Automation May Make Toll Roads More Common 585
bfwebster writes "Here in Denver, we have E-470, a toll section of the 470 beltway, that uses the usual transponder attached to your windshield. Fair enough, and I make use of it, particularly in driving to the airport. But they've just implemented new technology on E-470 that allows anyone to drive through the automated toll gates. If you don't have a transponder, it takes a photo of your license plate and sends a monthly bill to your house. As a result, the company that runs E-470 plans to close all human-staffed toll booths by mid-summer. And as an article in this morning's Rocky Mountain News notes, 'Such a system could be deployed on other roads, including some that motorists now use free. The result: a new source of money for highways and bridges badly in need of repair.' You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned."
Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score:5, Insightful)
...where everyone can be trusted and no one uses false plates to
1) not having to pay
2) just playing a prank to someone.
It will happen the same as with the red light cameras. People will use false license plates or even no plates at all.
Why is this a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The result: a new source of money for highways and bridges badly in need of repair.' You can bet that legislators, mayors, and city councilpersons everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned."
Why is this a bad thing? If the users of the road have to pay a little extra to maintain the road they're using, I don't have problem with it. If the money is being poured into some politician's slush fund, sure that's a problem, but reasonable use fees are exactly what's called for her. It sure beats the "selective billing" process of red-light cameras.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a bad thing? -Plate Cloning (Score:5, Insightful)
already being done by kids here [thenewspaper.com]
...Gas Tax? (Score:5, Insightful)
Toll roads make sense, though. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because I'm ALREADY PAYING for those roads. I pay gasoline taxes, I pay income tax. Take a look at all the stupid earmarks on the last 2 bailout/stimulus plans. I bet that would fix plenty of roads.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
>>everywhere will see this as an even-better source of income than red-light cameras. You've been warned."
>Why is this a bad thing?
Because "out of sight, out of mind". They'll add a toll to a previuosly toll-free road, live with the brief protest until it dies down and Voila! Instant revenue stream. Next thing you know, the entire legislature will be skinny-dipping in it.
Once they start pulling invisible tolls, you can bet your last dollar (f you have any dollars left), that the now-collected gas taxes will be diverted elsewhere. Flordia legislators pulled this scam years ago with the lottery. They sold it on the basis that the revenues collected would go to education. What they failed to mention was that they'd reduce other monies going to education. Net result, schools in Florida benefited not at all, while the Florida legislature got more dollars to piss away however they wished.
Your government treats you like a giant urinal cake. And if they can do it "out of sight" it's only going to get worse.
ALL roads are toll roads (Score:5, Insightful)
All roads in the U.S. and Canada are toll roads. You pay the toll at the gasoline pump through the ~70 cent per gallon tax. As it should be. If you're going to make use of government-paved roads, it makes sense to pay for that usage. Places with "extra" tolls are typically high-expense areas like tunnels & bridges where the gasoline toll is not enough to cover costs.
Alternatively you could get a horse-and-buggy and pay nothing, like my Amish neighbors do. ;-)
Re:...Gas Tax? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't the purpose of the gasoline tax in the United States to account for the wear an tear that your vehicle causes to the roads? If we start implementing tolling on nearly every major highway, we should start to see a reduction or removal of the gasoline tax. No way in hell should we be paying for something twice.
Here in TX we are paying for some roadways 3 times..first with the gas taxes,, then with revenue from sales taxes and now the state is turning them into toll roads..
Re:Why is this a bad thing? -Plate Cloning (Score:1, Insightful)
This is a total non-issue.
First, making it stick will be practically impossible. If they have the plate, a car that matches your model (down to the year, since there will be differences), AND you have no alibi, then maybe a judge will make you pay.
Second, there are solutions to this, such as increasing the penalties for having fake plates on a car or photographing the driver to increase the likelihood counterfeiters are caught.
