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0 pointsbboygravity3y ago0 comments

I've lived in countries with and without toll.

I feel the no toll approach is better.

Most importantly because no toll means (the feeling of) more privacy, toll means you're being tracked. Regardless of law we all know that everything eveywhere gets stored indefinitely independent of country (if not legally then illegally if not by the toll org then by the secret service).

Secondly the country I was in with the toll approach had worse infrastructure.

Thirdly, when looking at government spending as a whole, road infrastructure (in a non tollroad country) is really not that big of an expenditure as far as I know?

Forthly, a country may (and some do) still tax road-users only by just taxing car ownership periodically. No need to invade privacy for that through toll booths or even worse: mandatory tracking devices (countries in Europe are pushing for the latter). Added bonus: you can trivially put a tax on relatively polluting vehicles if you like and use that to subsidize less polluting vehicles.

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lxgr3y ago

Another option is to just tax fuel, which has the nice side effect of being roughly proportionate to actual road usage and pollution.

ndsipa_pomu3y ago

That would have been better in the past, but doesn't work so well with electric vehicles.

Ideally, vehicles should be charged in relation to approximately the fourth power of their weight as that is proportional to the road damage. However, that will drastically change the economics of logistics companies.

boosteri3y ago

Not necessarily, but governments would need to be transparent about subsidising logistics.. instead of the current state where this is done covertly by taxing little vehicles disproportionately.

numbasys3y ago

That's a good point and another reason to encourage it. It would boost rail over road, which makes far more sense.

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