[whoknowsidont]

Why do we need public funds to build a private authority that pays people absurd amounts of money who don't actually do anything instead of just you know.... building the road like we always have. For the public.

If we're going to spend the money anyways why do we need private profits?

Furthermore, just tax the vehicles that are actually doing damage to the roads. i.e., trucks.

A honda civic barely does anything to a road. Where a semi-truck is EXPONENTIALLY more damaging.

[orthoxerox]

Not literally exponentially, but the damage is proportional to the FOURTH power of the axle load. Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.

Honda Civic weighs 0.7t per axle, or 0.24tttt of wear.

F-150 weighs 0.9t per axle, or 0.65tttt of wear.

A school bus weighs 7.5t per axle, or 3164tttt of wear. That's more than thirteen thousand Honda Civics' worth of road damage. Imagine the driver of the Honda had to pay 1c per mile. The school bus would have to pay $130 per mile. Yes, it's carrying 78 passengers, so the cost would be $1.67 per mile per student, but I think most people would just drive their kids to school.

[potato3732842]

>Imagine how expensive shipping would've become overnight if all these trucks had to pay their fair share and passed the costs to their customers.

The roads are already being paid for and maintained at their current state. All you'd be doing is making goods slightly more expensive and other taxes slightly less. About 1-4% of your total tax burden goes to the roads. That's a small enough total number to be easily buried among your annual spend on goods.

Like if roads were these huge financial burdens that didn't amortize away to practically nothing.

[hamdingers]

> A honda civic barely does anything to a road. Where a semi-truck is EXPONENTIALLY more damaging.

Similarly, a Honda Civic is ~360 million times more damaging to the road than a bicycle, according to the fourth power law.

No reasonable fee structure should let car drivers use roads for free.

And that's before we get into the amount of valuable public land car drivers use for personal storage.

[dietrichepp]

The civic barely does anything to a road, except require its existence and maintenance, and it turns out that roads are expensive to build and maintain (even if only damaged by weather).

[_ea1k]

The means of collection and treatment of it as something other than tax revenue are problematic for sure. Those should be solvable problems, though.

Your point about semi-truck damage vs lighter vehicles is exactly why I think moving in that direction is so useful. The most fair taxation would accurately take both that aspect and actual miles driven into account.

[bbarn]

Except the impact of even gas prices going up has added to costs in basically anything delivered by truck. Every tax you put on that just eventually ends up in consumer hands.

[_aavaa_]

A highway is not a public good. It is a publicly subsidized good for private consumption.

Can I use the highway if I don’t have a car? (Barely)

Can I use it for anything non driving related (like a downtown street where lanes can be repurposed for outdoor seating)? No

I agree with you on what does the majority of the damage.

[kevin_thibedeau]

The US interstates move military equipment across the country without needing to deal with railroad bottlenecks. It is a public good. Just like GPS, it has ancillary civic functions but it still serves its original purpose.

[xnx]

> Can I use the highway if I don’t have a car?

Can I use the schools if I don't have a child?

[DangitBobby]

Apparently under your definition of a public good, there's no such thing.

[potato3732842]

>A highway is not a public good. It is a publicly subsidized good for private consumption.

So is every park. What's the point of this language game?

[morkalork]

I don't understand, there are plenty of other things the public pays for that you can't use for other, unintended purposes. You can't fly your hobby drone out of a public airport just because you want.

[whoknowsidont]

Necessary public infrastructure that is paid for with tax dollars is not a public good?

And just in case this fact is being lost / forgotten: Toll roads are primarily, originally funded through tax dollars but are disingenuously structured in a way these bozos can go "see, it's not actually tax dollars" (it is). The same exact dollars that should be used to build fully public, free roads are instead used to privatize public infrastructure.

There has never been a time where a toll raid has failed and the losses were treated as private. The bonds magically get repaid (to the right people, of course).

It's all tax dollars in the end, one way or another.