A couple of ideas occurred to me when I was thinking about how unlikely it is for Missouri to ever have toll roads (new roads or tolls on existing roads).
(1) What exactly is stopping DOTs from using concessions to build revenue for new or expanded roads? My understanding of whatever law that prevents every state except Connecticut and Maryland from having service areas on non-toll roads is admittedly vague. There seems to be so much potential here: gas stations, food courts, gift shops, tourist attractions, truck stops, etc. With truck stops, they could even charge for parking, considering how truck parking is always in such high demand.
(2) Advertisement funding. Almost every website is funded this way. Why not roads? Billboards are usually on private land, so the revenue stream typically only benefits land owners fortunate enough to own land adjacent to the road. Why not use ROW for billboards and collect the revenue to fund the road? Going back to Missouri, this seems like it could be particularly applicable on I-70.
Other ideas/thoughts?
Concessions at plazas are now considered state-subsidized competition with local businesses. This is why NY's "Taste of NY" stores on its highways were initially shot down by FHWA. I still don't know how NYSDOT got the approval -- one argument I had heard from the CFO was that the stores were "little more than vending machines"...but I doubt that's what convinced FHWA.
As of now, a ballpark estimate of gas taxes is $250 a year for my area. That is, 13k miles a year at, for simplicity, 26 mpg means 500 gallons annually, taxed at 50 cents federal, state and local.
I simply don't spend anything close to that in rest areas. If that would be added as overhead for places near the road, driving further inland would be a second option (and packing more drinks and food before leaving - a first one).
Airport and toll road places are already overpriced , but I don't think they contribute too much towards the bottom line. Limitations on outside food and drink in airports does help, though.
I think that Interstates should be able to have service plazas.
Quote from: kalvado on April 30, 2021, 07:34:46 AM
Airport and toll road places are already overpriced , but I don't think they contribute too much towards the bottom line. Limitations on outside food and drink in airports does help, though.
Whatever revenue the DOT's/toll authorities gained from service plazas is even less in many states now, as a lot of the deals for reconstructing service plazas in the northeast allowed the concessionaire to keep most of the revenue in return for financing the rebuild.
Quote from: stridentweasel on April 30, 2021, 06:02:23 AM
(1) What exactly is stopping DOTs from using concessions to build revenue for new or expanded roads? My understanding of whatever law that prevents every state except Connecticut and Maryland from having service areas on non-toll roads is admittedly vague. There seems to be so much potential here: gas stations, food courts, gift shops, tourist attractions, truck stops, etc. With truck stops, they could even charge for parking, considering how truck parking is always in such high demand.
Just wanted to note that CT & MD weren't exempt:
-The Merritt/Wilbur Cross Parkways & Connecticut Turnpike were formerly tolled, so these service plazas are grandfathered in.
-The toll plaza a mile north of the Tydings Bridge is technically for the entire JFK Highway stretch of I-95 from Baltimore to Delaware, which explains the existence of the Maryland House & Chesapeake House plazas. There also used to be ramp toll plazas at the exits along this stretch.
KY still have an operating service plaza on the WK Pkwy, decades after tolls were removed.
There is no prohibition on having service plazas on non-tolled roads. Federal law only prohibits service plazas on interstate highways, with an exception for those built prior to 1960. Tolls are irrelevant, it only matters whether the road is an interstate or not, and when the service plaza was built.
E.g. there are service plazas on the MA 128 portion of I-95, which was never a toll road, but was not built as an interstate.
Some states have laws prohibiting businesses from operating at rest areas (e.g. California), but many do not. In those states there would theoretically not be any law preventing the state DOT from building a service plaza along a non-interstate road.
Quote from: deathtopumpkins on April 30, 2021, 09:09:03 AM
There is no prohibition on having service plazas on non-tolled roads. Federal law only prohibits service plazas on interstate highways, with an exception for those built prior to 1960. Tolls are irrelevant, it only matters whether the road is an interstate or not, and when the service plaza was built.
E.g. there are service plazas on the MA 128 portion of I-95, which was never a toll road, but was not built as an interstate.
Some states have laws prohibiting businesses from operating at rest areas (e.g. California), but many do not. In those states there would theoretically not be any law preventing the state DOT from building a service plaza along a non-interstate road.
Massachusetts has 1 on MA 24.
In Illinois, are the establishments you see that span the tollways, kicking some of that revenue to transportation? I'd assume so....
I would say that removing the gas tax and using an alternative tax is a MUST in light of EVs.
Taxing tires would in theory be a pretty good approach, but you run into a perverse incentive where you discourage people from spending on safety equipment, so that is no good.
Some counties assess by the size of the lot for local roads. That tends to screw rural property owners however.
Quote from: OCGuy81 on April 30, 2021, 12:10:29 PM
In Illinois, are the establishments you see that span the tollways, kicking some of that revenue to transportation? I'd assume so....
They seem fairly keen to get rid of the oases, so I can only assume that they don't really make a lot of money, at least for the Tollway authority.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on April 30, 2021, 11:59:50 AM
Quote from: deathtopumpkins on April 30, 2021, 09:09:03 AM
There is no prohibition on having service plazas on non-tolled roads. Federal law only prohibits service plazas on interstate highways, with an exception for those built prior to 1960. Tolls are irrelevant, it only matters whether the road is an interstate or not, and when the service plaza was built.
E.g. there are service plazas on the MA 128 portion of I-95, which was never a toll road, but was not built as an interstate.
Some states have laws prohibiting businesses from operating at rest areas (e.g. California), but many do not. In those states there would theoretically not be any law preventing the state DOT from building a service plaza along a non-interstate road.
Massachusetts has 1 on MA 24.
MA 3 in Plymouth and MA 128 in Beverly as well. Kind of one on US 6 in Barnstable, if you want to consider that kind of a freeway.
Quote from: HighwayStar on April 30, 2021, 12:50:57 PM
I would say that removing the gas tax and using an alternative tax is a MUST in light of EVs.
Taxing tires would in theory be a pretty good approach, but you run into a perverse incentive where you discourage people from spending on safety equipment, so that is no good.
Some counties assess by the size of the lot for local roads. That tends to screw rural property owners however.
So far, I ran about 40k miles on my set, would probably have to replace them at about 50k. Gas tax is about 2 cents a mile (NY total rate - state, federal, local) would mean $800 tax for a set of tires on top of probably $600 rubber price. Sticker shock?
Quote from: stridentweasel on April 30, 2021, 06:02:23 AM
(2) Advertisement funding. Almost every website is funded this way. Why not roads? Billboards are usually on private land, so the revenue stream typically only benefits land owners fortunate enough to own land adjacent to the road. Why not use ROW for billboards and collect the revenue to fund the road? Going back to Missouri, this seems like it could be particularly applicable on I-70.
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
Quote from: stridentweasel on April 30, 2021, 06:02:23 AM
(2) Advertisement funding. Almost every website is funded this way. Why not roads? Billboards are usually on private land, so the revenue stream typically only benefits land owners fortunate enough to own land adjacent to the road. Why not use ROW for billboards and collect the revenue to fund the road? Going back to Missouri, this seems like it could be particularly applicable on I-70.
Engineers would probably put the kibosh on this due to message loading concerns. Obviously, they can't exercise any control over this when billboards are on private land adjacent to the road, but on the other hand, signs are a lot more ignorable that far off the traveled way. You could maybe get away with doing billboard gantries if they're more than a mile from adjacent interchanges.
The Lady Bird Johnson Act may also make this illegal, but I'm not familiar enough with its provisions to say for sure.
Tax on electricity. Obviously not all electricity use is for powering electric cars, but not all gas is used on roads either (some of it goes to things like lawnmowers and generators).
Road-maintenance fees on license plate stickers and driver license renewals. Of course, this means the tax burden is entirely on the residents of a given state, and not shared with drivers passing through, like the gas tax does. (This is a problem with tire taxes as well. Also, if you live in a metro area adjacent to a state line, you can buy tires in whichever state has the lower tire tax.)
Wind turbines positioned to generate electricity off the drafts of passing trucks. You could also construct solar panels in the middle of loop ramps. This electricity is then sold to the local power utility.
Traffic fines go to the state DOT rather than the police department or general fund.
The area under elevated highways is leased to private businesses. Obviously there aren't a lot of customer-oriented places that would want to be located under a freeway overpass, but it would be a good place for something like a self-storage business or a marijuana grow facility.
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 30, 2021, 04:24:28 PM
You could also construct solar panels in the middle of loop ramps.
I'm thinking that rollover truck accidents might become a lot more expensive that way.
Virginia has introduced what is called the "highway use fee." If it applies to your car, it's charged when you renew your registration–I had to pay it last week when I renewed the registration on my wife's Acura TLX. It applies to vehicles whose fuel efficiency exceeds a certain mpg rating; as to those vehicles (such as the TLX), the amount is calculated based on some kind of sliding scale using the EPA fuel economy figures. The fee also applies to alternative-fuel vehicles, including electric vehicles, and I believe those vehicles are subject to a flat fee that is calculated based on some combination of estimated average miles driven per year and estimated average fuel economy.
The funny thing is, when they introduced this fee, they also reduced the cost to register your car by $10 per year. So while our TLX was subject to the highway use fee, that fee came out to around $9.17 for two years, which means we actually came out ahead under the new system.
Here's the explanation from the DMV's website. I haven't looked at the statutes to see whether this is complete–I don't know what they do as to non-EV alternative-fuel vehicles, nor do I know whether it applies to diesel-powered cars (which I doubt because diesel is taxed differently from gasoline in Virginia).
QuoteVa. Code §§ 46.2-770, § 46.2-771, and § 46.2-772
The purpose of the highway use fee is to ensure a more fair contribution to the Commonwealth Transportation Fund from fuel-efficient and electric vehicles using highways in the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Transportation Fund is funded, in part, by motor fuels taxes. The highway use fee is effective July 1, 2020 and will be updated on a yearly basis.
"Fuel-efficient vehicles" are defined as vehicles that have a combined fuel economy of 25 miles per gallon (MPG) or greater, while, "electric motor vehicles" are defined to mean vehicles that use electricity as the only source of motive power.
In addition to a vehicle's combined MPG rating, two other factors are considered when calculating highway use fees: (1) the fuels tax rate at the time the vehicle is registered, and (2) the average number of miles traveled by a passenger vehicle in Virginia.
Electric vehicles are required to pay a fixed highway use fee, which is currently $88.20, to reflect the amount in fuels taxes electric vehicles will not pay during a single year due to not purchasing motor fuel.
The highway use fee for fuel-efficient vehicles, or vehicles manufactured in a year in which the average combined MPG rating for all of the vehicles produced in that year is 25 MPG or greater, is calculated to reflect the difference between the amount of fuels tax that the vehicle pays in a single year, based on its combined fuel efficiency, and the fuels tax paid by a vehicle with a combined fuel efficiency of 23.7 MPG.
DMV uses the combined fuel rating as provided by the manufacturer to determine if a vehicle is subject to the highway use fee. If the combined fuel rating is not available for a vehicle, DMV uses the estimated average fuel economy as determined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for all cars of the same model year and all trucks of the same model year with a gross weight between 6,000 and 10,000 pounds.
The following vehicles are exempt from the highway use fee:
Vehicles with a combined miles per gallon rating less than 25 MPG;
Autocycles;
Motorcycles;
Mopeds;
A vehicle with a gross weight greater than 10,000 pounds;
A vehicle that is owned by a governmental entity;
A vehicle registered under the International Registration Plan (IRP).
Quote from: kphoger on April 30, 2021, 04:34:43 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 30, 2021, 04:24:28 PM
You could also construct solar panels in the middle of loop ramps.
I'm thinking that rollover truck accidents might become a lot more expensive that way.
I'm thinking more of the large loop ramps that you see at trumpet-type interchanges moreso than your typical 1960s cloverleaf. Norman has a loop ramp with a 660-foot diameter, for instance. The inside of that loop has enough empty space you could play football inside it. If your truck rolls over into the middle of
that you are doing something hilariously wrong.
Besides, even if they do get damaged in an accident, just bill the responsible driver's insurance. DOTs already do this whenever an accident takes out a sign or delineator.
Wisconsin raised the registration fee on conventional cars by $10, but raised the fee on hybrid or electrical vehicles by a lot greater amount ($80 IIRC)
Quote from: Big John on April 30, 2021, 05:46:36 PM
Wisconsin raised the registration fee on conventional cars by $10, but raised the fee on hybrid or electrical vehicles by a lot greater amount ($80 IIRC)
Never underestimate politicians ability to collect when they see drops in tax revenue!
Quote from: JoePCool14 on April 30, 2021, 04:14:23 PM
Quote from: stridentweasel on April 30, 2021, 06:02:23 AM
(2) Advertisement funding. Almost every website is funded this way. Why not roads? Billboards are usually on private land, so the revenue stream typically only benefits land owners fortunate enough to own land adjacent to the road. Why not use ROW for billboards and collect the revenue to fund the road? Going back to Missouri, this seems like it could be particularly applicable on I-70.
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
Or this (https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8886008,-72.5094427,3a,28y,86.02h,91.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3ag3djKLVbW-ovKzaCSarw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192) :ded:
Quote from: JoePCool14 on April 30, 2021, 04:14:23 PM
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
That's kind of dismissive toward advertising as its own art form. Arrays of signs and billboards provide a form of stim within an transportation landscape, heightening the user experience while also serving a useful purpose.
