For the record, I've never seen Ando post anything but complaints about Simplicity. It's just the internet, guys. Who cares what people say about you?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Simplicity
If subsidy isn't the point, then what is? Where is the problem here and how has it so direly manifested? Should the citizen who pays their property taxes be less entitled to their transportation network so they can pad the margins of the trucking company who's only 'moving goods'? Should somebody living in a small condo in the inner city be entitled to use the road network once per week? because they paid 1/6 of the property taxes as somebody living in River Park South? What kind of arguments are these?
The road system is not a 'free good'. It has a price. It's paid for by taxes stretching all the way from property taxes to provincial and federal income taxes and consumption taxes. It's paid for by nearly everybody. What you probably mean to say is that it has no variable component, but even that's not true given that taxation can be adjusted. I have no idea what you might call 'overuse' given that there are no roads in this city that are absolutely impassable at all times of the day and where traffic of any material nature is confined to more than an hour or so twice a day, so you're getting carried away with the point.
These arguments are fine if you want to speak strictly hypothetically. For one, you aren't going to walk back car culture at this stage of the game in winter cities, so let's dismiss that out of hand. But secondly, think of the logistics of this if productivity is so important. For starters, if you set up tolls, you'll end up with the collective action problem of people intentionally avoiding them putting more pressure on roads not designed for that traffic. But more importantly, how can anybody possible administer a user fee for a road system in any way other than what they're already done which is institute a consumption tax (the gas tax)?
The leftist economist at this point would tell you that you educate people. The right-leaning economist will tell you that people do whatever is most convenient and that you're wasting your time. I would take my cues from history and that tells me your ideas, while having merit, are theoretically a waste of your time and mine.
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The taxes we pay aren't for using the roads. They're for building and maintaining them.
User fees for using roads have existed for a long time as tolls. Historically, they've had limited use because they slow traffic down. But many highways already use automated tolling systems. I-90 in Illinois is the closest example I know of. That is a limited access roadway--something we all agree our ring road ought to be--but the City of London is not, and they've successfully implemented congestion charges. Other cities have followed suit. The technology exists to easily charge drivers directly for using roads--a GPS unit in the car is all it takes--and could even sync with traffic data to charge variable rates based on demand.
I should also point out that road use isn't free, it's only presumed to be, and desired to be. The current cost of using roads is congestion. If everyone were satisfied with that reality, as even you seem to suggest they should be, then we wouldn't have this discussion. But people aren't willing to pay that price. So, implementing a monetary price is one way to replace congestion.
Of course, it's not the only way. Giving people a choice of whether to use roads lets them choose whether to pay that price. You write that off with a patently ignorant argument that Winnipeg has winter and therefore must have car culture. Other winter cities from Stockholm to Saporro do not depend on a car culture and car culture even fades here. We're a long way from the cruise nights of 2002, and that kind of behavior has become the transgressive and strange hallmark of assholes. But as even Winnipeg comes around on the benefits of giving people choice, we persist in building subdivisions that don't. And that leaves us collectively throwing good money after bad, whether it's building more road capacity, or pointless Bridgwater-style bicycle paths to nowhere.
For the point of this argument, I'm not talking about building suburbs as urbanist dreams--that is not necessary. But since the '80s--like you pointed out in an earlier post--suburbs have been terribly designed for getting around, featuring swaths of single-use development accessible only by car. Simply allowing convenience stores and coffee shops to exist inside these subdivisions would grant people a choice of whether to drive and whether to pay the price of congestion. That's not a radical change, not hypothetical, and not even an example of something smart other cities do. It's a reversion to what Winnipeg did as recently as the '70s.
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