[Saxon]

Geo,

You are right, everyone benefits from roads, just as we all benefit from an educated society based on school taxes. However, do we all benefit equally and can we all pay equally? No, we do not and can not. Further, many of the costs of roads are hidden, which creates a distorted marketplace for the goods on offer.

Now, the typical North American view is that roads and personal car ownership are a god given right, as well as a universal benefit to all, is not shared throughout the world. What a road tax does is put a cost on using the roads. (This next section is theoretical, we all know the real world does not do this well)

Roads do cost society through building, maintenance, pollution, police monitoring, traffic deaths, congestion and opportunity cost. By placing a cost on it, it allows society to recoup some of the cost and, to my mind, allows each individual a choice in how much of the cost they feel like paying. If you have your own car, you will pay 100% of the cost of it, via our theoretically perfect road tax. If you chose instead to use public transit, you will pay only a very small fraction of the bus’s cost to society over the year. You benefit from the road either way, but you choose the level at which you pay and also influence the level of cost which society bears. If everyone took the bus, we would need fewer big roads, there would be less pollution and maintenance would be less. Instead, we chose private cars and have resultantly more pollution, maintenance and freeways. Transport companies will pay more for their big trucks and will pass the costs on to the consumers. They may choose to switch to rail, which is more efficient for some kinds of products, has less deaths per kilometer traveled, and requires less policing.

If we put the price of using the road on the Users, we should also remove the price we are now charging everyone indirectly. As such, while the transport companies would pay much high road taxes, everyone would have lower company and income tax. They would then be able to pay the higher charges on goods and might choose the locally grown apples to the ones brought halfway across the continent.

Public transit is particularly woeful in North America because the real costs of the road network are not carried by the Users of the road. For financial reasons, more people would use public transit if faced with the true cost of owning a car, which would lead to public transit becoming more viable. Look at New York. It is expensive to run a car, so the subway, busses and taxis are very busy and do pretty well. My old boss considered a car essential here in Nairobi and does not have one in NY.

Determining what is an accurate costing of the impact of roads on society is next to impossible. This does not mean we should not try, nor that we should assume that the level of benefits automatically outstrips the negative costs. Even if the level of benefits is higher than the costs (and I agree with you, it usually does) we still need to determine who will bear the costs and how they will be recovered. (As an aside, Japan is sinking huge amounts of cash into public works, including roads. They are widely criticized for spending too much on these things, threatening their already slow economic growth. Sometimes you can have too many roads)

In most places, part of the cost of roads is paid for out of general taxation, so there is no link between behavior and result. I feel that more direct taxes are better, as it lets you know where your money is going and also allows you to decide if it is something of which you approve. The other part of the cost of roads is paid by those who live next to the road. Put a freeway next to your house and you pay when your property value drops. You pay much more and get nothing in return. Road tax does not stop you from paying, but does ensure that the guys driving by your house in the middle of the night pay. The guy who rides his bike and does not pay road tax probably does not wake you up as he rides by.

I have to run, so two more quick points. Roads kill at lot of people. I think 30,000 died in 1999 in the US. I looked it up after September 11 to get a sense of perspective. Look up traffic deaths with Google. The status quo kills and we could take steps to change it, like putting more people on buses driven by professionals or on trains. We pay in blood for our transport system, a hidden cost that most refuse to acknowledge.. The other point is that I do not think we could have 100% of the costs covered by a road tax, I just want a system where your choices of transport are influenced by the real costs. It is a fairly universal good, but I think the costs should be covered differently than the current model. Defense is the classic example of why some things should not be pay as you go, thought the Falkland Islanders do get a lot of value for their money. Education should have good government support, but I think that allowing parents to influence the schools through supplemental payments is not a bad thing.

Gotta run, which is probably better for all witnessing this extended post.