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 30, 2021, 04:15:14 PM
Engineers would probably put the kibosh on this due to message loading concerns. Obviously, they can't exercise any control over this when billboards are on private land adjacent to the road, but on the other hand, signs are a lot more ignorable that far off the traveled way. You could maybe get away with doing billboard gantries if they're more than a mile from adjacent interchanges.
The Lady Bird Johnson Act may also make this illegal, but I'm not familiar enough with its provisions to say for sure.
Maybe we just need to find an FHWA-sanctioned way of doing it in a manner that doesn't hinder safety.
Quote from: stridentweasel on May 01, 2021, 08:43:24 AM
Quote from: JoePCool14 on April 30, 2021, 04:14:23 PM
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
That's kind of dismissive toward advertising as its own art form. Arrays of signs and billboards provide a form of stim within an transportation landscape, heightening the user experience while also serving a useful purpose.
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 30, 2021, 04:15:14 PM
Engineers would probably put the kibosh on this due to message loading concerns. Obviously, they can't exercise any control over this when billboards are on private land adjacent to the road, but on the other hand, signs are a lot more ignorable that far off the traveled way. You could maybe get away with doing billboard gantries if they're more than a mile from adjacent interchanges.
The Lady Bird Johnson Act may also make this illegal, but I'm not familiar enough with its provisions to say for sure.
Maybe we just need to find an FHWA-sanctioned way of doing it in a manner that doesn't hinder safety.
Art issues aside, google ads cost about
0.3 cents per impression. Assuming same rate for ads on billboards (targeted ads on google should be more valuable, though).
With 2 cents per mile gas tax rate, it takes 7 billboards per mile to match that revenue, and 14 billboards per mile if actual costs are half of revenue.
Not to mention oversupply issues.
Quote from: vdeane on April 30, 2021, 10:25:29 PM
Quote from: JoePCool14 on April 30, 2021, 04:14:23 PM
Quote from: stridentweasel on April 30, 2021, 06:02:23 AM
(2) Advertisement funding. Almost every website is funded this way. Why not roads? Billboards are usually on private land, so the revenue stream typically only benefits land owners fortunate enough to own land adjacent to the road. Why not use ROW for billboards and collect the revenue to fund the road? Going back to Missouri, this seems like it could be particularly applicable on I-70.
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
Or this (https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8886008,-72.5094427,3a,28y,86.02h,91.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3ag3djKLVbW-ovKzaCSarw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192) :ded:
And they were building another one on the other side of the highway when this was taken.
Even more dumb is if you check the other side of the sign, it's not even an ad, it's just pseudo-PSA feel-good nonsense, further wasting the already limited rationale for those monstrosities.
Quote from: stridentweasel on May 01, 2021, 08:43:24 AM
Quote from: JoePCool14 on April 30, 2021, 04:14:23 PM
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
That's kind of dismissive toward advertising as its own art form. Arrays of signs and billboards provide a form of stim within an transportation landscape, heightening the user experience while also serving a useful purpose.
"Heightening the user experience" is incredibly subjective, and wholly counter to my feelings on the matter. The last thing that I want when I am trying to operate a 3,300 pound vehicle at a speed of 80 mph is some rich monocle-eating motherfucker sticking his nose into my business and begging for money.
I think it's safe to say I hate advertising in all forms.
Quote from: kphoger on May 01, 2021, 06:11:34 PM
I think it's safe to say I hate advertising in all forms.
It's ok to hate advertising. As long as you pay attention, you are being influenced by the message
Quote from: kalvado on May 01, 2021, 06:16:05 PM
Quote from: kphoger on May 01, 2021, 06:11:34 PM
I think it's safe to say I hate advertising in all forms.
It's ok to hate advertising. As long as you pay attention, you are being influenced by the message
I actively try not to. When ads come on the radio, I switch stations. If all of my presets are ads, I turn the radio off. When an ad comes on YouTube, I switch to a different program until it's over. Etc.
Quote from: SectorZ on May 01, 2021, 11:09:17 AM
Quote from: vdeane on April 30, 2021, 10:25:29 PM
Quote from: JoePCool14 on April 30, 2021, 04:14:23 PM
Quote from: stridentweasel on April 30, 2021, 06:02:23 AM
(2) Advertisement funding. Almost every website is funded this way. Why not roads? Billboards are usually on private land, so the revenue stream typically only benefits land owners fortunate enough to own land adjacent to the road. Why not use ROW for billboards and collect the revenue to fund the road? Going back to Missouri, this seems like it could be particularly applicable on I-70.
Gross. Would you want every highway to be like this (https://goo.gl/maps/37YtWzk1EaxjJxAg9) but worse? Imagine if we had to add gantries over roads just for billboards. No thank you. We get enough advertising on TV, radio, online, sports, etc.
Or this (https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8886008,-72.5094427,3a,28y,86.02h,91.75t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3ag3djKLVbW-ovKzaCSarw!2e0!7i16384!8i8192) :ded:
And they were building another one on the other side of the highway when this was taken.
Even more dumb is if you check the other side of the sign, it's not even an ad, it's just pseudo-PSA feel-good nonsense, further wasting the already limited rationale for those monstrosities.
Check more of the imagery. It's a LED display with changeable messages. In addition to the PSA, there's an ad for Elf the musical on that side.
I remember a proposal in Texas to allow TxDOT to buy up land for new roads, not just for the road, but also the adjacent land, which would become highway-fronting property. That way the increase in value would go to the state instead of the previous owner. They could sell or lease it for much more than they paid for it.
What about rest areas and/or service areas with drive-in movie theaters? Those are kind of making a comeback. Granted, I'm not sure how you'd keep people coming back when things are trending toward watching movies at home, anyway.
Quote from: stridentweasel on May 03, 2021, 05:59:38 AM
What about rest areas and/or service areas with drive-in movie theaters? Those are kind of making a comeback. Granted, I'm not sure how you'd keep people coming back when things are trending toward watching movies at home, anyway.
Wut.
Quote from: Rothman on May 03, 2021, 07:17:37 AM
Quote from: stridentweasel on May 03, 2021, 05:59:38 AM
What about rest areas and/or service areas with drive-in movie theaters? Those are kind of making a comeback. Granted, I'm not sure how you'd keep people coming back when things are trending toward watching movies at home, anyway.
Wut.
Drive in for trucks may be an interesting concept. I just wonder if feature movie duration should be subtracted from required test time...
Quote from: kalvado on May 03, 2021, 07:49:37 AM
Quote from: Rothman on May 03, 2021, 07:17:37 AM
Quote from: stridentweasel on May 03, 2021, 05:59:38 AM
What about rest areas and/or service areas with drive-in movie theaters? Those are kind of making a comeback. Granted, I'm not sure how you'd keep people coming back when things are trending toward watching movies at home, anyway.
Wut.
Drive in for trucks may be an interesting concept. I just wonder if feature movie duration should be subtracted from required test time...
But...a comeback...?
Quote from: Rothman on January 19, 1970, 01:01:26 PM
But...a comeback...?
Sadly, it's mostly because of a thing that happened over a year ago that caused indoor movie theaters to limit operations, but who knows if they'll have more staying power.
Quote from: kphoger on May 01, 2021, 06:26:59 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 01, 2021, 06:16:05 PM
Quote from: kphoger on May 01, 2021, 06:11:34 PM
I think it's safe to say I hate advertising in all forms.
It's ok to hate advertising. As long as you pay attention, you are being influenced by the message
I actively try not to. When ads come on the radio, I switch stations. If all of my presets are ads, I turn the radio off. When an ad comes on YouTube, I switch to a different program until it's over. Etc.
I don't even use the radio anymore, ad-block for YouTube
Electric car tax or car insurance bills to fund highways? I heard things that gas taxes may not be viable in the future.
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So we should keep the Honda Odyssey but ditch the Chevy Silverado 1500, correct?
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
So we shouldn't trade with other countries?
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:25:45 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
So we shouldn't trade with other countries?
We should trade, but at a surplus and as an exporter of finished goods and renewables and an importer of raw materials.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:27:43 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:25:45 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
So we shouldn't trade with other countries?
We should trade, but at a surplus and as an exporter of finished goods and renewables and an importer of raw materials.
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:28:31 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:27:43 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:25:45 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
So we shouldn't trade with other countries?
We should trade, but at a surplus and as an exporter of finished goods and renewables and an importer of raw materials.
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Perhaps not prohibited outright, but it made an unappealing proposition. The Japanese consumer is also discouraged from buying an American car.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:34:26 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:28:31 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:27:43 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:25:45 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
So we shouldn't trade with other countries?
We should trade, but at a surplus and as an exporter of finished goods and renewables and an importer of raw materials.
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Perhaps not prohibited outright, but it made an unappealing proposition. The Japanese consumer is also discouraged from buying an American car.
I do support some level of protection of American industry, but maybe not this.
For commercial planes, there is a tariff on importing Airbus planes from Europe, which is why we're seeing more of them (specifically the narrowbody A320 family) getting produced in Airbus's Mobile, AL factory lately. So HighwayStar got his idea sort of implemented a couple of years ago, at least in the aircraft industry :bigass:
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:36:34 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:34:26 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:28:31 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:27:43 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:25:45 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:24:35 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 13, 2021, 09:44:32 PM
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 13, 2021, 08:50:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 07:58:35 PM
Quote from: kalvado on May 13, 2021, 12:23:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 13, 2021, 12:16:32 PM
Tariffs would be a good way to do it.
Perfectly agreed. Stop importing clunkers from Detroit!
Oh, wait...
No, stop importing the junk from overseas.
So all German and Japanese cars are junk and we should all be driving Fords and Chevys, or whatever other car brands that are American?
By overseas he probably means China.
No, I mean not US territory, which extends to Mexico, Canada, etc. even though they are not technically overseas.
Yes, we should all be driving American built cars, the Japanese drive Japanese cars, the Germans drive German cars, and both are very good at keeping other vehicles out of their home market. Only the US is stupid enough to screw itself and import vehicles en masse at the expense of our own industry.
So we shouldn't trade with other countries?
We should trade, but at a surplus and as an exporter of finished goods and renewables and an importer of raw materials.
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Perhaps not prohibited outright, but it made an unappealing proposition. The Japanese consumer is also discouraged from buying an American car.
I do support some level of protection of American industry, but maybe not this.
Sometimes you have to crack a few eggs to make the omelette.
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 14, 2021, 01:37:15 PM
For commercial planes, there is a tariff on importing Airbus planes from Europe, which is why we're seeing more of them (specifically the narrowbody A320 family) getting produced in Airbus's Mobile, AL factory lately. So HighwayStar got his idea sort of implemented a couple of years ago, at least in the aircraft industry :bigass:
A step in the right direction for sure, but the end goal should be to take the factory away from Airbus and put it in American hands.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:34:26 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:28:31 PM
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Perhaps not prohibited outright, but it made an unappealing proposition. The Japanese consumer is also discouraged from buying an American car.
I don't get it. In 2016, the Toyota Camry was the most American-made vehicle being sold, with 75% of its parts made in America and the assembly plant being in Kentucky. Why should people have been discouraged from buying it?
Quote from: kphoger on May 14, 2021, 01:52:08 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:34:26 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:28:31 PM
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Perhaps not prohibited outright, but it made an unappealing proposition. The Japanese consumer is also discouraged from buying an American car.
I don't get it. In 2016, the Toyota Camry was the most American-made vehicle being sold, with 75% of its parts made in America and the assembly plant being in Kentucky. Why should people have been discouraged from buying it?
Because in 1950 90% of all vehicles in the world were being made in the US out of essentially 100% domestic components. THAT is the benchmark of excellence.
People should be discouraged from buying it because it is still not designed in the US, not manufactured by a US owned concern, and that 25% foreign component is the difference between being able to build it or not (as the current chip shortage shows).
People should be discouraged from buying it in favor of vehicles manufactured in the US of 100% domestic components by US owned concerns. (which by the way is EXACTLY what the Japanese themselves do with their domestic market)
Japan makes their cars with 100% domestic materials? Considering they're an island, I had imagine they would have to import something in.
Y'all realize that car companies are multinational corporations that make their products in a variety of countries irrespective of where the brand is headquartered, right?
(OMG, I was in such a hurry when I typed this the first time.)
What do I care where my car was designed, or even built? All I care is whether it's reliable and suits my needs. I don't particularly feel more compelled to support a factory in Kentucky than one in Nuevo León. People are people.
My wife's granduncle said once when we were discussing how a lot of K-Mart's and Wal-Mart's merchandise was produced in Chinese sweatshops: "And that's why I shop at Wal-Mart. I'd rather some poor young lady have a job in a sweatshop than be on the street selling herself as a prostitute."
Quote from: kphoger on May 14, 2021, 01:52:08 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 01:34:26 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 01:28:31 PM
So an American customer should not be able to buy a Toyota car?
Perhaps not prohibited outright, but it made an unappealing proposition. The Japanese consumer is also discouraged from buying an American car.
I don't get it. In 2016, the Toyota Camry was the most American-made vehicle being sold, with 75% of its parts made in America and the assembly plant being in Kentucky. Why should people have been discouraged from buying it?
But my point is that, if you discouraged people from buying Toyotas because it's "foreign", then there's a good chance the vehicle they'd buy instead would be
less American-made, not more.
