Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Toll Roads

I used to dislike toll roads. I felt like I had already paid my taxes and should be allowed to drive on whatever road I wanted to, without having to cough up any more money.

But the more I think about it, the more a toll road makes sense.

The thing is, the tolls are collected from the people who actually use the road, and the distance between using and paying is about as short as it gets. There's something to be said for collective cooperation, where everyone throws money into the pot and it goes to build roads for everyone to use. I'm not saying every road should be a toll road. But I am saying there's no such thing as a free road. It all gets paid for by someone, so why not have it be paid for by the people who directly drive on that road, at the time they drive on it, at a rate based on how much of the road they actually drive on.

1 comment:

Mark said...

Sounds an awful lot like a "Fair Tax"!