OK, the title might give you some ideas about what I want to say here; I am asking for you to be patient with me, and see where I have to go, here.
You might find it interesting,
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is running for Governor of Texas, against long-time Governor and complete crook, Rick Perry.
One of the big planks of her platform is auditing TXDOT, banning conversion of existing roads into toll roads, and banning the practice of allowing foreign corporations to control - and thus collect tolls from - toll roads.
Some of that, I agree with.
But let's do this in order, and like a poisonous flower at daybreak, as this unfolds, you will hopefully have some food for thought.
Ever notice that most big cities have their roads dissolve into chaos just before the end of the fiscal year?
Huge construction projects open, and gigantic stretches of road are torn apart at once.
Surely, there must be some reason for this, right?
Don't worry, I am here for this.
See, I've mentioned baselining before - the practice of taking all funds expended by a government agency during a single fiscal year, adding a percentage, and setting that as the budget for the following year - and this is the root cause of much of the difficulty we have with roads in this country.
Your local road repair office - whatever agency is responsible for it in your area - has a budget that is determined by baselining.
Now, let's imagine for a minute a fictitious town whose road budget this year is $100,000,000. If they spend all of it, next year they get $105,000,00, and are better off. YOU aren't, but THEY are.
If they spend only $80,000,000, on the other hand, their budget next year is $84,000,000 - they are worse off.
So, if there are unexpended funds at the end of the fiscal year, the agency will rush to try to spend every penny they have left in the budget, in the hopes of getting more for next year. Which is why huge sections of road can be perpetually under construction, and you still have to drive over potholes.
But there's another factor at work here, and that is the inherent incompetence of any government agency; because the road repair agency in your area does not answer to you, they don't have to do a "good" job, and their estimation of how long a project will take can be "when it's done."
Ask Duke Nukem if "when it's done" is a good idea.
Now, this is in large part due to lack of accountability. You can complain about the terrible roads all day, but it never affects the folks in charge of fixing the roads.
This is wrong.
Related to this is the fact that local governments - even state governments - have started, in recent years, converting existing - by which I mean, taxpayer-bought-and-paid-for - roads, into toll roads, requiring citizens to pay for them again, every time they use them.
Now, people are stupid; this is simple fact. Most people, as nice as they may be on a personal level, don't know their as from their elbow when it comes to economics or politics. They talk a lot about them, and frequently hold and passionately defend opinions for which they have no factual support regarding them, but that passion doesn't make them right.
So.
For some reason people have become convinced over the years that maintaining the roads is properly the function of the government, be it federal or state, and I suppose you could make a case for that.
I want to offer an alternative idea.
What if the only role the government maintained in the operation, creation, and repair of roads, was supervisory, namely deciding which companies would be awarded operator privileges for a given road?
Let me explain.
If you or I had to work on, say, six miles of city road, on a major traffic artery, in order to repair the openly deplorable state of its surface, the best way I can see to do that would be to work on one city block at a time. That limits traffic disruption as much as posible, and it's much easier to work on a small section at a time, than it is to, say, open the entire six mile stretch at once.
Kinda like, say, TXDOT does.
There is a major traffic artery, as described above, in Houston; Hillcroft Boulevard, which is now down to two lanes per side - a reduction by half of the driving surface - for a distance of nearly six miles. The ENTIRE northbound side of the road is torn apart.
There has been no visible work accomplished for several weeks.
Is there a good reason for such a disruption?
Sure; they don't care if it inconveniences you.
But a private company would; if their revenue stream in part depends on your use of their road, they have a built-in incentive to maintain the roads with as good and reliable a driving surface as possible, as functional and visible signals as possible, and to make repairs happen as quickly as possible and with minimal disruption to you.
Why?
Because if they don't, you'll use another road.
And then they don't get paid.
I would suggest that - this is a multipoint plan so stay with me - you first should eliminate all taxes whose sole beneficiary is road or transit funds.
Second, you contract the roads out to private companies, with the government maintaining the right to relieve them of the contract, and offer it to someone else, if the roads do not meet fixed quality audit standards.
Then allow the companies to bill based on road usage.
Technologically speaking, I would suggest - again, bear with me here - something similar to toll roads' EZTag.
Place, at each block, at each end, on each side, a tiny RFID transmitter, that marks a charge for use of that road for that block; farther apart for highways. In your car, a receiver, which adds up the charges, and generates a bill for road use at the end of each month.
You'd see a price spike the first month - and the second, a huge drop, as people start using the cheapest roads. Any measurement of actual usage shows that, versus costs of construction and maintenance, even the tiniest charges for road use would be wildly, astonishingly profitable for the companies maintaining the roads, while remaining well lower than the staggering taxes you pay now without realizing it.
So. You'd quickly reach an equilibrium, where there is a fairly well entrenched road toll, but the quality of the roads would be far better, construction and bizarre and unwanted projects that snarl traffic for months would be minimized; you'd save a bundle off the current gasoline taxes, road repairs would take place quickly, efficiently, and thoroughly.
Plus, corporations don't have eminent domain. The government does, which means that they can evict you from your home because they just have to spend the last $20K in their road budget. Corporations have a vested interest in not screwing you; all it would take is ONE "Company X stole my home!" campaign to ruin their day, as everyone finds and uses alternate routes.
Now, the issue I see with that would be a privacy issue; privacy advocates would object to a transmitter in your vehicle as an invasion of privacy, and rightly so, which is why your car would only possess the capacity to receive data, and the transmitters would be located at the roadside. That prevents any sort of record-keeping, except on your end; you'd have a bill, which you'd send back at the end of the month, and the company would be able to tell how many cars used their roads, but not whose, and unable to tell when you used them or what for.
Now to the part of the Hutchison Plan I don't like, to be addressed with a question:
If the best company to operate a road is German...
...Why stop them from doing so?