So which is better - a Ford made in Mexico or a Toyota built in America?
Quote from: Big John on May 14, 2021, 04:49:19 PM
So which is better - a Ford made in Mexico or a Toyota built in America?
Depends on if you value the common worker or the common CEO more.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 04:50:56 PM
Quote from: Big John on May 14, 2021, 04:49:19 PM
So which is better - a Ford made in Mexico or a Toyota built in America?
Depends on if you value the common worker or the common CEO more.
What do you mean by "worker"? There's more to making a car than just the CEO and the guy at the manufacturing plant.
Quote from: kphoger on May 14, 2021, 05:00:22 PM
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 04:50:56 PM
Quote from: Big John on May 14, 2021, 04:49:19 PM
So which is better - a Ford made in Mexico or a Toyota built in America?
Depends on if you value the common worker or the common CEO more.
What do you mean by "worker"? There's more to making a car than just the CEO and the guy at the manufacturing plant.
I was joking, I meant that for Ford the American company benefits but not the common guy who works in auto building.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 05:02:43 PM
I was joking, I meant that for Ford the American company benefits but not the common guy who works in auto building.
I'm sure there are plenty of executives in both countries, either way.
Quote from: SkyPesos on May 14, 2021, 02:07:39 PM
Japan makes their cars with 100% domestic materials? Considering they're an island, I had imagine they would have to import something in.
You are making the mistake of equating "components" and "materials", there is a key distinction. Japan imports raw materials, but very few components.
Quote from: Roadgeekteen on May 14, 2021, 04:50:56 PM
Quote from: Big John on May 14, 2021, 04:49:19 PM
So which is better - a Ford made in Mexico or a Toyota built in America?
Depends on if you value the common worker or the common CEO more.
That is not the relevant comparison. The alternative is US based manufacturing using US sourced components and under the management and ownership of Americans. Ford's Mexican operations would be treated no differently than Toyota.
Quote from: stridentweasel on May 14, 2021, 02:16:43 PM
Y'all realize that car companies are multinational corporations that make their products in a variety of countries irrespective of where the brand is headquartered, right?
(OMG, I was in such a hurry when I typed this the first time.)
They are not "multinational" corporations, they are headquartered in one nation and generally owned by shareholders of the same. Moreover, that model is undesirable anyway, what we want are US firms making US products using US workers and US parts, and being owned by Americans.
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 07:16:24 PM
what we I want are US firms making US products using US workers and US parts, and being owned by Americans.
Edited for accuracy. You seem to be mistaken about what we want.
Quote from: kphoger on May 14, 2021, 07:22:54 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on May 14, 2021, 07:16:24 PM
what we I want are US firms making US products using US workers and US parts, and being owned by Americans.
Edited for accuracy. You seem to be mistaken about what we want.
https://youtu.be/E09LU6XVyxs
Just using a back of the envelope calculation, I figure the outdoor billboard market is worth about 3.75 Billion dollars per year. Thus, if we were to allow advertising on the roadways and auction it off, we could reasonably expect to capture about 3.75 Billion in billboard rent, which would be the same amount of revenue as a 3 cent raise in the federal gas tax.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 03:12:07 PM
Just using a back of the envelope calculation, I figure the outdoor billboard market is worth about 3.75 Billion dollars per year. Thus, if we were to allow advertising on the roadways and auction it off, we could reasonably expect to capture about 3.75 Billion in billboard rent, which would be the same amount of revenue as a 3 cent raise in the federal gas tax.
So if the government is going to get into the billboard business, will it outlaw private landowners along highways from leasing billboard space?
Property owner to business owner: "The government wants to charge you $1,500 per month to put up a sign on the inside of the right of way fence. I'll charge you $750 per month to put up a sign on the outside of the fence that is just as visible from the road."
If I'm the business owner, I know which offer I'm taking.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 04, 2022, 09:34:55 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 03:12:07 PM
Just using a back of the envelope calculation, I figure the outdoor billboard market is worth about 3.75 Billion dollars per year. Thus, if we were to allow advertising on the roadways and auction it off, we could reasonably expect to capture about 3.75 Billion in billboard rent, which would be the same amount of revenue as a 3 cent raise in the federal gas tax.
So if the government is going to get into the billboard business, will it outlaw private landowners along highways from leasing billboard space?
Property owner to business owner: "The government wants to charge you $1,500 per month to put up a sign on the inside of the right of way fence. I'll charge you $750 per month to put up a sign on the outside of the fence that is just as visible from the road."
If I'm the business owner, I know which offer I'm taking.
Your example has a couple of issues.
First, the government is not declaring the price for this right to be X. It is holding an auction, similar to how the RF spectrum is auctioned.
Second, you are reading the process backwards. The off highway signs are already there in many cases, the government rights on the other hand are new.
So the actual result is at auction the government signage rights must be worth whatever the off highway sign rights are worth + any marginal value from being on the actual roadway and thus presumably more desirable. Hence the way I calculated the revenue, on the existing value of the off highway signs is the floor, not the ceiling, of the government revenue under this scheme. Your own example proves this last statement, as if the current price of an off highway sign is Y, then it will be worth bidding for the government rights at say Y-1, with participants only becoming indifferent at a price of Y=X (assuming 0 marginal desirability due to location).
Also note, that under this scheme, no regulation of the off highway signs is necessarily required. Because operators like Lamar have already invested in off highway signs, they may choose to bid on rights in order to
not use them, thereby preventing Joe's signs from bidding on those rights and putting up a competing billboard in front of theirs.
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
I had an idea lately for funding a highway that I was going to make into its own thread, but since this thread exists, I'll put it here.
The idea is to replace the gas tax with a universal tolling system on county, state, and federal roads. With the advent of AET, toll gantries can be now be placed in tighter ROW than older tollbooths, so under this proposal, these would go everywhere. Toll gantries with plate readers would be placed every 5-10 miles (maybe closer together in urban areas) on major routes and would charge only a paltry amount (maybe only 1 or 2 cents or so per 10 miles). As part of registering a car, you would get an account of some sort on a website or app (almost like the EZTag Express system in Houston) where you would have to register your plate. On the account, you would just simply pay the toll amount every month via credit card just as people do with other bills. Shunpiking would be discouraged by putting these toll gantries on all county, state, and federal routes that serve through traffic.
Pros:
- States like Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado could easily benefit from such a system near geographic areas that can't be easily crossed (major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.).
- With a more comprehensive tolling system, shunpiking would take more time and effort to find back road alternates, and wouldn't be used as much.
- State DOTs could adjust tolls on routes based on congestion or road conditions to make certain routes more attractive.
- Using this system on city streets would make walking, biking, or using public transport a better option for very short distances.
- Artists could be hired to design toll gantries to look interesting and unique from city to city, breaking up the boredom of long drives.
- With plate readers scattered everywhere, they could capture the plate numbers for cars involved in Silver and Amber Alerts, and send them to local law enforcement.
Cons:
- More government regulation isn't really a good thing.
- The psychology of using tolling rather than a tax doesn't work out. People would feel like they're paying more for the same.
- People would not appreciate change and would likely be opposed to it (such is the case for all good public ideas, it seems).
- Shunpiking would likely be a major issue.
- Constructing all the new toll gantries would definitely cost a pretty penny.
I will admit that there are probably many other bad aspects of this idea in the real world, but it seems interesting on paper.
Quote from: CoreySamson on February 04, 2022, 10:49:56 PM
I had an idea lately for funding a highway that I was going to make into its own thread, but since this thread exists, I'll put it here.
The idea is to replace the gas tax with a universal tolling system on county, state, and federal roads. With the advent of AET, toll gantries can be now be placed in tighter ROW than older tollbooths, so under this proposal, these would go everywhere. Toll gantries with plate readers would be placed every 5-10 miles (maybe closer together in urban areas) on major routes and would charge only a paltry amount (maybe only 1 or 2 cents or so per 10 miles). As part of registering a car, you would get an account of some sort on a website or app (almost like the EZTag Express system in Houston) where you would have to register your plate. On the account, you would just simply pay the toll amount every month via credit card just as people do with other bills. Shunpiking would be discouraged by putting these toll gantries on all county, state, and federal routes that serve through traffic.
Pros:
- States like Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado could easily benefit from such a system near geographic areas that can't be easily crossed (major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.).
- With a more comprehensive tolling system, shunpiking would take more time and effort to find back road alternates, and wouldn't be used as much.
- State DOTs could adjust tolls on routes based on congestion or road conditions to make certain routes more attractive.
- Using this system on city streets would make walking, biking, or using public transport a better option for very short distances.
- Artists could be hired to design toll gantries to look interesting and unique from city to city, breaking up the boredom of long drives.
- With plate readers scattered everywhere, they could capture the plate numbers for cars involved in Silver and Amber Alerts, and send them to local law enforcement.
Cons:
- More government regulation isn't really a good thing.
- The psychology of using tolling rather than a tax doesn't work out. People would feel like they're paying more for the same.
- People would not appreciate change and would likely be opposed to it (such is the case for all good public ideas, it seems).
- Shunpiking would likely be a major issue.
- Constructing all the new toll gantries would definitely cost a pretty penny.
I will admit that there are probably many other bad aspects of this idea in the real world, but it seems interesting on paper.
The tech overhead on that is absurdly high, along with arguably reasonable privacy concerns. It would likely cost trillions to build, with very high costs to maintain. Definitely neat from an economics standpoint, in that it allows some real time pricing, etc. but ultimately a Rube Goldberg solution.
- States like Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado could easily benefit from such a system near geographic areas that can't be easily crossed (major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.).Arguably this is actually a disadvantage as well, as it results in distortions where states collect rents on things like rivers and mountain ranges.
The gas tax is actually not a bad way to fund roads except for two issues.
One, vehicles that use more gas pay more than those that use less, which is taken to the extreme with electric cars now cluttering the road.
Second, the gas tax does not fully capture the positive externalities of the road network in its taxable population.
The second issue can be solved with funding from broad taxes that apply to society as a whole, the first might be solved by eliminating gas taxes and only imposing vehicle registration taxes.
My above approach of using advertising to fund roadways, along with service plaza revenue, would provide a supplement to these, though would certainly not be enough to replace them.
Quote from: CoreySamson on February 04, 2022, 10:49:56 PM
I had an idea lately for funding a highway that I was going to make into its own thread, but since this thread exists, I'll put it here.
The idea is to replace the gas tax with a universal tolling system on county, state, and federal roads. With the advent of AET, toll gantries can be now be placed in tighter ROW than older tollbooths, so under this proposal, these would go everywhere. Toll gantries with plate readers would be placed every 5-10 miles (maybe closer together in urban areas) on major routes and would charge only a paltry amount (maybe only 1 or 2 cents or so per 10 miles). As part of registering a car, you would get an account of some sort on a website or app (almost like the EZTag Express system in Houston) where you would have to register your plate. On the account, you would just simply pay the toll amount every month via credit card just as people do with other bills. Shunpiking would be discouraged by putting these toll gantries on all county, state, and federal routes that serve through traffic.
Pros:
- States like Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado could easily benefit from such a system near geographic areas that can't be easily crossed (major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.).
- With a more comprehensive tolling system, shunpiking would take more time and effort to find back road alternates, and wouldn't be used as much.
- State DOTs could adjust tolls on routes based on congestion or road conditions to make certain routes more attractive.
- Using this system on city streets would make walking, biking, or using public transport a better option for very short distances.
- Artists could be hired to design toll gantries to look interesting and unique from city to city, breaking up the boredom of long drives.
- With plate readers scattered everywhere, they could capture the plate numbers for cars involved in Silver and Amber Alerts, and send them to local law enforcement.
Cons:
- More government regulation isn't really a good thing.
- The psychology of using tolling rather than a tax doesn't work out. People would feel like they're paying more for the same.
- People would not appreciate change and would likely be opposed to it (such is the case for all good public ideas, it seems).
- Shunpiking would likely be a major issue.
- Constructing all the new toll gantries would definitely cost a pretty penny.
I will admit that there are probably many other bad aspects of this idea in the real world, but it seems interesting on paper.
It would be much easier and cheaper to just capture the miles driven every year when plates are renewed. Vehicle owners could pay it all at once or it could be split into a monthly bill. Drivers might also be required to estimate their yearly mileage in advance much like self-employed workers pay taxes.
The way things are going, your car may be permanently connected to the web in 30 years and road use could be calculated automatically. It would then be deducted from your bank account.
These ideas are draconian. This doesn't mean they won't happen. Something will need to be done as people drive more EVs. I'm just glad I don't have to sell people on how to best do it.
Quote from: skluth on February 05, 2022, 02:26:19 PM
Quote from: CoreySamson on February 04, 2022, 10:49:56 PM
I had an idea lately for funding a highway that I was going to make into its own thread, but since this thread exists, I'll put it here.
The idea is to replace the gas tax with a universal tolling system on county, state, and federal roads. With the advent of AET, toll gantries can be now be placed in tighter ROW than older tollbooths, so under this proposal, these would go everywhere. Toll gantries with plate readers would be placed every 5-10 miles (maybe closer together in urban areas) on major routes and would charge only a paltry amount (maybe only 1 or 2 cents or so per 10 miles). As part of registering a car, you would get an account of some sort on a website or app (almost like the EZTag Express system in Houston) where you would have to register your plate. On the account, you would just simply pay the toll amount every month via credit card just as people do with other bills. Shunpiking would be discouraged by putting these toll gantries on all county, state, and federal routes that serve through traffic.
