British Road Tax Scheme

[Charles Anthony]

How are you going to pay for the police to pay the tolls on the roads to come rescue you when sanity invades your home?

First, my insanity will be able to counter any level of sanity that comes within a block of my home. You would be surprised: I have people on my street thinking that the Bloc Quebecois is running in their riding and (hint, hint) I am not living in Quebec.

Second, if the police want me to pay a bill, they can use the same tactics they employ now when people do not pay their taxes. No need to be original there.

Third, with the elimination of income taxes, not only will I be able to pay for tolls but I can also give money away to the people who would otherwise invade my house and rob me. In fact, I would be happy to pay them protection money. The rise in personal wealth will be that high.

[August1991]

The mechanics of your proposal is precisely along the lines of what would be done if the road was privately owned.

Charles, we once had a delightful poster here named Hugo - I miss him. He would have made the same point as you.

I disagree with Hugo, you and this point. In theory, private enterprise can operate roads. And in theory, nuclear fusion can produce electricity.

Governments exist, and can do good for the collective. But they need financing. What better way to finance government than to charge individuals for use of a collective resource?

----

Traffic in North American cities is Soviet. It works by queues: who has the patience to wait the longest. We need a Gorbachev.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear August1991,

we once had a delightful poster here named Hugo - I miss him.

I miss him too... the 'rightest of the right'...a real 'philosopher', even though I often disagreed...

Governments exist, and can do good for the collective. But they need financing. What better way to finance government than to charge individuals for use of a collective resource?

Again, you are an enigma...are you for or against 'the common good'? Or do you have a personal 'scales of justice' for it's demarkation of applicability?

[geoffrey]

Traffic in North American cities is Soviet. It works by queues: who has the patience to wait the longest. We need a Gorbachev.

Or a European/Asian pro-cycling attitude. Too bad it doesn't work so well in the winter...

[Charles Anthony]

In theory, private enterprise can operate roads.

Your proposal is an application of that same theory.

Governments exist, and can do good for the collective. But they need financing. What better way to finance government than to charge individuals for use of a collective resource?

You are talking about more than one thing here: the efficiency of collecting the financing; managing a collective resource; governments existing; goverments can do good.

I will not dispute that the current format of collecting taxes is generally efficient. I will say it is still wrong.

I will not dispute your proposed method of managing the roads. In fact, I will not dispute any other method because it is a waste of time and equally arbitrary. I will dispute the right to manage this "collective" resource by pointing out who among the "collective" is falsely being represented but still forced to finance.

I will not dispute that coercive governments will exist. People tend to covet their neighbor's belongings.

I will not dispute that coercive governments can do good. I can steal from you and donate to charity.

Traffic in North American cities is Soviet. It works by queues: who has the patience to wait the longest.

Interesting thought. I actually have a radically different idea for dealing with traffic.....

We need a Gorbachev.

....quite the contrary. We need to leave people to their own devices. Ever see a four-way flashing red? They work. People stop and act with courtesy.

People slow down to a crawl if they can not see what might hit them.

Commonly, the traffic intersections that have the fewest accidents are ones which have hegdes (or some other visual obstructions) around the corners. The largest and widest intersections where I live are notorious for having collisions. People always wonder why the seeming paradox.

There is an interesting underpass in the city of London, Ontario (I doubt it is the only one that exists in the world) that is so narrow that only one car can pass at a time. Imagine that: four lanes of traffic reduced to one lane. Signs on both sides say "Yield to oncoming traffic" and people stop, look both ways and proceed. All for the sake of preserving an historic bridge of the city. No collisions.

If I owned a road, I would not have traffic lights. That is a waste of electricity. If I could not afford to build freeway on-ramps and off-ramps (no need for anybody to stop) I would have my intersections elevated onto slight hill, reduced lanes or bottle-necks at the intersections and visual obstructions that can only be safely overcome by stopping. I would also throw in a few speed bumps along the way.

Understandably, that does not address the financing for maintenance.

Financing is easy. I would set up a PayPal acount.

we once had a delightful poster here named Hugo - I miss him.

I miss him too... the 'rightest of the right'...a real 'philosopher', even though I often disagreed...

He also took a lot of bait just for the sake of argument. I guess that made him fun. Half of the posts that taunted him should have been ignored.

I pray that he returns because I disagree vehemently on certain current affairs issues he explored, particularly warfare.

Or a European/Asian pro-cycling attitude. Too bad it doesn't work so well in the winter...

You would be amazed. In my city, the bicycle delivery service keeps going throughout the winter. They are still faster than the drivers.

[geoffrey]

Or a European/Asian pro-cycling attitude. Too bad it doesn't work so well in the winter...

