Home of the bin chicken. Visit our friends:
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.
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.
Can governments not mandate trucks use specific roads even without tolls?
Those forms of transportation are space- and energy-efficient, but they are not time-efficient. Cars are in many cases the fastest way to commute to work, and the last thing an overworked, sleep-deprived working stiff needs is to lose even more precious time and sleep. Cars are popular for a reason.
This comment feels at odds with what you said about traffic being preferable to tolls. Although I suppose public transport is slower if you design a city around the concept of "fuck you, got mine".
It's also slower if you don't live in a densely-packed city, which a lot of people don't, because housing in densely-packed cities has a very high cost per square foot. There's also no such thing as HOA-free housing in cities; the nature of multi-family housing makes such freedom impossible. Suburbs, too, are popular for a reason.
Tolls are good actually
No they're not. They punish the working poor for being working poor, and take away what little they have in the way of employment opportunities.
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.
People already pay for their roads. That's the whole point of this post.
“Tolls are good” types justify tolls by saying they reduce traffic. What they don't tell you is that tolls reduce traffic by separating working poor people from their jobs, which makes them even more poor, stressed, and sleep-deprived than they already were.
The reduced traffic, meanwhile, makes driving more pleasant for the rich, and that's the real purpose of tolls.
Tolling is gentrification.
Congestion charges are better
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!
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.
Is it not the case that toll roads are privately funded roads that do not receive tax dollars for upkeep?
If you do it very very wrong I suppose