Pros:
- States like Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado could easily benefit from such a system near geographic areas that can't be easily crossed (major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.).
- With a more comprehensive tolling system, shunpiking would take more time and effort to find back road alternates, and wouldn't be used as much.
- State DOTs could adjust tolls on routes based on congestion or road conditions to make certain routes more attractive.
- Using this system on city streets would make walking, biking, or using public transport a better option for very short distances.
- Artists could be hired to design toll gantries to look interesting and unique from city to city, breaking up the boredom of long drives.
- With plate readers scattered everywhere, they could capture the plate numbers for cars involved in Silver and Amber Alerts, and send them to local law enforcement.
Cons:
- More government regulation isn't really a good thing.
- The psychology of using tolling rather than a tax doesn't work out. People would feel like they're paying more for the same.
- People would not appreciate change and would likely be opposed to it (such is the case for all good public ideas, it seems).
- Shunpiking would likely be a major issue.
- Constructing all the new toll gantries would definitely cost a pretty penny.
I will admit that there are probably many other bad aspects of this idea in the real world, but it seems interesting on paper.
It would be much easier and cheaper to just capture the miles driven every year when plates are renewed. Vehicle owners could pay it all at once or it could be split into a monthly bill. Drivers might also be required to estimate their yearly mileage in advance much like self-employed workers pay taxes.
The way things are going, your car may be permanently connected to the web in 30 years and road use could be calculated automatically. It would then be deducted from your bank account.
These ideas are draconian. This doesn't mean they won't happen. Something will need to be done as people drive more EVs. I'm just glad I don't have to sell people on how to best do it.
There is no need for any such approach however, we could fully fund all roads with general means funding, rather than just charging vehicle owners. Everyone benefits from the road network, therefore everyone should pay for it. In fact, given the administrative overhead on taxing vehicles, or anything else on a specific level, the best approach would be something like a VAT that provides all funding with a minimum of apparatus.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 05, 2022, 02:51:11 PM
Quote from: skluth on February 05, 2022, 02:26:19 PM
Quote from: CoreySamson on February 04, 2022, 10:49:56 PM
I had an idea lately for funding a highway that I was going to make into its own thread, but since this thread exists, I'll put it here.
The idea is to replace the gas tax with a universal tolling system on county, state, and federal roads. With the advent of AET, toll gantries can be now be placed in tighter ROW than older tollbooths, so under this proposal, these would go everywhere. Toll gantries with plate readers would be placed every 5-10 miles (maybe closer together in urban areas) on major routes and would charge only a paltry amount (maybe only 1 or 2 cents or so per 10 miles). As part of registering a car, you would get an account of some sort on a website or app (almost like the EZTag Express system in Houston) where you would have to register your plate. On the account, you would just simply pay the toll amount every month via credit card just as people do with other bills. Shunpiking would be discouraged by putting these toll gantries on all county, state, and federal routes that serve through traffic.
Pros:
- States like Louisiana, Kentucky, and Colorado could easily benefit from such a system near geographic areas that can't be easily crossed (major rivers, mountain ranges, etc.).
- With a more comprehensive tolling system, shunpiking would take more time and effort to find back road alternates, and wouldn't be used as much.
- State DOTs could adjust tolls on routes based on congestion or road conditions to make certain routes more attractive.
- Using this system on city streets would make walking, biking, or using public transport a better option for very short distances.
- Artists could be hired to design toll gantries to look interesting and unique from city to city, breaking up the boredom of long drives.
- With plate readers scattered everywhere, they could capture the plate numbers for cars involved in Silver and Amber Alerts, and send them to local law enforcement.
Cons:
- More government regulation isn't really a good thing.
- The psychology of using tolling rather than a tax doesn't work out. People would feel like they're paying more for the same.
- People would not appreciate change and would likely be opposed to it (such is the case for all good public ideas, it seems).
- Shunpiking would likely be a major issue.
- Constructing all the new toll gantries would definitely cost a pretty penny.
I will admit that there are probably many other bad aspects of this idea in the real world, but it seems interesting on paper.
It would be much easier and cheaper to just capture the miles driven every year when plates are renewed. Vehicle owners could pay it all at once or it could be split into a monthly bill. Drivers might also be required to estimate their yearly mileage in advance much like self-employed workers pay taxes.
The way things are going, your car may be permanently connected to the web in 30 years and road use could be calculated automatically. It would then be deducted from your bank account.
These ideas are draconian. This doesn't mean they won't happen. Something will need to be done as people drive more EVs. I'm just glad I don't have to sell people on how to best do it.
There is no need for any such approach however, we could fully fund all roads with general means funding, rather than just charging vehicle owners. Everyone benefits from the road network, therefore everyone should pay for it. In fact, given the administrative overhead on taxing vehicles, or anything else on a specific level, the best approach would be something like a VAT that provides all funding with a minimum of apparatus.
A bit counterproductive option to lump all money into a single pile. Everyone has their priorities, and roads may be too far down the list. As it is, raiding dedicated funds happen much more often than I would like to see. Opposite happens as well.
Overall, simply paying for service is a bit less confusing way of sharing cost. Costs do trickle down via price of goods and services which require physical transportation (e.g. virtually everything), but with a bit more natural distribution - not bureaucracy controlled one.
(edited for typo)
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Eh...I've never been impressed with any of the non-USPS options. The UPS website is far more cumbersome to use than the USPS one, and UPS drivers appear to go out of their way to avoid delivering packages sometimes (I've never gotten one of those "sorry we missed you" stickers from USPS). USPS has also never made me drive to another county to pick up a package from their distribution center.
FedEx I know nothing about, but their rates have scared me off finding out more. I remember dealing with DHL to ship eBay parcels when I was a kid, but I remember looking into them when starting my current business and finding something objectionable about them too (it may have been a continued requirement for the use of paper waybills).
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2022, 02:42:18 PM
FedEx I know nothing about, but their rates have scared me off finding out more. I remember dealing with DHL to ship eBay parcels when I was a kid, but I remember looking into them when starting my current business and finding something objectionable about them too (it may have been a continued requirement for the use of paper waybills).
FedEx is even worse. The only time I've had a package outright lost was "delivered" via FedEx. I also remember their tracking system leaving a lot to be desired.
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2022, 02:42:18 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Eh...I've never been impressed with any of the non-USPS options. The UPS website is far more cumbersome to use than the USPS one, and UPS drivers appear to go out of their way to avoid delivering packages sometimes (I've never gotten one of those "sorry we missed you" stickers from USPS). USPS has also never made me drive to another county to pick up a package from their distribution center.
FedEx I know nothing about, but their rates have scared me off finding out more. I remember dealing with DHL to ship eBay parcels when I was a kid, but I remember looking into them when starting my current business and finding something objectionable about them too (it may have been a continued requirement for the use of paper waybills).
People forget that USPS actually had to improve somewhat once it had competition. DHL, UPS, FedEx benefit us all even if we don't use them by pressuring USPS to compete.
Incidentally, how about a delivery tax to support roads? People ordering packages would be an easy tax to apply, and would offset the increase in truck traffic, etc.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:03:07 PM
Incidentally, how about a delivery tax to support roads? People ordering packages would be an easy tax to apply, and would offset the increase in truck traffic, etc.
Kills small business. Amazon/Walmart/others that can afford to offer free shipping can eat the cost of increased shipping prices. Smaller shippers that have to pass the shipping fees along will be at an even worse price disadvantage.
Besides, there's no guarantee that a shipment will even spend the majority of its journey on the road at all. Portions of the journey may go by train or airplane.
Maybe if you limited it to full truckload shipments or LTL freight. But individual parcels are a nonstarter.
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2022, 08:20:37 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:03:07 PM
Incidentally, how about a delivery tax to support roads? People ordering packages would be an easy tax to apply, and would offset the increase in truck traffic, etc.
Kills small business. Amazon/Walmart/others that can afford to offer free shipping can eat the cost of increased shipping prices. Smaller shippers that have to pass the shipping fees along will be at an even worse price disadvantage.
Besides, there's no guarantee that a shipment will even spend the majority of its journey on the road at all. Portions of the journey may go by train or airplane.
Maybe if you limited it to full truckload shipments or LTL freight. But individual parcels are a nonstarter.
I thought there is already some highway use tax for commercial vehicles anyway
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2022, 08:20:37 PM
Maybe if you limited it to full truckload shipments or LTL freight. But individual parcels are a nonstarter.
That's an industry with a fairly active and powerful lobby. They fight diesel tax increases tooth and nail for what is predominantly road use taxes on them, so I would expect much the same on another form of taxation on their industry. They are fairly large reason that the roads wear out at the rate they do as well as well as a fairly large contributor of traffic impedance, so that's why diesel taxes already are much larger than gas taxes.
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2022, 08:20:37 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:03:07 PM
Incidentally, how about a delivery tax to support roads? People ordering packages would be an easy tax to apply, and would offset the increase in truck traffic, etc.
Kills small business. Amazon/Walmart/others that can afford to offer free shipping can eat the cost of increased shipping prices. Smaller shippers that have to pass the shipping fees along will be at an even worse price disadvantage.
Besides, there's no guarantee that a shipment will even spend the majority of its journey on the road at all. Portions of the journey may go by train or airplane.
Maybe if you limited it to full truckload shipments or LTL freight. But individual parcels are a nonstarter.
No, it might harm small e-com businesses, but not brick and mortar. Also big companies cannot magically "eat" any cost.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:03:07 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 06, 2022, 02:42:18 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Eh...I've never been impressed with any of the non-USPS options. The UPS website is far more cumbersome to use than the USPS one, and UPS drivers appear to go out of their way to avoid delivering packages sometimes (I've never gotten one of those "sorry we missed you" stickers from USPS). USPS has also never made me drive to another county to pick up a package from their distribution center.
FedEx I know nothing about, but their rates have scared me off finding out more. I remember dealing with DHL to ship eBay parcels when I was a kid, but I remember looking into them when starting my current business and finding something objectionable about them too (it may have been a continued requirement for the use of paper waybills).
People forget that USPS actually had to improve somewhat once it had competition. DHL, UPS, FedEx benefit us all even if we don't use them by pressuring USPS to compete.
Incidentally, how about a delivery tax to support roads? People ordering packages would be an easy tax to apply, and would offset the increase in truck traffic, etc.
Just what we need: Lousy private sector companies doing public work... :D
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 11:00:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
No, I know exactly what they mean, this is straight out of Econ 101.
One is not a subset of the other. Let me give you some examples.
A good/service is "rival" when the consumption of one person of the good/service trades off with the consumption of someone else. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is rival, if I eat it, you can't.
A good/service is "excludeable" when the consumption of one person can be differentially prevented or allowed relative to another. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is excludable, if you give the cashier $1.59 you will receive one, and if I do not, then I won't get one.
The four classes of goods are determined by their rivalry and excludability. Public goods must be both non-rival and non-excludable. Natural monopoly goods must be non-rival but excludable. Common goods must be non-excludable but rival. And finally private goods are both rival and excludable.
Cable TV is a natural monopoly good, you can exclude people from it, but there is no rivalry in the sense that if you recive the signal I can't.
Fish in an ocean without property rights are a common good. A fish I catch cannot be caught by you, but neither of us can exclude the other from fishing.
Notice that the imposition of property rights can make a common good a private one.
we want everyone to be able to communicate with each otherAssumption not in evidence. To what degree? With what speed? At who's expense? Etc. No, communication, in the form of letters, is rival and excludable, a textbook private good. Certainly we may wish some communication, just as we wish a long list of things, but that does not change its nature as a good, nor give a bright line as to how much should be provided.
a clear public benefitThat is not relevant, the definition of "public good" has nothing to do with it being a benefit to the public.
each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods No, that there are 4 classes of goods is well established and taught in every Econ 101 class. It is not really an area of significant research at this point.
The government may always choose to provision goods which are private, monopoly, common, or public, but in doing so it does not change the nature of any of them.
Regarding your most recent post: how does this even support your initial argument about how billboards on highway ROW are a good idea? I'm not seeing the connection.
Quote from: 1 on February 07, 2022, 06:17:50 AM
Regarding your most recent post: how does this even support your initial argument about how billboards on highway ROW are a good idea? I'm not seeing the connection.
Its largely just context so we can properly understand what is, and is not, a public good.
I think every proposal on this thread must be considered in two worlds, one with fiat and one without.
With fiat it is possible to discuss the actual merits of the proposals.
Without fiat its largely a matter of discussing if enough political pressure/faction fusing could be done to pass the legislation.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 01:14:33 PM
With fiat it is possible to discuss the actual merits of the proposals.
Without fiat its largely a matter of discussing if enough political pressure/faction fusing could be done to pass the legislation.
I drive a Hyundai
Quote from: paulthemapguy on February 07, 2022, 02:15:27 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 01:14:33 PM
With fiat it is possible to discuss the actual merits of the proposals.
Without fiat its largely a matter of discussing if enough political pressure/faction fusing could be done to pass the legislation.
I drive a Hyundai
I'm sorry :coffee:
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 11:44:00 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 11:00:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
No, I know exactly what they mean, this is straight out of Econ 101.
One is not a subset of the other. Let me give you some examples.
