Thread: Goldman Sachs Wants You to Pay-by-the-Mile to Drive on U.S. Roadways

Originally Posted by CivilWars

Originally Posted by SoySoldier

Oh, so they want to make roads like the health-care system. Good idea, right capitalists?

Last I checked I, and other taxpayers before and with me, paid for ALL of the roads in America. Last I checked MOST doctors in America paid for their own education, and MOST hospitals paid to construct their own facilities. Good try.

And what does that have to do with it?

You don't think engineers go to school?

Engineers go to school, and as often as doctors pay for it.

So now engineers can go to school and the road-making companies can pay for all of it. Then it would be OK if we bought their services. This is no different than any other service that could be provided by the government.

So, by your logic, if a business is paid for by tax payers it is OK to make it a public service? So if medicine is paid by taxpayers is would be OK to provide it to everyone, just like roads, correct?

Payed for by taxes, they can eat a dick.

could someone please explain to me how this would work, exactly?

i read the article, but i've also heard a couple of also explanations, which may be correct or incorrect...

1) private companies will initially fund the construction of new roads, so that the government doesn't have to. the government would then pay back the private company over XX years (over 10 years, for example), with interest. a toll may or may not be enforced.
- this would benefit the company because they have a reliable investment
- this would benefit the government because they would be able to build roads immediately without having to spend so much up front
- this would benefit the public because they get the roads immediately (instead of later or never), assuming that the roads were essential in improving commuting/transportation/business/etc. indirectly, this would also help prevent accidents/car repair/etc (think about all of the potholes and other road damage in heavy traffic areas)

2) private companies would 'purchase' old roads from the government that need repair. they would pay for the repair and maintain the quality of the road for XX years. they would then set up a toll to receive revenue.
- benefits similar to the ones above

also, i dont think ALL of the roads would be purchased... im sure the government would only sell select, strategic ones.

Don't we already pay with various gasoline taxes?
And take the Pennsylvania Turnpike as a shining example of a piss-poor toll road. Always construction, always a crappy ride, still 2 lanes for a majority of it, still ridiculous slow speed limits.

If money from tolls was enough that we could keep up our roads in pristine conditions then we'd already be doing it. Corporations wouldn't do this if they weren't going to get a profit from it (i.e. something like a 10% cut off the top), which either means raising tolls or reducing road quality. If a road's bad enough now, we can fire the governor and get a new "pro-roads" governor. If a road gets bad under private ownership then even with a "pro-roads" governor we'd have to hope he could get the corporation to fix it in a timely manner, without being able to squeeze additional funds from the state taxpayers.

From recent history of privatization of roadways, these companies usually go for "it's ours for a long time" (i.e. competition is far in the distance and we lose that market benefit). This is partly due to tax law, but it still sucks for the public. You can't "fire" them, you can only try to fine them and put pressure on, which private companies are really good at avoiding. One of the places where private companies are generally better than the government is in their ability to weasel out of their supposed obligations. They spend a lot of money on this, and the public doesn't seem to realize that this is where some of the 'market efficiency' loses efficiency. In my line of work you get pretty knowledgeable about it. On a side note, there is nothing more satisfying than using a contractor's own dirty tricks against them to force them to do the job they contracted to do, and give the public its money's worth.

Private companies also manage to get loosely defined contracts (i.e. legally they don't have to do as much as the public thinks they'd have to do... although any contractor will gladly work for you as long as you give them more of that sweet public money). It's frequently cheaper and more expedient (i.e. happens now instead of after 2 years of litigation) to just pay a private owner more to fix a problem than to hold them to a contract that is just barely on the public's side, or that is so loosely written that it's tough to tell whose side it's on.

Also, by the time a real problem with the privatized road is seen (years down the road) the public officials who worked the deal are likely gone, and the most the public can do is elect someone else in the next election. They're still stuck with the deal. Corporations have a ton of money and if a politician is already in enough of a jam that he's considering selling MAJOR public resources for a quick fix solution (i.e. fix a budget and get re-elected) then I don't trust his motivations for such a deal at all. Indiana and Chicago tollways are owned for 75 to 99 years!

Keep in mind that corporations never offer even close to the full amount that tolls would bring in over the period that they'll own the road for.

Aside from these other considerations, the public loses a lot of leeway to actually plan transportation policy going into the future. How much planning would we need to do around the turnpike in the next 99 years? It's ridiculous to even consider shackling our grandchildren's children to a deal like that.

Selling public roads appears to be almost universally a bad idea. Perhaps accepting a deal from a corporation that pays the entire cost of building a new public road, which the public can then choose to use and pay a toll for, could be worked to be beneficial to the public, but such a deal would be almost guaranteed to lose money for the private owner, and as such no private owner would go for it.

Originally Posted by hawgballs

But seriously, what is next? Private Troopers to ensure highway safety?

Be like (from what i remember) in Snow Crash where its almost private everything

Or Robocop where they privatized the police department.

Originally Posted by hawgballs

Originally Posted by ems_goof

Don't we already pay with various gasoline taxes?
And take the Pennsylvania Turnpike as a shining example of a piss-poor toll road. Always construction, always a crappy ride, still 2 lanes for a majority of it, still ridiculous slow speed limits.

Right. But at least with this flawed system, there are, at least, people to be held accountable by the public. Whereas private companies are accountable to nobody but their major investors..........

Right, because there are no anti-trust laws, no corporate laws, no labor statutes, none of that... its the wild wild west and these companies are LITERALLY doing anything their investors allow.