22:08, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that automated toll collection largely speeds up the process of getting through toll plazas. Captain Zyrain 08:01, 14 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  criticism 

message: I think this article used to have a reasonable coverage for a number of countries, but some one appears to have forked that material off inot a separate article without summarising it here.  The result is that the article now has an excessive focus on USA.  Peterkingiron (talk) 22:23, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Globalise 

message: A change of emphasis on the above - Turnpike Trusts in England were primarily intended to maintain the roads, not build new ones. They were able to use a portion of the Statute Duty from the Parishes through which the highway already passed. This was augmented with the tolls they collected under the powers given in the Act of Parliament relating to that particular road. They did make some improvements by building short sections of new road but the construction of totally new roads was a rarity. Southern England was intensively farmed by the 18th century and getting new land to build a road would have been as difficult as it subsequently was for the private enterprises that built canals and then the railways on totally new lines of communication with new capital. Telford adapted the roads that had previously been under a  number of earlier turnpike trusts when he improved the road from London to Holyhead (for Ireland). (A.rosevear (talk) 17:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Turnpike Trusts 

message: In US English, specifically eastern and heartland dialects where the various types of tolling roads are most prevalent, the opening listed AKAs each have different meanings. A turnpike is a closed-access single-toll highway, often commercialized. A driver gets a marker (or a scan notice on open road tolling systems, when they enter, and pay only once when they leave, often at a booth toll house. A tollway is a pay-as-you-go. Drivers will pay along the way as well as when they enter or leave. They are also often commercialized. A toll road is equivalent to a tollway, though without the commercial oasis centres. Just if someone wants to mention or break down the differences in in the US.Lostinlodos (talk) 22:36, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I would suggest that the appropriate place to deal with this may be in Toll roads in the United States .  This is so that this worldwide article does not become cluttered with local detail.  (From England) Peterkingiron (talk) 19:35, 2 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  Gotcha, I didn't know there was a Toll roads in the United States  so it makes sense not to disambiguate the terms here then! Lostinlodos (talk) 13:20, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  The AKAs In US English 

message: Can someone add a section on the etymology of "turnpike" as, while toll road is intuitive, turnpike isn't so it'd be interesting to know how this word found its place in the lexicon.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.67.62.142 (talk) 17:46, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: The word has several meanings, besides the reference to roads, including a barrier to detain water on river navigations.  In the context of roads, it is probasbly a pike (or long staff) placed across the road to block it, so that the toll collector extract the toll.  This was hinged so that it turned to let traffic through.  This statement is made without adequate evidence, and should not be moved to the article, unless a citation can be provided for it.  Peterkingiron (talk) 10:00, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

text: All my books are in store right now, but that is correct. When I finish moving I will dig it out. SimonTrew (talk) 19:47, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Etymology 

message: We have a separate Toll roads in the United States, also an interational article Toll roads around the world.  The right place for discussion specifically of US system is ther former.  This article does currently seem rather too US-centric, and may indeed need to be pruned of some of that to globalise it.  Peterkingiron (talk) 10:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  globalise again 

message: I could stuff this into the bottom of "Structure of the Article" but experience has shown that gets little notice if you do that, though really it belongs there. So my apologies in advance.
Really I think the "Early Toll Roads", i.e. History, section should come first-- or perhaps Etymology comes first (I will dig out some reliable sources for this)-- before going into modern methods of payment etc etc. In most articles the history usually comes first. SimonTrew (talk) 19:53, 5 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  History/Early Toll Roads 

message: The criticism section needs to be expanded because it doesn't address the negative impact toll roads can have with regards to tourism. I found this document from 1998 that gives some numbers regarding potential negative impact of toll interstates on tourist spending, however it's 11 years out of date now so I'm hesitant to add it to the article. There must be some criticism out there for things like the Westpark Tollway which appear to be set up to not allow "non-locals" to use the road due to the requirement that every vehicle have a transponder. There are also some examples (just look at any US road atlas and I bet this holds true elsewhere) where the only way to enter a city is to have to pay a toll, which once again must have attracted some criticism. 68.146.81.123 (talk) 16:21, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Criticism section

message: It would be cool to have an 1800s-era photo or illustration depicting an early turnpike. -- Beland 13:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Photo request