A good/service is "rival" when the consumption of one person of the good/service trades off with the consumption of someone else. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is rival, if I eat it, you can't.
A good/service is "excludeable" when the consumption of one person can be differentially prevented or allowed relative to another. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is excludable, if you give the cashier $1.59 you will receive one, and if I do not, then I won't get one.
The four classes of goods are determined by their rivalry and excludability. Public goods must be both non-rival and non-excludable. Natural monopoly goods must be non-rival but excludable. Common goods must be non-excludable but rival. And finally private goods are both rival and excludable.
Cable TV is a natural monopoly good, you can exclude people from it, but there is no rivalry in the sense that if you recive the signal I can't.
Fish in an ocean without property rights are a common good. A fish I catch cannot be caught by you, but neither of us can exclude the other from fishing.
Notice that the imposition of property rights can make a common good a private one.
we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other
Assumption not in evidence. To what degree? With what speed? At who's expense? Etc. No, communication, in the form of letters, is rival and excludable, a textbook private good. Certainly we may wish some communication, just as we wish a long list of things, but that does not change its nature as a good, nor give a bright line as to how much should be provided.
a clear public benefit
That is not relevant, the definition of "public good" has nothing to do with it being a benefit to the public.
each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods
No, that there are 4 classes of goods is well established and taught in every Econ 101 class. It is not really an area of significant research at this point.
The government may always choose to provision goods which are private, monopoly, common, or public, but in doing so it does not change the nature of any of them.
Your Econ 101 is very muddled and confused compared to the classes I took. And, your inclusion of verbose irrelevance is quite telling.
You are simply wrong about the same concepts being taught in every Econ 101 class, your ability to parrot Wikipedia notwithstanding.
Communication is a service, not a good. Envelopes are certainly a private good, but the delivery service itself? Nah. It should be treated as a public good. This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly. We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
Quote from: Rothman on February 07, 2022, 04:18:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 11:44:00 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 11:00:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
No, I know exactly what they mean, this is straight out of Econ 101.
One is not a subset of the other. Let me give you some examples.
A good/service is "rival" when the consumption of one person of the good/service trades off with the consumption of someone else. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is rival, if I eat it, you can't.
A good/service is "excludeable" when the consumption of one person can be differentially prevented or allowed relative to another. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is excludable, if you give the cashier $1.59 you will receive one, and if I do not, then I won't get one.
The four classes of goods are determined by their rivalry and excludability. Public goods must be both non-rival and non-excludable. Natural monopoly goods must be non-rival but excludable. Common goods must be non-excludable but rival. And finally private goods are both rival and excludable.
Cable TV is a natural monopoly good, you can exclude people from it, but there is no rivalry in the sense that if you recive the signal I can't.
Fish in an ocean without property rights are a common good. A fish I catch cannot be caught by you, but neither of us can exclude the other from fishing.
Notice that the imposition of property rights can make a common good a private one.
we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other
Assumption not in evidence. To what degree? With what speed? At who's expense? Etc. No, communication, in the form of letters, is rival and excludable, a textbook private good. Certainly we may wish some communication, just as we wish a long list of things, but that does not change its nature as a good, nor give a bright line as to how much should be provided.
a clear public benefit
That is not relevant, the definition of "public good" has nothing to do with it being a benefit to the public.
each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods
No, that there are 4 classes of goods is well established and taught in every Econ 101 class. It is not really an area of significant research at this point.
The government may always choose to provision goods which are private, monopoly, common, or public, but in doing so it does not change the nature of any of them.
Your Econ 101 is very muddled and confused compared to the classes I took. And, your inclusion of verbose irrelevance is quite telling.
You are simply wrong about the same concepts being taught in every Econ 101 class, your ability to parrot Wikipedia notwithstanding.
Communication is a service, not a good. Envelopes are certainly a private good, but the delivery service itself? Nah. It should be treated as a public good. This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly. We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
Not sure where you took your econ 101 classes, but they have some explaining to do.
Nor am I "parroting" Wikipedia, this is all just recall of the course I took (and got an A+ in mind you).
Rather than writing good/service every time I use the term good, which is frequently done when talking about the public/private/monopoly/common nature of goods/services as the discussion is not necessarily about whether they can be transported for consumption or not. Or to put it the way one professor I once had did, a good is the opposite of a bad, ie. in this context good refers to goods and services collectively. However your definition of the communication as a service is perfectly correct.
This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly.This logic has a subtle error in it. Let me clear this up.
If you send a letter, that letter trades off with available capacity in the system. Its not that I can't send a letter as well, but that our letters are rival in their use of the capacity. To make the point more clear, if I send 100 letters, and you want to send 100 letters, they won't both fit in the same delivery bag on the same day, etc. Or to put it another way, you buying a McDouble does not stop me from buying one, but we both can't eat the same burger, I have to have a different one. My letter needs its own allocation of capacity separate from yours (however small the marginal capacity required for 1 letter may be).
We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.What you
want something to be has nothing to do with the actual nature of the good/service. You wanting everyone to be able to send letters does not make it non-excludable, we are perfectly capable of preventing some people from sending them regardless of whether we invoke that ability or not (and indeed, we do exactly that, ever tried sending a letter without postage?). Making it non-rival is physically impossible.
Postal service is a private good. National defense is an actual example of a public good.
In the spirit of hopefully stearing this back on course, I would like to estimate the revenue opportunity if we had service plazas on the entire interstate system as originally intended. Doing this with advertising was fairly easy, but not sure how to estimate the service plaza revenue.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 05:13:30 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 07, 2022, 04:18:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 11:44:00 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 11:00:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
No, I know exactly what they mean, this is straight out of Econ 101.
One is not a subset of the other. Let me give you some examples.
A good/service is "rival" when the consumption of one person of the good/service trades off with the consumption of someone else. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is rival, if I eat it, you can't.
A good/service is "excludeable" when the consumption of one person can be differentially prevented or allowed relative to another. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is excludable, if you give the cashier $1.59 you will receive one, and if I do not, then I won't get one.
The four classes of goods are determined by their rivalry and excludability. Public goods must be both non-rival and non-excludable. Natural monopoly goods must be non-rival but excludable. Common goods must be non-excludable but rival. And finally private goods are both rival and excludable.
Cable TV is a natural monopoly good, you can exclude people from it, but there is no rivalry in the sense that if you recive the signal I can't.
Fish in an ocean without property rights are a common good. A fish I catch cannot be caught by you, but neither of us can exclude the other from fishing.
Notice that the imposition of property rights can make a common good a private one.
we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other
Assumption not in evidence. To what degree? With what speed? At who's expense? Etc. No, communication, in the form of letters, is rival and excludable, a textbook private good. Certainly we may wish some communication, just as we wish a long list of things, but that does not change its nature as a good, nor give a bright line as to how much should be provided.
a clear public benefit
That is not relevant, the definition of "public good" has nothing to do with it being a benefit to the public.
each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods
No, that there are 4 classes of goods is well established and taught in every Econ 101 class. It is not really an area of significant research at this point.
The government may always choose to provision goods which are private, monopoly, common, or public, but in doing so it does not change the nature of any of them.
Your Econ 101 is very muddled and confused compared to the classes I took. And, your inclusion of verbose irrelevance is quite telling.
You are simply wrong about the same concepts being taught in every Econ 101 class, your ability to parrot Wikipedia notwithstanding.
Communication is a service, not a good. Envelopes are certainly a private good, but the delivery service itself? Nah. It should be treated as a public good. This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly. We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
Not sure where you took your econ 101 classes, but they have some explaining to do.
Nor am I "parroting" Wikipedia, this is all just recall of the course I took (and got an A+ in mind you).
Rather than writing good/service every time I use the term good, which is frequently done when talking about the public/private/monopoly/common nature of goods/services as the discussion is not necessarily about whether they can be transported for consumption or not. Or to put it the way one professor I once had did, a good is the opposite of a bad, ie. in this context good refers to goods and services collectively. However your definition of the communication as a service is perfectly correct.
This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly.
This logic has a subtle error in it. Let me clear this up.
If you send a letter, that letter trades off with available capacity in the system. Its not that I can't send a letter as well, but that our letters are rival in their use of the capacity. To make the point more clear, if I send 100 letters, and you want to send 100 letters, they won't both fit in the same delivery bag on the same day, etc. Or to put it another way, you buying a McDouble does not stop me from buying one, but we both can't eat the same burger, I have to have a different one. My letter needs its own allocation of capacity separate from yours (however small the marginal capacity required for 1 letter may be).
We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
What you want something to be has nothing to do with the actual nature of the good/service. You wanting everyone to be able to send letters does not make it non-excludable, we are perfectly capable of preventing some people from sending them regardless of whether we invoke that ability or not (and indeed, we do exactly that, ever tried sending a letter without postage?). Making it non-rival is physically impossible.
Postal service is a private good. National defense is an actual example of a public good.
The capacity of our postal service can always be expanded, so your idea that letters take up capacity is illusory.
And hey, I got an A in all my econ classes, too (did you just take the one? Things do get more complicated...). I think yours was the wrong one. :D We're just proving my point.
Quote from: Rothman on February 07, 2022, 05:20:11 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 05:13:30 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 07, 2022, 04:18:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 11:44:00 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 11:00:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
No, I know exactly what they mean, this is straight out of Econ 101.
One is not a subset of the other. Let me give you some examples.
A good/service is "rival" when the consumption of one person of the good/service trades off with the consumption of someone else. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is rival, if I eat it, you can't.
A good/service is "excludeable" when the consumption of one person can be differentially prevented or allowed relative to another. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is excludable, if you give the cashier $1.59 you will receive one, and if I do not, then I won't get one.
The four classes of goods are determined by their rivalry and excludability. Public goods must be both non-rival and non-excludable. Natural monopoly goods must be non-rival but excludable. Common goods must be non-excludable but rival. And finally private goods are both rival and excludable.
Cable TV is a natural monopoly good, you can exclude people from it, but there is no rivalry in the sense that if you recive the signal I can't.
Fish in an ocean without property rights are a common good. A fish I catch cannot be caught by you, but neither of us can exclude the other from fishing.
Notice that the imposition of property rights can make a common good a private one.
we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other
Assumption not in evidence. To what degree? With what speed? At who's expense? Etc. No, communication, in the form of letters, is rival and excludable, a textbook private good. Certainly we may wish some communication, just as we wish a long list of things, but that does not change its nature as a good, nor give a bright line as to how much should be provided.
a clear public benefit
That is not relevant, the definition of "public good" has nothing to do with it being a benefit to the public.
each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods
No, that there are 4 classes of goods is well established and taught in every Econ 101 class. It is not really an area of significant research at this point.
The government may always choose to provision goods which are private, monopoly, common, or public, but in doing so it does not change the nature of any of them.
Your Econ 101 is very muddled and confused compared to the classes I took. And, your inclusion of verbose irrelevance is quite telling.
You are simply wrong about the same concepts being taught in every Econ 101 class, your ability to parrot Wikipedia notwithstanding.
Communication is a service, not a good. Envelopes are certainly a private good, but the delivery service itself? Nah. It should be treated as a public good. This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly. We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
Not sure where you took your econ 101 classes, but they have some explaining to do.
Nor am I "parroting" Wikipedia, this is all just recall of the course I took (and got an A+ in mind you).
Rather than writing good/service every time I use the term good, which is frequently done when talking about the public/private/monopoly/common nature of goods/services as the discussion is not necessarily about whether they can be transported for consumption or not. Or to put it the way one professor I once had did, a good is the opposite of a bad, ie. in this context good refers to goods and services collectively. However your definition of the communication as a service is perfectly correct.
This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly.
This logic has a subtle error in it. Let me clear this up.
If you send a letter, that letter trades off with available capacity in the system. Its not that I can't send a letter as well, but that our letters are rival in their use of the capacity. To make the point more clear, if I send 100 letters, and you want to send 100 letters, they won't both fit in the same delivery bag on the same day, etc. Or to put it another way, you buying a McDouble does not stop me from buying one, but we both can't eat the same burger, I have to have a different one. My letter needs its own allocation of capacity separate from yours (however small the marginal capacity required for 1 letter may be).
We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
What you want something to be has nothing to do with the actual nature of the good/service. You wanting everyone to be able to send letters does not make it non-excludable, we are perfectly capable of preventing some people from sending them regardless of whether we invoke that ability or not (and indeed, we do exactly that, ever tried sending a letter without postage?). Making it non-rival is physically impossible.
Postal service is a private good. National defense is an actual example of a public good.
The capacity of our postal service can always be expanded, so your idea that letters take up capacity is illusory.
And hey, I got an A in all my econ classes, too (did you just take the one? Things do get more complicated...). I think yours was the wrong one. :D We're just proving my point.
The fact that you can expand it does not mean that letters do not take up capacity, that is patently ludicrous.
McDonalds can always build more restaurants, so if you eat one of the hamburgers it does not reduce the total number available?
The concept of rivalry is about a particular unit of something being impossible to "share" not about the ability to make more.
And yes, I took a fair number of econ courses, and in none of them did they suddenly decide that capacity of letter handling is no longer rival, or that hamburgers start to fall out of the sky.
