• LesserAbe@lemmy.world
    14·
    6 months ago

    I don’t like when government funded projects are sold to private corporations. I like government funded infrastructure though.

  • Meuzzin@lemmy.world
    12·
    6 months ago

    This shit angers me to no end. Where I live, they built this wonderful highway around the greater metro area. Said it’d be a toll road for 25 years until paid off. We’re on year 29 now, because they needed to “update” it.

    Then, you find out the tolls are managed by a for-profit company in Saudi Arabia…? The express lanes, that cause more traffic and wrecks than a simple exspansion of lanes, is ran buy a for-profit company, in a foreign country. It makes no sense, unless you’re a fan of unregulated capitalism, I guess.

  • dillekant@slrpnk.net
    92·
    6 months ago

    Toll roads aren’t bad, it’s all in the details. The problem is that the government is often “captured” and therefore has no incentive to have a fair contract, so they’ll add clauses like

    • If the company loses money because the government does something, the government will pay them. This often prevents the government from reducing or removing the toll road / other privately owned resource.
    • The government can’t “compete” with the toll road, either with another road or (sometimes) through public transport.
    • The government will often, as a form of pork-barrelling, offer people reimbursements for the toll road usage, thereby funneling tax payer money into the private company.
    • Toll roads are tax deductible.

    Ideally, toll roads encourage people to take the train.

    • Srh@lemmy.world
      3·
      6 months ago

      Usually the details show toll roads are bad. Ideally, toll roads are not needed. Toll roads are a result of failure of government.

      • Cethin@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        It’s also a failure of politics. If you tell people you’re going to raise taxes to pay for the road, you’re probably not getting elected. Toll roads ideally are just another form of tax that is more sneaky than straight up raising taxes.

  • alcoholicorn@lemmy.ml
    1·
    6 months ago

    Are toll roads less of a scam than free roads though? At least toll road construction and maintenance is funded by drivers.

    It’s a regressive tax, but so are state taxes.

    • AJ Sadauskas@aus.socialOP
      0·
      6 months ago

      @alcoholicorn It is when it has been privatised to a company that pretty much pays no tax (hi Transurban!), for roads that taxpayers helped to pay for, and those toll roads connect car dependent suburbs that have next to no public transport.

      • Tower@lemm.ee
        1·
        6 months ago

        Also when we’re told the tolls are to pay for the road, but after the road is paid off, the toll stays…

        • hayes_@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          6 months ago

          Not disagreeing with your core point but infrastructure is never paid off.

          Upkeep on a mile of asphalt is way more than I expected and I live somewhere temperate.

  • NateNate60@lemmy.world
    21·
    6 months ago

    I’m a big fan of putting speed cameras everywhere. Let the bad drivers pay for the road.

  • delirious_owl@discuss.online
    32·
    6 months ago

    You can ride them for free with those plate covers that are dark when viewed from above

    That’s just what I’ve read, tho. Personally I just go through tolls for free because I’m not an asshole and I ride a bicycle instead of a car.