You would be amazed. In my city, the bicycle delivery service keeps going throughout the winter. They are still the faster than the drivers.

I bike too work in the Chinook weeks in the winter, I'd rather take the car when it's -20 though thanks. Considering they demolished most of my bike paths to build roadways is another issue I have with the City of Calgary. No wonder traffic is so bad, the city seemingly purposely prevents you from using alternative methods. You can't even fit onto a c-train in the mornings either! :angry:

[Charles Anthony]

I am putting this here because it lends itself best to the general theme of this thread: making our roads more peaceful and market driven.

European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs

by Matthias Schulz

European traffic planners are dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren -- by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs.

---SNIP---

It may sound like chaos, but it's only the lesson drawn from one of the insights of traffic psychology: Drivers will force the accelerator down ruthlessly only in situations where everything has been fully regulated. Where the situation is unclear, they're forced to drive more carefully and cautiously.

---SNIP---

Strange as it may seem, the number of accidents has declined dramatically. Experts from Argentina and the United States have visited Drachten. Even London has expressed an interest in this new example of automobile anarchy. And the model is being tested in the British capital's Kensington neighborhood.

Der Spiegel

Behold, all you nay-sayers, the door is opening ever so wider...

[geoffrey]

My bet CA, is that this results in higher insurance premiums and body counts.

[Technocrat]

If that system gets implimented over here... im trading in my civic for the car in Deathrace 2000

GARAUNGA!!!

[jdobbin]

European Cities Do Away with Traffic Signs

It is interesting to see this. I do think that we could do away with many signs out there. In North America, it could probably be done slowly. I'd like to see this done on some experiment towns in Canada to see how good it actually is.

[geoffrey]

If that system gets implimented over here... im trading in my civic for the car in Deathrace 2000

GARAUNGA!!!

I'll be out buying the biggest vehicle I can possibly find. I may even drive a semi around town to protect myself.

I do live in Alberta, we have the worst drivers in the country... well, maybe not as bad as Montrealers.

It is interesting to see this. I do think that we could do away with many signs out there. In North America, it could probably be done slowly. I'd like to see this done on some experiment towns in Canada to see how good it actually is.

Like those lights that always seem to be red when your driving at 3am? Oh yes, do away with please. I suggest turning all the lights on yellow flash outside of 7am-7pm.

[jdobbin]

Like those lights that always seem to be red when your driving at 3am? Oh yes, do away with please. I suggest turning all the lights on yellow flash outside of 7am-7pm.

Certainly, there should be more thought to sign pollution and an overabundance of traffic lights and four way stop signs.

One thing I think would be had to imagine is a crossroads where there was no stop signs at all.

[B. Max]

Tom Brake, the Liberal Democrats spokesman, said: "We see it as far fairer. It taxes car usage, not car ownership."

Yes by all means buy one to keep the econmy going but don't dare drive it.

[August1991]

The technology is here. And it's cheap.

What Michael Wolf has for sale might help solve the hot-button problems that prevail in the headlines these days: greenhouse gas, crime, traffic congestion, infrastructure costs, insurance rates, environmental preservation, road safety, transportation efficiency, urban planning and border security.

Add to that mix a quick means of locating missing persons in a one-time crisis or large-scale disaster, and you've got a long list of reasons why Mr. Wolf thinks he's got a winning product. But, like many entrepreneurs, he is having a hard time finding a buyer.

The E-Plate is a new vehicular licence plate embedded with a Radio Frequency Identification (RFI) chip that is programmed with a second encrypted number that can be scanned by electronic readers positioned intermittently along any network of roads.

Remove the licence plate from the vehicle and it's designed to break into pieces, so it can't be stolen by thieves. If your vehicle goes missing with plate intact, report it and police could log on to the data from the RFI readers and track its location. Police and insurance companies could see a reduction in the $1- billion a year auto theft costs Canadians.

Greenhouse emissions could be reduced with the study of traffic patterns using the RFI readers, Mr. Wolf says, while the system can be applied to collect tolls to generate revenue for maintaining and improving alternative transportation systems without tapping into federal coffers.

Financial Post

This is UK technology and the license plate costs about $40. A network of receptors along roads would be more costly.

This is an example of how backward government is. A private enterprise would be adopting this already. The one hope is that politicians clue into the revenue potential this device offers. If combined with cuts in property taxes, this has the potential to be popular politically.

[M.Dancer]

A similar policy in Canada would do more to help Canadian cities than any welfare scheme the federal Liberals/NDP can dream up. And the sad part is that we will have such a traffic policy eventually, it's just a question of time.