Third, toll booths already snap a picture of your car if you run the booth resulting in a bigger fine than just paying the toll. (So this method of payment will actually cost you LESS money if someone fakes your plate.)
Fourth, they would have to run through the toll many, many times to make you pay a significant amount, each time risking the consequences and each time providing you with an opportunity to present an alibi.
The problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
That I already pay taxes to maintain the roads. I pay a federal tax on gasoline, which is supposed to be used to maintain the interstate highway system.
I find it kind of unsettling that after taking my tax dollars to build and maintain their highways, certain states believe they can now charge an extra fee simply because the road passes through their state. If they can send me a bill for driving on a highway built with my tax dollars, perhaps I should be allowed to send them an invoice for reimbursement of the fuel taxes I paid while in their state.
The idea behind having federal funding of roads is that you create a system of roads by which everyone is allowed to travel, free of charge. If individual states want to get into the toll-road business, we're going to end up like we were in the 30's and 40's, where there was no consistency in road quality and signage from one state to the next.
Commonplace? You Bet (Score:1, Insightful)
Its good for the environment (Score:5, Insightful)
Figure that will be one way to sell it. Hello carbon tax.
Yes it is not reasonable to you or me, however there are many who would like nothing more to "punish" people who drive cars, after all only the rich or those who don't care if they are destroying the planet will drive cars. Honestly this is how it will come to pass. We have toll roads that were supposed to expire (ga400) when they paid off, guess what, ain't happened and won't ever happen.
Once a government gets a tax in it will take a change of government to remove it. I seriously doubt it will be republican or democrats that will help us.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, I am a huge fan of road pricing, insofar it means making the people who use the road pay for it.
There are two arguments against this:
1) Privacy. If they implement this on all roads, the government or whomever owns the road has a nice log of where you've driven, day to day. Has your government ever given any indication that they are trustworthy enough to gain this information?
2) As others have pointed out: this offers even better ways to milk motorists. And don't think people will protest too much if they gradually raise prices, that's what they've done over here. Motorists in the Netherlands already bring in 3 times the yearly road and public transport expenditure (for example: VAT + a special tax on new cars add as much as 66% to the sticker price); the rest is blown on other useless stuff. Once this system is in place, you can bet that prices will go up, a few points over inflation, every single year.
Oh, and they get a free 100% accurate speed trap out of this. They've implemented such a system for just that reason around a few of our cities. At least that old system is anonymous (it turns the picture of your license plate into a "signature", which is compared against the signatures read at the end of the stretch of road being monitored. Only if a speeding violation is detected will it perform an OCR on the plate and send you the ticket. But for road pricing they need proof that you've used the road at the time you are billed for).
Re:...Gas Tax? (Score:2, Insightful)
Isn't the purpose of the gasoline tax in the United States to account for the wear an tear that your vehicle causes to the roads?
Yeah, and then the Palins of this world redirect your tax dollars from California or Massachusetts to build roads and bridges to nowhere in their states.
If we start implementing tolling on nearly every major highway, we should start to see a reduction or removal of the gasoline tax.
The gasoline tax doesn't come close to covering the costs the automobile imposes on the nation. Costs resulting from driving aren't just maintaining the roads, they include the pollution, medical care, bad urban planning, ensuring the availability of oil, etc.
Driving right now are largely subsidized by income tax. We have this system because it works for a few powerful interests, and that's also the reason why other modes of transportation have such a hard time establishing themselves.
Back to the middle age (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This is the fairest way to fund roads (Score:2, Insightful)
Everybody should be paying for roads whether they are driving or not. If you rely on public transportation to get around you are still using the road. Even if you never leave your house or building you are using the road system. All of the goods you purchase are traveling by road.
Some smaller towns are running into the problems of decreased fuel tax revenue as more people buy electric or high fuel efficiency vehicles. A low percentage tax that everybody pays should pay for roads.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
This point of view currently makes SOME sense.