Frankly I don't care how many you took, its obvious that you are not applying the concept correctly.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 06:02:21 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 07, 2022, 05:20:11 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 05:13:30 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 07, 2022, 04:18:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 11:44:00 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 11:00:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 08:00:42 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 06, 2022, 02:13:03 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 06, 2022, 01:04:31 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 05, 2022, 08:24:39 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 04, 2022, 10:16:19 PM
Of course, it would also be possible to enact some type of "beautification" law similar to what Johnson saddled us with to remove off highway signs over time, or at least prevent the addition of any more.
Can you imagine the furor if the government passed a law forbidding companies like UPS, FedEx, etc., from operating and competing with the USPS?
No different than the government outlawing all signs off ROW and limiting advertising signs to government-owned property.
No,it is actually very different, your comparison is invalid.
First, postal delivery is clearly in the realm of a private good, it is both excludeable and rival. That is not exactly true of highway advertising.
Second, postal delivery does not have negative externalities of the sort that highway signs do.
Third, the average person would not care in the slightest if the government did this, plenty of people would be unhappy if they were forced to use USPS for everything.
Fourth, the government has already had regulations similar to this in the past to remove signs.
And finally, I said this could be done, not that it was actually integral to the plan. An even better way to accomplish the same would not be to legislate their removal, but simply impose various tax changes to make them less attractive than placing signs in the actual ROW.
Postal service is not clearly a private good, simply because allowing the public to communicate is clearly a public good.
That is not what the definition of a public good is. A public good must be both non-rival, and non-excludable. Postal service is both rival and excludable.
You keep using those words. I do not think they mean what you think they mean, especially when rivalry is a subset of excludability.
It's not about how the service is distributed currently, but how they should be. By definition, we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other. Therefore, communication should be treated in a manner that is non-excludable (health care as well). Furthermore, we all benefit when communication is handled smoothly -- a clear public benefit.
That all said, each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods (market efficiency as well). So, just barking about goods/services being excludable or rival or not as if that is an objective measure is absurd when you consider the heft of ongoing debates about how to handle goods/services overall in this country.
No, I know exactly what they mean, this is straight out of Econ 101.
One is not a subset of the other. Let me give you some examples.
A good/service is "rival" when the consumption of one person of the good/service trades off with the consumption of someone else. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is rival, if I eat it, you can't.
A good/service is "excludeable" when the consumption of one person can be differentially prevented or allowed relative to another. Example, A McDonald's Hamburger is excludable, if you give the cashier $1.59 you will receive one, and if I do not, then I won't get one.
The four classes of goods are determined by their rivalry and excludability. Public goods must be both non-rival and non-excludable. Natural monopoly goods must be non-rival but excludable. Common goods must be non-excludable but rival. And finally private goods are both rival and excludable.
Cable TV is a natural monopoly good, you can exclude people from it, but there is no rivalry in the sense that if you recive the signal I can't.
Fish in an ocean without property rights are a common good. A fish I catch cannot be caught by you, but neither of us can exclude the other from fishing.
Notice that the imposition of property rights can make a common good a private one.
we want everyone to be able to communicate with each other
Assumption not in evidence. To what degree? With what speed? At who's expense? Etc. No, communication, in the form of letters, is rival and excludable, a textbook private good. Certainly we may wish some communication, just as we wish a long list of things, but that does not change its nature as a good, nor give a bright line as to how much should be provided.
a clear public benefit
That is not relevant, the definition of "public good" has nothing to do with it being a benefit to the public.
each economist out there has a different explanation for public and private goods
No, that there are 4 classes of goods is well established and taught in every Econ 101 class. It is not really an area of significant research at this point.
The government may always choose to provision goods which are private, monopoly, common, or public, but in doing so it does not change the nature of any of them.
Your Econ 101 is very muddled and confused compared to the classes I took. And, your inclusion of verbose irrelevance is quite telling.
You are simply wrong about the same concepts being taught in every Econ 101 class, your ability to parrot Wikipedia notwithstanding.
Communication is a service, not a good. Envelopes are certainly a private good, but the delivery service itself? Nah. It should be treated as a public good. This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly. We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
Not sure where you took your econ 101 classes, but they have some explaining to do.
Nor am I "parroting" Wikipedia, this is all just recall of the course I took (and got an A+ in mind you).
Rather than writing good/service every time I use the term good, which is frequently done when talking about the public/private/monopoly/common nature of goods/services as the discussion is not necessarily about whether they can be transported for consumption or not. Or to put it the way one professor I once had did, a good is the opposite of a bad, ie. in this context good refers to goods and services collectively. However your definition of the communication as a service is perfectly correct.
This idea that if I send a letter means you can't is just silly.
This logic has a subtle error in it. Let me clear this up.
If you send a letter, that letter trades off with available capacity in the system. Its not that I can't send a letter as well, but that our letters are rival in their use of the capacity. To make the point more clear, if I send 100 letters, and you want to send 100 letters, they won't both fit in the same delivery bag on the same day, etc. Or to put it another way, you buying a McDouble does not stop me from buying one, but we both can't eat the same burger, I have to have a different one. My letter needs its own allocation of capacity separate from yours (however small the marginal capacity required for 1 letter may be).
We want everyone to be able to send letters, making the service non-excludable and non-rival and therefore a public service.
What you want something to be has nothing to do with the actual nature of the good/service. You wanting everyone to be able to send letters does not make it non-excludable, we are perfectly capable of preventing some people from sending them regardless of whether we invoke that ability or not (and indeed, we do exactly that, ever tried sending a letter without postage?). Making it non-rival is physically impossible.
Postal service is a private good. National defense is an actual example of a public good.
The capacity of our postal service can always be expanded, so your idea that letters take up capacity is illusory.
And hey, I got an A in all my econ classes, too (did you just take the one? Things do get more complicated...). I think yours was the wrong one. :D We're just proving my point.
The fact that you can expand it does not mean that letters do not take up capacity, that is patently ludicrous.
McDonalds can always build more restaurants, so if you eat one of the hamburgers it does not reduce the total number available?
The concept of rivalry is about a particular unit of something being impossible to "share" not about the ability to make more.
And yes, I took a fair number of econ courses, and in none of them did they suddenly decide that capacity of letter handling is no longer rival, or that hamburgers start to fall out of the sky.
Frankly I don't care how many you took, its obvious that you are not applying the concept correctly.
And you are failing to see the flaw in the concept altogether.
Anyway...
Back to the service plazas.
Estimating the potential funding from service plazas on a national scale is difficult as I previously indicated. However, I did find some numbers on PA which should help, but this is going to be more of a consulting estimate type answer, meant to size the amount on magnitude, not calculate it precisely. That said, let's run the numbers.
This is the link for the numbers https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2016/08/pa_turnpike_service_plazas_mor.html (https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2016/08/pa_turnpike_service_plazas_mor.html)
I'm using the 2015 numbers for sales, which were
C Store $28,064,757
Diesel $17,991,260
Gas $43,411,528
Food $62,206,077
The royalty is 3% on C store goods, 4% on food, and 1 cent for each gallon of fuel. Assuming fuel was 2.50 a gallon in 2015, that gives us a total revenue of $3,575,797 or $3.6 million.
Now the actual structure of the economics of the service plazas is very complex, as PA did leases of varying lengths that had a "rebuild/refurbish" requirement whereby the leaseholders also paid for that capital improvement, to the tune of $170 Million. Using the assumption of 30 years for both leaseholders (one has that outright, the other holds the options for it) we can get a rough idea of how much of the deal was the capital investment versus the royalty.
I'm going to assume 5% as the discount rate due to the stability of this cash flow relative to the 8% of the stock market. I'm also going to use the assumption of monthly payments, which are 1/12 of the annual $3.6M, so $300k. Using the PV of an Annuity formula we get $56.6 M.
So the total value of the 30 year lease was $170M + $56.6M, or $227M.
And thus, working backwards from this number we can calculate what the annual royalty would need to be in an all royalty deal to be worth $227M over 30 years.
This comes out to be $1.20M per month for 17 service plazas in PA.
Now, in extrapolating to the entire country the estimate is going to be rough. By no means are all roads in PA served by service plazas, but even if we assume the state has as many as it should we can use it to extrapolate for the rest of the country.
In doing so I will use population to extrapolate, which gives the total for the country as $28.8M a month, and thus $346M per year.
This seems a lot lower than the billboard revenue estimate, but given the relatively small number of service plazas this would represent (410 nationally based on the above scaling) and the likely low royalty that PA is getting for its plazas I suppose it is reasonable. A better designed scheme should be able to multiply this figure at least into the range of the billboard revenue estimate.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 07, 2022, 11:29:11 PM
Anyway...
Back to the service plazas.
Estimating the potential funding from service plazas on a national scale is difficult as I previously indicated. However, I did find some numbers on PA which should help, but this is going to be more of a consulting estimate type answer, meant to size the amount on magnitude, not calculate it precisely. That said, let's run the numbers.
This is the link for the numbers https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2016/08/pa_turnpike_service_plazas_mor.html (https://www.pennlive.com/politics/2016/08/pa_turnpike_service_plazas_mor.html)
I'm using the 2015 numbers for sales, which were
C Store $28,064,757
Diesel $17,991,260
Gas $43,411,528
Food $62,206,077
The royalty is 3% on C store goods, 4% on food, and 1 cent for each gallon of fuel. Assuming fuel was 2.50 a gallon in 2015, that gives us a total revenue of $3,575,797 or $3.6 million.
Now the actual structure of the economics of the service plazas is very complex, as PA did leases of varying lengths that had a "rebuild/refurbish" requirement whereby the leaseholders also paid for that capital improvement, to the tune of $170 Million. Using the assumption of 30 years for both leaseholders (one has that outright, the other holds the options for it) we can get a rough idea of how much of the deal was the capital investment versus the royalty.
I'm going to assume 5% as the discount rate due to the stability of this cash flow relative to the 8% of the stock market. I'm also going to use the assumption of monthly payments, which are 1/12 of the annual $3.6M, so $300k. Using the PV of an Annuity formula we get $56.6 M.
So the total value of the 30 year lease was $170M + $56.6M, or $227M.
And thus, working backwards from this number we can calculate what the annual royalty would need to be in an all royalty deal to be worth $227M over 30 years.
This comes out to be $1.20M per month for 17 service plazas in PA.
Now, in extrapolating to the entire country the estimate is going to be rough. By no means are all roads in PA served by service plazas, but even if we assume the state has as many as it should we can use it to extrapolate for the rest of the country.
In doing so I will use population to extrapolate, which gives the total for the country as $28.8M a month, and thus $346M per year.
This seems a lot lower than the billboard revenue estimate, but given the relatively small number of service plazas this would represent (410 nationally based on the above scaling) and the likely low royalty that PA is getting for its plazas I suppose it is reasonable. A better designed scheme should be able to multiply this figure at least into the range of the billboard revenue estimate.
Think about it from a different side. Somewhat average federal fuel tax can be estimated as $100 per car annually (13 k miles @26 mpg =500 gallons, *18 cents)
If you want to extract 10% of that via service plazas, while assuming 10% of revenue going towards road budget, average driver would need to spend $100 annually at those plazas. Which may be about right.
That would mean that service plazas are at least 5% expensive than independent business off exit - and likely more
Or look at existing business. Pilot flying J has annual revenue of $20B. That probably means $1B can be extracted as road funding - a very optimistic number. Even if combined services would be 5x , that still a small fraction of $43B highway fund brings in annually.
Yet another way is to look at revenue from toll plazas as a fraction of toll road budget - NYS thruway would be a good example with very captive service areas and complex time-consuming exits. Would be a small fraction as well.
Arkansas now has a dedicated 1/2 cent sales tax (https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2022/feb/07/arkansas-oklahoma-to-partner-on-us-412-interstate/?fbclid=IwAR3FM0W4Vcgv0cbc0vD2b2DojTE85gpjUkwjWa5xF7n1vk8c90VTEE7fJuE) dedicated to highways according to this line, "Taldo said the quarter-cent sales tax dedicated to highways that voters approved in November 2020 is allowing the state to plan projects a lot further out." They've already accepted the gas tax isn't enough.
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricingIts this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I chose that term over "price gouging" because I knew how you'd react to that term. Not terribly surprised that you reacted in the same manner.
How would you describe the pricing structure of a business that either has a captive customer base or a monopoly that sets those prices at levels higher than they otherwise would be found in a competitive market?
If you go to a grocery store in a town that only has one such grocery store, it can set prices at whatever level it wants because it can. There's no competition. The same grocery store, situated in a town with other grocery stores, will either have competitive prices or will offer some sort of special service to justify the higher prices.
I've been in businesses where something that was obviously purchased at a retail store for a much lower price is on the shelf priced at two or three times the retail rate at other venues. At one of the campground stores I was in last summer in Montana, there was a food item that had quite obviously been bought at Dollar Tree and the store was asking $2.50 for it. Why? Because it could; there was no other place in that little town to buy anything. What term would you use to describe that? Predatory pricing? Price gouging? What, exactly?
QuoteAnd the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Unfortunately, they can, thanks to a terrible Supreme Court precedent. The name of the court case escapes me but I think it was out of Connecticut. Just because they can doesn't mean they should.
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 03:34:01 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I chose that term over "price gouging" because I knew how you'd react to that term. Not terribly surprised that you reacted in the same manner.
How would you describe the pricing structure of a business that either has a captive customer base or a monopoly that sets those prices at levels higher than they otherwise would be found in a competitive market?