Toll roads aren't new. Do they still charge for the Lauretian autoroute? I had a friend who get pebbles in his ashtray for the toll basket....and in Ontario we have the ETR, the Express Toll Route, designed to ease the burden of the 401...transponders and cameras do the work of the toll basket and filty licenses do the work of pebbles/....

[geoffrey]

I support pay-per-use on city roads, but keep the highways *free*. I don't want my fruits and veggies including the cost of all that, a trucks use of the highway in most places has zero impact on anything else.

[August1991]

Toll roads aren't new. Do they still charge for the Lauretian autoroute? I had a friend who get pebbles in his ashtray for the toll basket....and in Ontario we have the ETR, the Express Toll Route, designed to ease the burden of the 401...transponders and cameras do the work of the toll basket and filty licenses do the work of pebbles/....

Would you do your grocery shopping in a store if you paid $50 to enter and then took what you could fill in a cart?

Would such a grocery store survive and be profitable?

M. Dancer, I'm amazed that you think it normal to pay for your road use by taxes yet you would never pay for your food that way. Imagine if you bought your groceries through local taxes? (Would you live in a city where anyone could take what groceries they wanted from local stores since they were financed by property tax? Yet that's how most people around the world "buy" their road use.)

For roads, the technology exists to turn them into groceries. IMV, we must pay for our road use the way we pay for groceries, and hotel rooms. We rent hotel rooms according to use: when, where and how long. Cities should charge us for road use the same way. The technology exists to measure road use and road use taxes could reduce property taxes. This would be a popular political measure.

I support pay-per-use on city roads, but keep the highways *free*. I don't want my fruits and veggies including the cost of all that, a trucks use of the highway in most places has zero impact on anything else.

Are you sure?

[Charles Anthony]

This:

a trucks use of the highway in most places has zero impact on anything else.

is an outrageous statement.

I believe most of our environmental problems are a direct result of the transportation industry. Reflexively, people find it absolutely normal to expect the State to subsidize transportation.

You guys can make the logical connection.

[B. Max]

'Charles Anthony' date='Apr 21 2007, 08:14 AM' post='210531']

I believe most of our environmental problems are a direct result of the transportation industry. Reflexively, people find it absolutely normal to expect the State to subsidize transportation.

You guys can make the logical connection.

That's ridiculous. The tranportation industry has been carrying the country on its back for years. Something it is no longer prepared to do, and without it you would have nothing.

[margrace]

There are several problems here. One is that a 6 kilometre piece of highway south of North Bay cost 60 million to build, meanwhile the northlander train is empty going down in this same directions. One of the main problems is that it is absolutly no good for people wanting to use it. It only picks up once in a 150 stretch of track between Huntsville and North Bay. Another problem is that although it goes through Beaverton it does not pick up or stop there and there are no buses in Beaverton either.

The other problem I see is truck warehousing, if the border closes then Honda cannot operate. If weather closes the roads for any length of time we run out of groceries pretty fast.

[fellowtraveller]

I just returned from the UK. Anybody who believes a congestion or road tax would reduce any other taxes, or affect the volume of traffic, is also a believer in Tinkerbelle. And it should be called a road tax, since central London already has a huge congestion charge - about $20 per day for the privilege of driving into the city. The system works so well (not in reducing traffic, but in creating revenue) that the area affected by the congestion charge has just been doubled.

Public transist, always revered here, is actually very expensive in London. A single one way fare on the Tube is about $10. Train fares between cities is shockingly expensive too.

The UK is a vast sprawl of suburbia, with poor or nonexistent transit between towns. Solve that, and you'll solve the car problem.

Typical cost of owning a car in suburban London: parking in your own neighbourhood: about 5 pounds per day. congestion charge to drive to the city: 8 pounds per day. parking in the city: at least 10 pounds per day. Total daily cost of commuting: 23 pounds or about $55 per day and that does not include the cost of fuel, taxes, insurance, registration, maintenance, or the actual cost to buy or lease the car itself.

Like everything else in rip-off Britain- getting around is very costly.

[August1991]

I just returned from the UK. Anybody who believes a congestion or road tax would reduce any other taxes, or affect the volume of traffic, is also a believer in Tinkerbelle. And it should be called a road tax, since central London already has a huge congestion charge - about $20 per day for the privilege of driving into the city.

The simple answer to this is: if you don't want to pay these charges, don't go there. (Why should you have the right to use a city street without paying for it? Did you sleep in your London hotel room for free?)

The road system in the modern world is essentially Soviet. The State provides the service and "prices" bear no relation to usage or cost. Not surprisingly, our roads suffer from queues and congestion just as the Soviet Union did.

Queues are a terrible waste of people's time. Instead of doing something useful with one's time, drivers stare into space while gripping a steering wheel.