Until alternative fuel cars become more common. Just because someone is driving an electric does not mean their car magically causes no wear on the highway. Would YOU want to pay more at the pump in terms of gas taxes to subsidize the roads for those not making use of oil?
That's where gas taxes fail, when not all vehicles are consuming gas. This doesn't excuse the administrators desires to double-dip with bonus information gathering, it simply means they should be making a one-or-the-other kind of system.
Re:Old news... (Score:3, Insightful)
Our government should not be in the business of making it more expensive for me to go see my family 100 miles away.
But I assume that you agree they should make it /possible/ to see your family 100 miles away?
Just a little word (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with the rest of your post, why is point 4) a bad things ? Shall we now boycott all US company in Europe on the ground that they bring the money back in the US, instead of Europe ? Don't you think it is a rather dumb argument , especially knowing how mostly bad can be protectionism in some case ? Because sooner or later it falls down in a tit-for-tat fight.
Re:The problem is... (Score:4, Insightful)
hat I already pay taxes to maintain the roads. I pay a federal tax on gasoline, which is supposed to be used to maintain the interstate highway system.
Except the federal gas tax has lost buying power over the decades as the tax has not kept pace with the cost of maintaining highways. The federal highway trust fund is bankrupt. I'd have more sympathy for your position if you were out advocating that the federal gas tax be raised to cover the full cost of driving (and it's not just road maintenance).
Really? (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't realize that Texas had the ability to elect the President of the US all by itself.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? -Plate Cloning (Score:4, Insightful)
This will encourage a new crime, called stealing someone else's legitimate license plate.
And replacing the victim's legitimate license plate with a legitimate-looking fake one, unbeknownst to the victim.
Yes, yes, and then people will start making masks that look like your face and robbing banks with them. And they'll steal some loose hairs from your keyboard at work, Gattaca-style, and plant those at the scene. And they'll replace all your friends and relatives with body-doubles who will lie about your whereabouts on that day.
Denver resident here. The OP fails to mention (Score:5, Insightful)
The OP fails to mention some things about the C470/NW Parkway here in Denver
It's pretty much the most expensive per-mile toll road in the country. And they keep raising the rates on it every 6 months.
I could save about 5 - 8 minutes out of my 35 min commute if I used it. However, that would cost me $120 per month. $3 for 8 miles of road (each way) in my case. And that's *one* toll booth.
And the reason those 8 miles would save me that much time is that no one uses the thing because of the ever-increasing tolls.
I am being completely serious when I say that at 5pm (rush hour) on the northern 1/4 of the toll road, you would be hard pressed to encounter more than 6 - 7 other cars while on it. Meanwhile, the surface roads that run near it are packed with cars.
And don't get me started about how the toll road always seems to be plowed when it snows while the surface streets aren't.
It's not that I can't afford $120/mo ... I just refuse. It's the principle of the thing. I already pay for roads; it's called paying my taxes. Cut my taxes by $120/mo and I'll gladly pay for that road rather than the ones I'm using now.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:2, Insightful)
You do have a point. As far as social order, except in highly congested cities, cars keep people isolated and moving along. The longer space between cities and suburbs means that while traveling your pretty safe inside your own vehicle and so are all the other drivers. IF you forced everyone to take subway or buses there would be more assaults both from thugs and regular people having a bad day.
I don't think American society could adapt to the slower pace of a mass-transit system. The average work week is 10 hours longer than in most of Europe, without cars there's simply not enough time per day to go where you gotta be. Consider Europeans also get many more vacation days and personal time that's 2-3x as much as Americans to take a half day off to visit the doctor or do personal business.. things Americans do at lunchtime.. in their cars.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't laugh it is become a big problem in Europe where kids to get back a teachers..
Can you cite 2 such cases?
Re:Old news... (Score:2, Insightful)
Our government should not be in the business of making it more expensive for me to go see my family 100 miles away.
But I assume that you agree they should make it /possible/ to see your family 100 miles away?
