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Stolen from my favourite Facebook group (warning: not really safe for work).
Literally my thoughts as I try to navigate around Brisbane. A trip from the west to the airport can involve up to half a dozen tolls if you do it wrong.
I think the government shouldn't pay for roads... they should pay for much more efficient forms of transportation like trains, buses, and bicycle infrastructure.
To be fair I like the sentiment but the message is just wrong at least in the United States. Here toll roads are privately built roads in conjunction with public entities. They contract generally defines a certain period where tolls can be collected to recoup the cost of the road with profit so say a road costs 5 mil they might be able to collect for 10 years with a estimated value of 40mil.
It's crazy and nonsensical when the smart money is in public funding of grand national projects like high speed rail with a focus on cargo and intercity travel preferably underground. Japan is doing a huge project that moved most of their services into deep underground tunnels and I think that's a smart thing to do for the us.
Similar here, but the contract periods tend to be much longer. Like 50 to 100 years before they'll go toll-free, which is just absurd really. And they're not fully private ventures, taxpayer money is spent on these bits of infrastructure.
And the worst part is they don't really do anything to improve traffic long-term. During peak hour, it's not unusual to jump in the tunnel only to be stuck in the same gridlock traffic as you'd be in anyway, only you just paid 6 bucks for the privilege.
I don't think government funded roads typically improve traffic either lol, only public transit and better city design is gonna do that.
I say let the private companies try to make their money, the cost of driving should reflect its true cost to society to push people towards more sustainable options. And once there are less people on the road, existing tolls will have no choice but to set pricing competatively or die (b.c. traffic wouldn't be a concern anymore)
Maybe I'm a bit extreme in my position, but I really hate cars for so many reasons...
Sorta the same but fuck corpos, a federalized rail system is a do or die thing nationally. If world war breaks out again we aren't separated from the rest of the world in the same way we were before and thus isolation will not save us.
Not to mention high speed till roads allows governments to mandate trucks be forced to use them, which makes free local free roads less dangerous, more durable and less congested.
Because they don't want any peasants and serfs creating traffic for the 1% trying to get around ok?
Yeh.. you states with toll roads should be up in arms about that fucking racket. Privatisation fucking running rampant up there. What a blatant scam.
Someone else should pay for my roads!
Tolls are good actually
Only works when there are decent alternatives, other wise it is just taking money from commuters (and in the case of my city giving it to private corporations).
Explain.
People should pay for their roads. "Free" driving leads to a tragedy of the commons, and inefficient road system.
But we do though, with rego and fuel taxes and the like - sorry, I'm just confused and trying to clarify atm, were you suggesting we don't at the moment?
Rego doesn't even begin to cover the cost of roads. Nearly all the cost comes from general tax revenue.
Citation?
It's easy to work it out yourself.
Road funding is 8.3 billion from councils per year plus 5.6 billion (federal maintenance) +15 billion (federal projects) plus whatever the states spend. Plus there are other parts of road funding that come from other budgets but it's well over 30 billion all up. The number of registered cars in Australia is 21 million. So over $1500 per car per year for road expenditure.
Rego (excluding the insurance component which doesn't go towards roads) is about $200 depending on the state. So the rest is coming from general revenue.
Note that they never claimed rego paid for all the road costs. It's just something that's commonly assumed.
My understanding was that vehicle registration basically covered the costs of administrating the scheme, with road funding being driven by the excise on fuel. Which is why the government offers rebates for certain off road uses and if you run a generator etc.
If you calculate the revenues from fuel excise it doesn't come close to covering road costs either. I didn't even count the state funded road costs above but they come to some additional thousands per year per vehicle.
Most road costs are paid out of general revenue. Which means that the 30% of people who don't drive are paying for roads for everyone else too.
Yeah registration and fuel tax certainly covered a majority of it. This site has a breakdown and even with some of the dubious categories it's definitely still a significant portion. I suspect this also includes local roads which doesn't really make sense because you need them regardless of whether you have a car or not.
Congestion charges are better
Old workplace had its head office in Brisneyland (we're in melbs) and every damned time I was up there for a training junket I ended up in a car full of screaming coworkers, taking tunnel after tunnel and desperately clawing at google maps trying to figure out when the fuck we entered the tenth circle of hell because there are ten circles, not nine, the tenth is the one where you’re trying to get from The Circuit to the CBD in peak traffic while crammed in a tiny rental car with several large men who have just come off a 4 hour flight.
For convenience.
I have watched Daylight far too many times. I'm not a fan of the tunnels.
If it is high speed road or special infrastructure, it make sense.
The faster you go, the exponentially higher forces are put on the road, that means it is going to be very expansive to maintain. Instead of putting that extra maintenance on everybody, is put only to those who decides to use the road infrastructure.
Have you driven in Brisbane, bro? They don't know what a high speed road is. You pay to drive at 60km/h in a tunnel.
If you do it very very wrong I suppose