If you go to a grocery store in a town that only has one such grocery store, it can set prices at whatever level it wants because it can. There's no competition. The same grocery store, situated in a town with other grocery stores, will either have competitive prices or will offer some sort of special service to justify the higher prices.
I've been in businesses where something that was obviously purchased at a retail store for a much lower price is on the shelf priced at two or three times the retail rate at other venues. At one of the campground stores I was in last summer in Montana, there was a food item that had quite obviously been bought at Dollar Tree and the store was asking $2.50 for it. Why? Because it could; there was no other place in that little town to buy anything. What term would you use to describe that? Predatory pricing? Price gouging? What, exactly?
QuoteAnd the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Unfortunately, they can, thanks to a terrible Supreme Court precedent. The name of the court case escapes me but I think it was out of Connecticut. Just because they can doesn't mean they should.
Oh no, the return of GoUgInG.
How would you describe the pricing structure of a business that either has a captive customer base or a monopoly that sets those prices at levels higher than they otherwise would be found in a competitive market?First off, the market is competitive, just because you don't have several sellers at every single point in time in every single place does not change that.
McDonalds is not a monoploly because they won't let you order a Whopper inside their store, if you want a different sandwich you can cross the street.
What term would you use to describe that? Predatory pricing? Price gouging? What, exactly?Simple, just pricing. The price is higher than it is somewhere else, so what? Prices at dollar tree are higher than wholesale, I guess every dollar tree in the country is gouging their customers too!
If you want to buy it, then do so, and if you don't fine, someone else might have a higher reservation price than you do. Its just pricing. But to attach this irrational emotional significance to the price at some arbitrary level beyond which it is somehow evil or demonic is absurd.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
Speaking of things that make it hard to accept someone's conclusions at face value...has your opinion on I-70 in Baltimore become any less nonsensical?
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 08, 2022, 05:22:55 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
Speaking of things that make it hard to accept someone's conclusions at face value...has your opinion on I-70 in Baltimore become any less nonsensical?
I consider my position sensible, if perhaps a bit pedantic, that I-70 does not go to Baltimore. :nod:
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 05:57:58 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 08, 2022, 05:22:55 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
Speaking of things that make it hard to accept someone's conclusions at face value...has your opinion on I-70 in Baltimore become any less nonsensical?
I consider my position sensible [...] that I-70 does not go to Baltimore. :nod:
Neat. You're the only person that does.
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect,
prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that
price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 08, 2022, 06:29:30 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 05:57:58 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 08, 2022, 05:22:55 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
Speaking of things that make it hard to accept someone's conclusions at face value...has your opinion on I-70 in Baltimore become any less nonsensical?
I consider my position sensible [...] that I-70 does not go to Baltimore. :nod:
Neat. You're the only person that does.
Hey after all, I-80 goes to Chicago, but doesn't go
into Chicago proper.
As for road funding, it will be a combination of methods as the fuel mix changes.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/motor-fuel-taxes (https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/motor-fuel-taxes)
Quote from: edwaleni on February 08, 2022, 07:40:44 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 08, 2022, 06:29:30 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 05:57:58 PM
Quote from: Scott5114 on February 08, 2022, 05:22:55 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
Speaking of things that make it hard to accept someone's conclusions at face value...has your opinion on I-70 in Baltimore become any less nonsensical?
I consider my position sensible [...] that I-70 does not go to Baltimore. :nod:
Neat. You're the only person that does.
Hey after all, I-80 goes to Chicago, but doesn't go into Chicago proper.
As for road funding, it will be a combination of methods as the fuel mix changes.
https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/motor-fuel-taxes (https://www.urban.org/policy-centers/cross-center-initiatives/state-and-local-finance-initiative/state-and-local-backgrounders/motor-fuel-taxes)
I-80 was completed as designed though, I-70 was not.
And of course a hipster think tank is going to say fuel taxes are the answer, but that does not make it true. Alternative funding sources are a great way to fund roads and in the case of service plazas improve traveler experiences.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:21:22 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
The supply side does not set the price, it only sets a price floor. Ever heard of price discrimination?
In any case, my above point about rent is explicitly about supply and why we can be comfortable with the rent being the same on and off highway.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:33:16 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:21:22 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
The supply side does not set the price, it only sets a price floor. Ever heard of price discrimination?
In any case, my above point about rent is explicitly about supply and why we can be comfortable with the rent being the same on and off highway.
Neither supply nor demand sets the price independently of each other.
It's also seeming like you think markets are efficient in reality. Any economics professor worth their salt will tell you that the examples in your textbook are simply heuristic.
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:38:00 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:33:16 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:21:22 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
The supply side does not set the price, it only sets a price floor. Ever heard of price discrimination?
In any case, my above point about rent is explicitly about supply and why we can be comfortable with the rent being the same on and off highway.
Neither supply nor demand sets the price independently of each other.
It's also seeming like you think markets are efficient in reality. Any economics professor worth their salt will tell you that the examples in your textbook are simply heuristic.
Prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by the supply. No amount of supply of anything can set the price for something no one desires. The only impact supply has is the establishment of a floor.
Nowhere have I claimed markets are perfectly efficient, that is a strawman. They do however always seek equilibrium which is fundamentally close enough for our purposes here.
You might want to trim that quote chain.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 12:49:24 AM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:38:00 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:33:16 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:21:22 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
The supply side does not set the price, it only sets a price floor. Ever heard of price discrimination?
In any case, my above point about rent is explicitly about supply and why we can be comfortable with the rent being the same on and off highway.
Neither supply nor demand sets the price independently of each other.
It's also seeming like you think markets are efficient in reality. Any economics professor worth their salt will tell you that the examples in your textbook are simply heuristic.
Prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by the supply. No amount of supply of anything can set the price for something no one desires. The only impact supply has is the establishment of a floor.
Nowhere have I claimed markets are perfectly efficient, that is a strawman. They do however always seek equilibrium which is fundamentally close enough for our purposes here.
Repeating a wrong statement doesn't make it right (see OPEC's historic ability to affect prices through supply...or the U.S.' use of agricultural subsidies...). Your argument regarding rents and service plazas are based upon a perfect implementation of the heuristic principles you parrot.
The idea that our markets in reality always seek equilibrium is absolutely not founded in our country in a lot of cases given that businesses have rigged them through legislation and other means to maximize their profits. Our government is not providing the environment needed so markets operate like they do in economics textbooks (i.e., the criteria for market operation are not being met).
Quote from: 1 on February 09, 2022, 06:31:07 AM
You might want to trim that quote chain.
Doing so on a phone is really annoying. Once the "price" of doing so comes down to something I'm "willing to pay," I will do so. :D
[snark] Maybe the DOT could hold bake sales at these new service plazas to increase their revenue. [/snark]
Quote from: GaryV on February 09, 2022, 07:39:54 AM
[snark] Maybe the DOT could hold bake sales at these new service plazas to increase their revenue. [/snark]
You are not the first to come up with idea, though
(https://dailygazette.com/wp-content/uploads/fly-images/152274/NYtourismSIGNS1b_1-940x940.jpg)
Quote from: Rothman on February 09, 2022, 06:38:56 AM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 12:49:24 AM
Prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by the supply. No amount of supply of anything can set the price for something no one desires. The only impact supply has is the establishment of a floor.
Nowhere have I claimed markets are perfectly efficient, that is a strawman. They do however always seek equilibrium which is fundamentally close enough for our purposes here.
Repeating a wrong statement doesn't make it right (see OPEC's historic ability to affect prices through supply...or the U.S.' use of agricultural subsidies...). Your argument regarding rents and service plazas are based upon a perfect implementation of the heuristic principles you parrot.
The idea that our markets in reality always seek equilibrium is absolutely not founded in our country in a lot of cases given that businesses have rigged them through legislation and other means to maximize their profits. Our government is not providing the environment needed so markets operate like they do in economics textbooks (i.e., the criteria for market operation are not being met).
trimmed extra quoting so
shit throwing circus standup show discussion may continue in a readable fashion.
Quote from: Rothman on February 09, 2022, 06:38:56 AM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 12:49:24 AM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:38:00 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:33:16 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:21:22 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
The supply side does not set the price, it only sets a price floor. Ever heard of price discrimination?
In any case, my above point about rent is explicitly about supply and why we can be comfortable with the rent being the same on and off highway.
Neither supply nor demand sets the price independently of each other.
It's also seeming like you think markets are efficient in reality. Any economics professor worth their salt will tell you that the examples in your textbook are simply heuristic.
Prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by the supply. No amount of supply of anything can set the price for something no one desires. The only impact supply has is the establishment of a floor.
Nowhere have I claimed markets are perfectly efficient, that is a strawman. They do however always seek equilibrium which is fundamentally close enough for our purposes here.
Repeating a wrong statement doesn't make it right (see OPEC's historic ability to affect prices through supply...or the U.S.' use of agricultural subsidies...). Your argument regarding rents and service plazas are based upon a perfect implementation of the heuristic principles you parrot.
The idea that our markets in reality always seek equilibrium is absolutely not founded in our country in a lot of cases given that businesses have rigged them through legislation and other means to maximize their profits. Our government is not providing the environment needed so markets operate like they do in economics textbooks (i.e., the criteria for market operation are not being met).
No, but repeating a correct statement is sometimes the only recourse when someone continues to confuse the issue at hand.
I am actually very familiar with OPEC/TX RRC history and again you are misrepresenting what they do. They can choose to restrict supply, or say that they will only offer petroleum at x price, but that does not set the price, consumers do that by being willing to buy at that price.
Do you think that a country which had no use for oil would have its oil price "set" by OPEC or anyone else? Of course not. The buyer sets the price by their willingness to pay.
The idea that our markets in reality always seek equilibrium is absolutely not founded in our country in a lot of cases given that businesses have rigged them through legislation and other means to maximize their profitsOnce again you are jumbling up separate issues that have nothing to do with each other. Markets are still seeking an equilibrium in that case, the equilibrium seeking does not go away simply because the legislature imposes a rule of some kind. It may change the
point of the equilibrium that is being sought, but not the act of seeking it.
Also firms are ALWAYS supposed to seek profits, so the last portion of that is tantamount to saying the sky is blue or water is wet.
Our government is not providing the environment needed so markets operate like they do in economics textbooks (i.e., the criteria for market operation are not being met).Wrong and strawman. The government does not provide the criteria needed to always get a completely unregulated, perfect competition outcome, but it does provide the environment required for equilibrium seeking markets. Seeking equilibrium does not require perfect competition
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 09:25:03 PM...in the case of service plazas improve traveler experiences.
I disagree with that assertion. Service plazas may work if there is a captive audience -- say, a long rural stretch of toll road with few commercial services, or if it's a closed-system toll road that makes exiting and entering inconvenient -- but in any other case, they don't improve the travel experience. At a service plaza, you get one gas station with no opportunity for competitive pricing. You get one convenience store; again with no opportunity for competitive pricing. (And that leaves out the fact that C-stores charge more than, say, Dollar Generals or Family Dollars for like items). You get one burger place, one sub place, maybe one pizza place, and so on.
Compare that to a busy highway exit where you might find three or four gas stations of different brands, two or three burger places (McD, BK, Wendy's), a couple of sandwich shops (Subway and Penn Station), and so on. The traveler gets a choice. And it's really not much more difficult to exit the freeway to patronize one of those establishments than it is to stop at a service plaza.
I don't think service plazas, with the state either leasing storefront locations or becoming the franchisee and running the businesses itself, would be a financial windfall.
And I'm still a fan of managing costs for highway work vs. increasing revenues.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 09, 2022, 11:10:56 AM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 09:25:03 PM...in the case of service plazas improve traveler experiences.
I disagree with that assertion. Service plazas may work if there is a captive audience -- say, a long rural stretch of toll road with few commercial services, or if it's a closed-system toll road that makes exiting and entering inconvenient -- but in any other case, they don't improve the travel experience. At a service plaza, you get one gas station with no opportunity for competitive pricing. You get one convenience store; again with no opportunity for competitive pricing. (And that leaves out the fact that C-stores charge more than, say, Dollar Generals or Family Dollars for like items). You get one burger place, one sub place, maybe one pizza place, and so on.
Compare that to a busy highway exit where you might find three or four gas stations of different brands, two or three burger places (McD, BK, Wendy's), a couple of sandwich shops (Subway and Penn Station), and so on. The traveler gets a choice. And it's really not much more difficult to exit the freeway to patronize one of those establishments than it is to stop at a service plaza.
I don't think service plazas, with the state either leasing storefront locations or becoming the franchisee and running the businesses itself, would be a financial windfall.
And I'm still a fan of managing costs for highway work vs. increasing revenues.
No one is holding you hostage, you can get off the highway if you please. But many people are not cheap enough to care if the gas is an extra 3 cents a gallon or that soda would have been 10 cents cheaper if they got off an exit, went through 2 lights and bought it at 7-11.
It absolutely improves traveler experiences because travelers can now choose for themselves which they want.
And of course, without resorting to the old proof, the prices on the highway can only be higher if people's reservation prices are higher, so if as you insinuate their reservation prices are not higher for whatever reason then they won't have to pay extra (speaking in aggregate of course, I am sure a few people will be complaining how expensive they are no matter what, right along with how when they were a kid you could buy the entire Hershey's firm for only a nickel).
Or have you considered another possibility, where they prove so popular that the holders of the fuel station rights can bargain a large contract for fuel and get the price
lower than off highway stations? (similar to how Costco, Walmart, and Sam's Club do).