Thereby making it more expensive for me for you to see your family 100 miles away.
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:4, Insightful)
Do you have any data at all to support these assertions? From the second statement I assume that the safety you refer to in your first statement is related to violent crime. Of course you seem to totally ignore the question of safety from accidents related to transportation, which is far more likely to cause death or injury to any given individual than violent crime.
Regarding the likelihood of an increase in ridership leading to a rise in violent crime on mass transit, I'd like to seem some data to support that assumption. Further, even if we assume that violent crime rates did rise with say a 400% increase in mass transit utilization, something I'm not willing to concede is likely but certainly not totally outside the realm of possibility, what is going to matter most to the riders is the per mass-transit user crime rate (which would determine the likelihood of any individual person being the victim of a crime).
Of course it is highly dependent upon where you are, where you are going, and how well designed and operated the mass transit system you are riding is, but I don't see any reason to believe that a blanket statement that mass transit takes longer than commuting in a car. From my own personal experience, having spent three years commuting ever day on a subway to an from work with an occasional trip by car, I can say unequivocally it was much faster by train. What's more it wasn't wasted time. I could read on the train, which I could not safely do in the car. Add to that it was much less stressful.
I think American society could adapt just fine to mass transit. I'm definitely speculating but from the tone of your post, I think it is you yourself who feels you could not adapt to a car-less existence.
Re:Calm down, this is a decade old (Score:3, Insightful)
So? What do you want, a free lunch? The maintenance of roads cost money.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Because I'm ALREADY PAYING for those roads. I pay gasoline taxes, I pay income tax.
Income tax is insufficient to pay for our Federal spending (defense spending alone has roughly doubled since 2000). The US has a shockingly low gasoline tax by world standards (about 35 cents/gallon). And on top of that the taxes are collected and distributed inefficiently--- the barely-used Interstates in my home state (Vermont, pop ~600,000) are routinely repaved, while the highways in New York State (pop. 20 million+, not to mention traffic from neighboring states) are falling apart. This is inefficient.
Additionally, it's a fairly basic reality that if you underprice a resource it will be overconsumed. This is one of the cornerstones of our economy, but for some reason we have the notion that we shouldn't apply this logic to public resources. I would much rather exchange the inefficient blanket gasoline tax in exchange for a targeted tax that collects revenue from actual road usage, at least for roads that are running near their capacity. This would reduce taxes and make sure the roads are maintained in accordance with their usage.
Take a look at all the stupid earmarks on the last 2 bailout/stimulus plans. I bet that would fix plenty of roads.
Sadly that's exactly what Congress insisted on. It's a stupid and inefficient use of Federal money.
Re:Old news... (Score:1, Insightful)
Sort of. Some of the toll roads in Oklahoma were promised to have been "paid off" some years ago, at which point they were supposed to become regular roads, yet magically the tolls stay in place for (insert reason) every year...
Re:rental cars? (Score:1, Insightful)
They have warnings about this in car rental agencies in Toronto. You can pay for a transponder or pay a massive service charge and the toll afterwards.
I think I used the 407 three times. It would be useful, but the company managing it has steadily increased prices since it was created, and the bizzare connection between license suspension and a private company is scary. Especially when the private company doesn't answer the phones and keeps making mistakes with the bills.
I've taken to overpaying by one penny, so that they send me a statement tellign me that I have a one penny credit. I know it doesn't do much damage to them, but it gives me a feeling of satisfaction.
The privatization is another problem I suppose. Never let your government privatize your roads, it is criminal.
Re:Calm down, this is a decade old (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yearly fee based on weight and mileage, in addition to abolishing gas taxes, and I might be in. Mileage is a requirement to make this work, as while I drive a old Civic on a daily basis, I have a 3/4-ton Chevy that I rarely move (except when I need to haul stuff). I don't want to be billed like it's my daily vehicle.
