The toll road scam: A government-made monopoly you pay for.
Here’s a funny-because-it’s-true take on Transurban and the poor tax it imposes, from Punter’s Politics:
https://youtu.be/FlKBakPAtiw?si=G39_0GcJzSB0SSA8
#cars #roads #fuckcars @fuck_cars #tolls #tollroads #memes #funny #urbanism #UrbanPlanning #auspol #vicpol #nswpol
I don’t like when government funded projects are sold to private corporations. I like government funded infrastructure though.
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.
@ajsadauskas @fuck_cars Everything that’s been built with taxpayer money and privatised have been a massive government fraud. The jokes on us apparently.
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.
Usually the details show toll roads are bad. Ideally, toll roads are not needed. Toll roads are a result of failure of government.
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.
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I’m a big fan of putting speed cameras everywhere. Let the bad drivers pay for the road.
I avoid those roads now… Holy shit the new toll system is a shakedown.
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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.
You ride a bike on highways?
Yes, of course.
If it looks like a tax, feels like a tax, and works like a tax…