[survirtual]

Correct.

Tolls are a regressive tax on the working class. The rich don't even need to use the roads as much because they have other people delivering for them. When they need the road system, the tolls are nothing to them.

The working class, which are generally required to be driving to survive, are left holding the bag for tolls. In places with bad public transit, tolls are just a forced wealth transfer from working class to private firms managing the tolls.

[pclmulqdq]

The people who use something should pay for its upkeep. It doesn't matter if that makes it a "regressive" tax. If you are a daily user of a road, you should pay more for its upkeep than someone who doesn't use the road.

[axiolite]

Why should a delivery driver pay the toll for the road to my house, and not me? Why should I be able to exploit flat-rate product pricing like that and skim some money from all customers of the delivery service?

Why should I pay the toll to drive to a friend's house? They're the one getting the benefit out of having easy access to transportation.

What if my taxes pay for all the roads in my town, while the neighboring town chooses to implement tolls instead? Why should I get double-taxed? Prisoner's dilemma and race-to-the-bottom?

Why should I have to deal with having my license plate stolen, and police time wasted (who are paid out of taxes), because of people who don't pay the tolls?

[tstrimple]

If that's the case, trucking companies should be paying 99.99% of taxes to maintain roads. They are responsible for almost all of the deterioration.

https://www.gao.gov/products/109954

[hoppyhoppy2]

>The people who use something should pay for its upkeep.

Fee-for-service city parks? Public libraries? Fire departments? Sidewalks? What about investing in the "public good"?

[thfuran]

>The people who use something should pay for its upkeep

Why? That doesn’t seem like a good way to run society.

[nfw2]

All the statistics I've been able to find point to higher toll road usage among higher income people, not less.

[nosianu]

Which may already be a sign of ability to pay? Not that I will argue against the right of US Americans to have a country that gets more and more divided by "class" defined by money, an interesting if not very ethical experiment for sure.

The very well-known in Germany satiric news website "Der Postillion" had an interesting provocative piece just yesterday (German, but auto-translate takes care of that): https://www.der-postillon.com/2023/12/weihnachtsmann-ungerec... -- "Schlimmer Verdacht: Bevorzugt der Weihnachtsmann die Kinder reicher Eltern?" ("A disturbing suspicion: Does Santa Claus favor the children of wealthy parents?")

Being able to get to places by car is one of the most basic needs in the US. I think it leads to cementing the monetary status quo and monetary class affiliation when that becomes even more dependent on how much money one can spend on it. A nicer car being more expensive is fine in that regard, it does not get you from A to B much or any faster than the cheap one. Being able to choose roads or lanes that will take you there much faster is different.

It removes one's personal "hard work" contribution to success if more and more of it is out of your control - after all, how much money you start the game of life with is nothing one has control over. Maybe making that kind of mechanism worse is not the best idea in the long term. Unless we are really aiming for what all the dystopia movies and anime have been showing us.

There are also tons and tons of indirect effects. For example, I would make the claim that wealthy shareholders benefit a lot more from roads than poor people, even when they don't drive, since the companies they own and the entire economy needs them. The poorer people driving to work "paying their share" does not look so clearly justified to me, unless one believes that their salaries are perfect indications of their role in value creation.

[SoftTalker]

Because the cost is not an issue for higher income people. The poor either sacrifice something else to pay the toll, or they take a (likely longer, slower, or more congested) alternate route to avoid the tolls. This ends up costing them more time, which of course is a fixed quantity per day, so they again end up sacrificing. In a way it's regressive even if they avoid it.

[metalman]

Tolls and public transit fares are regressive.

We have removed all tolls here in Nova Scotia,including for small car ferry's , were not rich or populous,but are building out our infrastructure bit by bit to facilitate ease of transport and the prevention of accidents and traffic jams. The other thing they added are info signs accross the main hyways comming in, giving times for the main transit routes, making it easy to redirect , 45 MIN!, yikes! sounds like coffee and grocerie shopping to me! It has realy made a huge difference getting around the city and has opened up options for travelling rural routes that have ferries.

[kcplate]

This is a strange argument that leaves out some important considerations. You could easily say that because the rich don’t need to use public transit the fares charged for riding public transit are a regressive tax on the working class that use it. Shouldn’t you also argue against public transportation ride fares enriching the private companies that build turnstiles and ticketing machines?