paul@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU@dual.UUCP (01/02/87)
> Foo. Charging owners of private automobiles the full cost of > building and maintaining the roadways is hardly a free market > economy. The roadways are a classic example of "neighbourhood > effect"; every one of us derives benefit from the roads, whether we > drive an automobile or not. What kind of benefits did you have in mind? Smog or being maimed and injured or killed. > Virtually every good that you purchase travels some part of its > journey from field or factory to store via truck This is currently true, but is no reason why the users of roads should not pay for them. The current road subsidy is largely responsible for the heavy use of trucks. Without the road subsidies, and particularly the almost free-to-user "Interstates" much more traffic would move by rail. > ambulances, police > cars and emergency vehicles of all sorts use and require an > extensive road network. Ambulances, police cars and emergency vehicles only really require a network of local roads. Given that well over 50% of accidents and emergencies are caused by or related to automobile traffic anyway, it would seem reasonable that road-users pay for this too. Perhaps they can subsidize non-road users for a change. > Given that, the road network will exist anyway. The marginal cost > per automobile is pretty small. I am not convinced that the marginal cost per automobile is small. The road network only exists in the form it does today because it is heavily subsidised. > In sum, the roads perform a variety of useful services besides > getting people from A to B. This is absolute drivel. The ONLY service roads provide is to get objects from A to B. In all other respects they are very unsatisfactory. They are dangerous, killing ten of thousands a year. They are the chief cause of pollution in most cities. How close to a Freeway would you like to live? > All mass transit does is get people from A to B slowly, and in > discomfort. The only beneficiaries are the small minority of > individuals for whom the mass transit system's service nearly > approximates an automobiles. Once again little of this is true. Mass Transit benefits everyone, even drivers. Every person who travels by public transit leaves extra room on road for those who are not travelling by public transit. Also in the Bay Area and other real city areas, the "minority" that uses public transit is far from small. Certainly the Los Angeles solution of building ever wider Freeways at taxpayer's expense is no solution. The result is always the same: the congestion that was to be reduced by the new Freeway is moved to another section of road. In the end you get a sprawling city of clogged roads. Paul Wilcox-Baker. -------
elg@seismo.CSS.GOV@killer.UUCP (02/18/87)
The poster of the above dialog basically argued that he does not
use roads, thus he doesn't want to pay taxes to support roads. Or
something to that effect.
Actually, almost all federal highway construction IS financed by
the people who use the roads. Just look at the gas pump someday...
and notice the excise tax... thus the people who use the road, ARE
paying for the road.
There's a lot of things that I don't want our government doing. Like
subsidies, boondoggles, huge security agencies, etc... but let's be
reasonable, government DOES have a purpose in the general realm of
things. The primary one, of course, being to protect me from those who
would rob me of my things, or my life (thus police forces, fire
departments, the Armed Forces if we assume that unfriendly powers
would rape & pillage us otherwise, etc.). And subsidising or
providing public utilities in areas where otherwise they would be
unprofitable -- e.g. rural areas had no electricity until the Fed.
Govt. set up rural electrical co-op fund, one way Ma Bell was allowed
to keep her monopoly for so long, was by using city dwellers to
subsidise rural phone co.'s, etc. Basically, you CAN say that these
are necessary for the protection of those unfortunate enough to be in
a place where utilities are not commercially economical.
And to a rural dweller, the automobile is the most important
part of his life. Without an automobile, someone living in Castor,
Louisiana (pop. 500), would starve to death -- walking 20 miles to
the nearest store isn't very feasible, especially for the old,
and 500 people won't support
much of a store, and wouldn't be able to finance a road to take
their product to the nearest city, Shreveport, which is 50 miles
away over hilly terrain (that'll be a few million dollars,
probably!).
I still can't get over these city slickers with their snide
assumptions that life in The Real World is just like it is in
their canyons of concrete and glass.... listen, Los Angeles or
New York isn't the United States, most people still live in cities
of 250,000 or less.
* Airwick *
--
Eric Green {akgua,ut-sally}!usl!elg, elg%usl.CSNET
(Snail Mail P.O. Box 92191, Lafayette, LA 70509)
A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.