Moreover, like the Soviet Union, road congestion is terrible for the environment. All those vehicles pump emissions into the atmosphere and yet the vehicles aren't even moving.

In all of this, the problem is that the "environment" (including public roads and atmosphere) is the modern world's slave. We use it without having to pay for its services.

As part of other environmental measures, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City now plans to adopt a similar road tax scheme for Manhattan:

The mayor acknowledged that the proposal for congestion pricing was the most contentious, calling it “the elephant in the room.”

Under the plan, the city would charge $8 for cars and $21 for commercial trucks that enter Manhattan below 86th Street from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on weekdays. The charge would be $4 for drivers within Manhattan, and several exemptions would apply. No one would be charged on the Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive or the West Side Highway. There would be no charge for moving cars to comply with alternate side parking, and there would be no charge for taxis.

A similar system is in place in congested parts of London and Singapore, where Mr. Bloomberg said it had been shown to reduce congestion and improve air quality. In Manhattan, cameras and other equipment at intersections would deduct money from a driver’s E-ZPass account or photograph a car’s license plate, with the driver given two days to pay the fee through the mail, online or at certain stores.

The city said yesterday that it intended to seek state approval for a three-year test of congestion pricing and would need to spend $225 million to buy and install traffic-recording equipment. Officials said the city and state could jointly apply for grants from the United States Department of Transportation to cover those costs.

New York Times

I have no doubt that this type of scheme will soon spread to other cities in the modern world. Eventually, we will pay for all road use (urban and rural) and along with other environmental fees, many taxes that we now pay (income tax for example) will no longer exist.

The tranportation industry has been carrying the country on its back for years. Something it is no longer prepared to do, and without it you would have nothing.

No one is doubting that transportation is necessary in a modern economy. It is how we pay for the use of roads that is at issue.

At present, we pay for our roads through general taxes. Would you live in a city if your groceries were provided through general taxes? Imagine if the government taxed you $300 per month and then you went to any grocery store whenever you were hungry and took the food you wanted. No one would accept such a system for groceries yet that's how we provide roads and people think it's normal. This has terrible consequences in traffic congestion and in environmental damage.

[Wilber]

The road system in the modern world is essentially Soviet. The State provides the service and "prices" bear no relation to usage or cost. Not surprisingly, our roads suffer from queues and congestion just as the Soviet Union did.

Just like everything else government provides that is paid for out of general revenue. But wait a minute, what about the billions in fuel taxes motorists pay every year? Less than 5% of the federal tax collected goes back into the road system. I'll bet the state doesn't have a clue what portion of sales, fuel and other taxes motorists pay relating to their vehicles goes back into road infrastructure and doesn't much care. It all just goes into the big pot to be doled out on whatever schemes suit them.

Imposing a congestion tax without providing efficient alternatives is just a money grab.

At present, we pay for our roads through general taxes. Would you live in a city if your groceries were provided through general taxes?

Without roads you would have to go to the farm to get your groceries.

[August1991]

I'll bet the state doesn't have a clue what portion of sales, fuel and other taxes motorists pay relating to their vehicles goes back into road infrastructure and doesn't much care. It all just goes into the big pot to be doled out on whatever schemes suit them.

I'll take that idea of yours Wilbur and apply it to food. Imagine if we got our food through general taxes. That is, imagine if we paid farmers through general tax revenues with no connection to what food the farmers produced or what food we wanted.

In the case of roads, there is a large disconnect between what and how we pay and what we use. A similar disconnect in food would likely leave us starving, or waiting in queues. Indeed, that's how Soviet farming worked.

[Wilber]

I'll bet the state doesn't have a clue what portion of sales, fuel and other taxes motorists pay relating to their vehicles goes back into road infrastructure and doesn't much care. It all just goes into the big pot to be doled out on whatever schemes suit them.

I'll take that idea of yours Wilbur and apply it to food. Imagine if we got our food through general taxes. That is, imagine if we paid farmers through general tax revenues with no connection to what food the farmers produced or what food we wanted.

In the case of roads, there is a large disconnect between what and how we pay and what we use. A similar disconnect in food would likely leave us starving, or waiting in queues. Indeed, that's how Soviet farming worked.

So what are you saying, everything should be user pay? If you want to take transit to your grocery store you had better chip in for the roads that the trucks used to get those groceries to your store, otherwise you had better be prepared to walk to the farm and get them yourself. If you want police, ambulance and fire service you had better be willing to chip in for the roads they need whether you own a vehicle or not. Society needs infrastructure to function. You benefit from that infrastructure every day even though you may not use it yourself.

You say there is a big disconnect. I'll bet neither you or government has a clue what that disconnect may be if there is one and has no interest in figuring it out.