Who'll Build The Roads?

Posted by khalling 9 years, 9 months ago to Culture
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a Stossel article from Capitalism Magazine
SOURCE URL: http://capitalismmagazine.com/2014/07/wholl-build-roads/


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  • Posted by $ rockymountainpirate 9 years, 9 months ago
    I have never lived anywhere that mass transit or bicycle lanes would work for me, yet I have paid for a lot of them.

    Remove the laws and regulations and privatize them and let the users pay.

    I saw a congressman interviewed today who has a bill that would reduce the excise tax 10cents a gallon. He said the states and local area should determine what their needs are and tax accordingly.
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    • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 9 months ago
      You know what they call privatized mass-transit, and it works a lot better and more efficiently than buses and trains and other forms of mass-transit?

      They call it, "the Taxicab".
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  • Posted by $ winterwind 9 years, 9 months ago
    Neil Smith, in The Probability Broach, touches on this but doesn't address the "who builds them" part of the question. He does mention that they are paid for by tolls [essentially a user fee] and that one road company lowered its speed limit to 70 mph and almost went broke because no one would drive on their roads with such a low limit. [They drive hovercraft, BTW] I also picked up the idea that if the roads weren't maintained, people wouldn't drive on them.
    I don't know enough about the building-and-maintenance costs of roads to address the question specifically, so rely on real life experiences and reason. There are lots of ways to finance things, once you remove the extra added costs of regulating them. Remember
    that bumper sticker - "I long for the day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber"? In the same book, there is a table at an outdoor event, staffed by the militia, to raise money for new equipment.
    There's gotta be a way.....
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  • Posted by CircuitGuy 9 years, 9 months ago
    I think they should charge for roads by supply and demand, increasing the price to the point where they never get clogged with cars hardly moving. If that makes them really expensive, that's an incentive for someone to build a new road, relieving the congestion and high prices, and for people who so desire to move to a walkable area.
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  • Posted by Robbie53024 9 years, 9 months ago
    One of the key items there is that the subways in NYC were privately built. When they were private, they were run and maintained very effectively. When the gov't took over, costs sky-rocketed, service declined, reliability decreased, and enhancements ceased.
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  • Posted by Hiraghm 9 years, 9 months ago
    Maybe we should send some people to Italy to examine those old Roman roads that are still in use...

    I recall once reading about how they were constructed. Much, much more durable and long-lived than our current roads, IMO.

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