I also don't want anybody monitoring where I'm driving, so no GPS crap. A simple radio odomoter reader will be just fine - possibly with the requirement that as part of renewing my plates every year, I have to drive the car through some sort of scan arch in the DMV's parking lot to get a read.
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:3, Insightful)
We're conditioned to be afraid of other Americans because enough of them are insane that we really should be afraid of them. There's a reason we lock up so many people and it isn't just crazy drug laws. So yes, expect U.S. society to develop differently. Our religious fanaticism creates generations of brainwashed morons who just keep having kids and begging the government for money. This means that we end up isolating ourselves because we know that walking down the street could get us killed.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:3, Insightful)
No need for a scan arch. Have your ipass/toll collection device report your mileage for you.
So they could track where you go? A better way to get your mileage is to simply read the odometer. When someone goes down to renew their license plate tags the odometer is read and you're billed for the number of miles driven. Of course this will take longer and people won't know how much they'll owe until it's checked.
Falcon
Re:Yeah, it would be cool in an ideal world... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, the planning argument will ONLY hold up if you were somehow able to go back in time and convince them back then to plan the cities better.
It isn't possible to completely tear up the current infrastructure and redo it for mass transit that is actually practical and convenient for the masses.
Two other big arguments against it ever happening, the economy, we'll not be able to afford that change. And also..the car culture that is ingrained into the US mindset will not be easily erased.
Re:As used in Ireland (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Why is everyone so afraid of a user pays system? If I choose not to have a car, why should my taxes subsidize the rest of you??? I do have a car btw, and although I live around 10km from the office, I do around 800km a week of work related travel so the bicycle idea won't work for me. I tried it once and hayfever nearly killed me :(
In the past 15 years we've had some major road upgrades done around Melbourne (Australia) which were funded via the use of tolls. I think it's a great idea. The amount of petrol you save by using the tollways goes a good way towards the cost of the tollways themselves, and you get where you are going faster and more safely. Even better, I use these tollways once or twice a year and so pay next to nothing for them!
My biggest grumble is how we let big trucks trundle down the freeways when there is a perfectly good rail system running parallel to it.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Hear hear! Raise the gas tax and forget the tolls and cumbersome data collection and assessment schemes.
What is it about complexity that everyone loves so? Complexity costs money. Complexity gives too many angles for swindlers to pull a swindle. I don't want our traveling taxation to become as complicated as our income taxes are now! All this talk of schemes for taxes based on GPS data, odometer readings, weight, etc. Automatic tolling based on license plate. Then you have to have security measures to stop cheaters from rolling back odometers or switching license plate numbers or such. And the overhead on all these schemes is huge. Then, who knows what next, tax breaks for the elderly or disabled, or as an incentive for businesses to locate plants in the state.
And it's so unnecessary. An energy tax is a reasonably fair way. Can catch the electric vehicles with electricity taxes. It takes more energy to move larger heavier vehicles, and (duh) more energy to travel farther. Why bother trying to weigh everyone or track their travels?
Right now, we're subsidizing highways and driving in a big way. It's a huge boost to status quo trucking companies, auto makers, road construction, oil suppliers. It throws the economy out of whack. It skews our choices away from what is actually least costly to what is artificially the least costly. And now we have a whole food chain that will collapse wrenchingly if we actually started making it bear the costs it incurs. Too big to fail, bah! Subsidies discourage innovation-- necessity is the mother of invention. If it wasn't so incredibly, unsustainably cheap to drive around, we'd have more public transportation, less crowded roads, less suburban sprawl, better connections for pedestrians and cyclists. We'd be closer to viable alternatives, maybe already there. We'd all be wealthier if we weren't wasting so much energy pushing around heavy steel cages with horribly inefficient gasoline engines. And, fewer miles means longer lasting cars. Sucks for the auto makers and oil peddlers, maybe, but they don't deserve special consideration. They can sink or swim like everyone else.