And I'm still a fan of managing costs for highway work vs. increasing revenues. Why not do both? They are not mutually exclusive. If you can trim 1 Billion of wasted spending, and I can pull 1 Billion in rental revenues then we have 2 Billion to put towards finally finishing I-70.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 10:55:27 AM
Quote from: Rothman on February 09, 2022, 06:38:56 AM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 12:49:24 AM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:38:00 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:33:16 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 11:21:22 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 11:09:26 PM
Quote from: Rothman on February 08, 2022, 10:46:42 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 06:56:42 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 06:22:10 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 04:58:52 PM
Quote from: kalvado on February 08, 2022, 02:02:33 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 08, 2022, 12:57:13 PM
Quote from: hbelkins on February 08, 2022, 11:07:27 AM
We've discussed the service plaza thing before. They're entirely logical on closed-system toll roads, especially when exiting and re-entering can incur a higher toll than going straight through. It makes for a more captive audience because of the convenience factor, and with that captive audience you get predatory pricing. And some of the service plazas have problematic left exits and entrances.
They're less workable on free routes, because they compete with privately-owned businesses at the exits, which would employ a full-court legislative lobbying press against any efforts for the government seeking to compete with them. And the businesses would have more competitively-priced products. It's not really a great inconvenience to get off the interstate to get gas or food.
The only reason I stop at the service plaza on the Western Kentucky Parkway is basically for novelty reasons, and if I need to pee. Otherwise, I will usually stop at Central City or Leitchfield if I need gas or want a bite to eat, and if I'm going east, I try to hold out until Elizabethtown because there are so many more options and gas is usually cheaper. I'm not a fan of the short acceleration area to merge back into the road into the fast lane. The only saving grace is that the road is not all that heavily traveled.
Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall.
predatory pricing
Its this kind of jaberwocky terminology that makes it hard to accept your conclusions at face value.
I 100% agree that on toll roads the convenience factor is higher with fewer exits being in place, that is not up for dispute.
However, there is no reason that on road plazas cannot displace off highway plazas either. I would imagine the model would be analogous to Hotelling's linear city, ie. there is a location of consumers on the road, and firms seek to be as close to them as possible.
Importantly, the assumption that prices need to be higher on the roadway need not hold for these new plazas. Firms locating on the highway could simply price match and be at a considerable advantage. In that case the rental value of the facilities should be equal to the off highway alternatives.
If we assume that the number of locations is comparable to Flying J + Loves, and a 5% take on the revenue as rent, that still generates $40B*5% or 2 Billion dollars a year, which is not a negligible sum.
Also this Government-run businesses on interstates competing with private businesses at the exits isn't going to be a windfall. is misunderstanding the proposition. I am not proposing the government run businesses on the interstates, I am proposing the government auction the operating rights/rents, etc. to private corporations for limited periods for on highway plazas.
In the long run, I would expect these on highway plazas to displace most of the off highway plazas. There are other pressures which bear on this, locals often oppose off highway projects, building them as part of the highway itself would offer additional separation from communities. And the federal government can use eminent domain to obtain property in areas where a private corporation would be unable to build a plaza on its own.
Lets put it so - whatever costs and profits at the off-highway business going to be, on-highway business would face same costs and would need to bring same profit, plus whatever outlay to a highway fund would be. Only thing you can play with is rent/tax on a parcel within ROW. I don't believe it will be a significant benefit. So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be. If you propose eminent domain, you'll have to endure many expensive lawsuits eating up profit for quite some time. That's if (big if!) eminent domain for a restaurant would survive in court.
What? None of that made any sense at all.
So price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be.
That fails on multiple levels.
First, prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by costs, this is the first lesson of Econ 101.
Second, rent "off highway" is not free, it is also a cost.
So even if we assume no difference in the reservation price of buyers, the on highway facilities should rent for at least what the off highway facilities rent for.
As to lawsuits, the simple answer is for the government to fiat it through. The highways are a national security matter, simply change the law so no one can sue to impede their construction.
When you take Economy 151 next semester, they may tell you how business expenses have to correlate with prices and ability to do business in a given market...
I passed the 100 series courses long ago kid. And your assertion still incorrect, prices are set by what a buyer will pay. That does not change no matter what econ course you take.
Proof? You cannot sell goods/services to buyers at a price higher than they are willing to pay. End of discussion.
Now, if the cost of providing a good/service is higher than the price buyers are willing to pay, then it does not come into existence. But all prices ultimately rest on what a buyer will pay, not what it cost you to provide the good/service.
And to tie this back to the original point, even if we have to establish a price "floor" based on costs, then the assertion you made, that price on plaza would be higher by whatever that highway outlay would be then implicitly requires that the companies off the highway are paying 0 in rent.
Now, if you are telling me you have access to prime interstate side real estate that rents for 0 then we can go into the truck stop business and be millionaires. :spin:
Egads. Somebody missed the "aggregate" in their P/Q graphs in Econ 101.
Nope, aggregating willingness to pay into a demand curve does not change that fundamental fact. You still end up setting prices based on demand of the buyers. Notice that in a competitive market, the equilibrium price is such that the last buyer is the one that is just barely willing to pay. You never end up with buyers paying more than they are willing, aggregated or not. :clap:
You're ignoring the supply side...
The supply side does not set the price, it only sets a price floor. Ever heard of price discrimination?
In any case, my above point about rent is explicitly about supply and why we can be comfortable with the rent being the same on and off highway.
Neither supply nor demand sets the price independently of each other.
It's also seeming like you think markets are efficient in reality. Any economics professor worth their salt will tell you that the examples in your textbook are simply heuristic.
Prices are set by what a buyer will pay, not by the supply. No amount of supply of anything can set the price for something no one desires. The only impact supply has is the establishment of a floor.
Nowhere have I claimed markets are perfectly efficient, that is a strawman. They do however always seek equilibrium which is fundamentally close enough for our purposes here.
Repeating a wrong statement doesn't make it right (see OPEC's historic ability to affect prices through supply...or the U.S.' use of agricultural subsidies...). Your argument regarding rents and service plazas are based upon a perfect implementation of the heuristic principles you parrot.
The idea that our markets in reality always seek equilibrium is absolutely not founded in our country in a lot of cases given that businesses have rigged them through legislation and other means to maximize their profits. Our government is not providing the environment needed so markets operate like they do in economics textbooks (i.e., the criteria for market operation are not being met).
No, but repeating a correct statement is sometimes the only recourse when someone continues to confuse the issue at hand.
I am actually very familiar with OPEC/TX RRC history and again you are misrepresenting what they do. They can choose to restrict supply, or say that they will only offer petroleum at x price, but that does not set the price, consumers do that by being willing to buy at that price.
Do you think that a country which had no use for oil would have its oil price "set" by OPEC or anyone else? Of course not. The buyer sets the price by their willingness to pay.
The idea that our markets in reality always seek equilibrium is absolutely not founded in our country in a lot of cases given that businesses have rigged them through legislation and other means to maximize their profits
Once again you are jumbling up separate issues that have nothing to do with each other. Markets are still seeking an equilibrium in that case, the equilibrium seeking does not go away simply because the legislature imposes a rule of some kind. It may change the point of the equilibrium that is being sought, but not the act of seeking it.
Also firms are ALWAYS supposed to seek profits, so the last portion of that is tantamount to saying the sky is blue or water is wet.
Our government is not providing the environment needed so markets operate like they do in economics textbooks (i.e., the criteria for market operation are not being met).
Wrong and strawman. The government does not provide the criteria needed to always get a completely unregulated, perfect competition outcome, but it does provide the environment required for equilibrium seeking markets. Seeking equilibrium does not require perfect competition
There is no difference between suppliers seeking a price floor and buyers seeking a price ceiling. Both affect where the supply and demand curves will meet. Your description that buyers just set the price is simply incorrect and strange.
As for your other calisthenics to defend your point, I think at this time you've broken your back.
There is no difference between suppliers seeking a price floor and buyers seeking a price ceiling. Both affect where the supply and demand curves will meet. Your description that buyers just set the price is simply incorrect and strange.
Nope, there is a significant difference. Suppliers cannot determine a price other than a floor. Consumers DO determine the price outside the floor. One has a single point control, the others control everything above that. And notice, when any transaction actually occurs, it happens at the price the CONSUMERS set, not the ones the suppliers set.
As for your other calisthenics to defend your point, I think at this time you've broken your back. :hmmm:
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 11:47:50 AM
Why not do both? They are not mutually exclusive. If you can trim 1 Billion of wasted spending, and I can pull 1 Billion in rental revenues then we have 2 Billion to put towards finally finishing I-70.
There's as much chance of finishing I-70 from its current terminus at the Park & Ride within the city limits of Baltimore as there is of finishing I-40 through Overton Park in Memphis, or I-95 through Washington DC. The chances are zero for any of the projects. The locals have made their decisions.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 09, 2022, 02:16:45 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 09, 2022, 11:47:50 AM
Why not do both? They are not mutually exclusive. If you can trim 1 Billion of wasted spending, and I can pull 1 Billion in rental revenues then we have 2 Billion to put towards finally finishing I-70.
There's as much chance of finishing I-70 from its current terminus at the Park & Ride within the city limits of Baltimore as there is of finishing I-40 through Overton Park in Memphis, or I-95 through Washington DC. The chances are zero for any of the projects. The locals have made their decisions.
Decisions can be overruled, local decisions matter until Washington decides otherwise, then locals have to just do as they are told. :pan:
Interestingly, I recall seeing this old news clip on some wolves that were being killed in New Mexico by local ranchers, and some bureaucrat got up and made a statement to the effect of "a few people here can't nullify what 90% of Americans want", I say I think that would be excellent to apply to the highways as well.
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
Why do we need to phase out the gas tax? More efficient vehicles costing less is a benefit, not a drawback.
Quote from: 1 on February 10, 2022, 03:53:27 PM
Why do we need to phase out the gas tax? More efficient vehicles costing less is a benefit, not a drawback.
No its a drawback. They still take up space on the roads and wear at the surface, they need to pay for that.
If you had no gas tax, to the extent they are truly more efficient, they would reap the actual benefit of that efficiency. But the status quo is creating an artificial efficiency based on taxes that needs to be fixed.
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
This was discussed earlier in the thread I believe. The reason you don't want to do this is it creates a perverse incentive for people to drive on balding/bald/duct taped tires. Taxing a safety feature is generally not a good idea.
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires
So instead of paying a small tax every week or month, someone will have to pay a huge tax once every X years.
The cost of tires is already high enough that people will try to get every last smidgen of tread wear out of them. Now they'll have to delay even more because they can't afford the price of the tires plus the tax.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:27:04 PM
Quote from: 1 on February 10, 2022, 03:53:27 PM
Why do we need to phase out the gas tax? More efficient vehicles costing less is a benefit, not a drawback.
No its a drawback. They still take up space on the roads and wear at the surface, they need to pay for that.
If you had no gas tax, to the extent they are truly more efficient, they would reap the actual benefit of that efficiency. But the status quo is creating an artificial efficiency based on taxes that needs to be fixed.
More efficient gas or diesel powered vehicles are inherently lower taxed. I guarantee the gas tax won't go away until there is no need for fuel when/if the fleet turns completely non-fossil fuel because too many things are dependent on fuel sales, including road construction and maintenance, sales taxes, transit subsidies and the like at the local, state and federal levels. Electric vehicle owners are already complaining about the higher yearly plate fees some states are charging, but there is no way to effectively tax electricity as fuel except at charging stations where maybe 10% of the use is from. With home charging, how is the meter gonna know what is charging your car vs. what is turning on the AC? The other alternative, mileage based tax, is practical but needs to overcome a lot of public skepticism in order to be initiated, and will need to transition from a fuel-based system of collection without perception of "double counting" mileage and fuel based taxes.
Quote from: Rick Powell on February 10, 2022, 05:30:58 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:27:04 PM
Quote from: 1 on February 10, 2022, 03:53:27 PM
Why do we need to phase out the gas tax? More efficient vehicles costing less is a benefit, not a drawback.
No its a drawback. They still take up space on the roads and wear at the surface, they need to pay for that.
If you had no gas tax, to the extent they are truly more efficient, they would reap the actual benefit of that efficiency. But the status quo is creating an artificial efficiency based on taxes that needs to be fixed.
More efficient gas or diesel powered vehicles are inherently lower taxed. I guarantee the gas tax won't go away until there is no need for fuel when/if the fleet turns completely non-fossil fuel because too many things are dependent on fuel sales, including road construction and maintenance, sales taxes, transit subsidies and the like at the local, state and federal levels. Electric vehicle owners are already complaining about the higher yearly plate fees some states are charging, but there is no way to effectively tax electricity as fuel except at charging stations where maybe 10% of the use is from. With home charging, how is the meter gonna know what is charging your car vs. what is turning on the AC? The other alternative, mileage based tax, is practical but needs to overcome a lot of public skepticism in order to be initiated, and will need to transition from a fuel-based system of collection without perception of "double counting" mileage and fuel based taxes.
More efficient gas or diesel powered vehicles are inherently lower taxed. Exactly, and this is an existing flaw with the gas tax.
Millage taxes are not really practical, too much incentive to cheat and roll odometers and other shenanigans.
Plate taxes are actually an excellent way to capture electric vehicle taxes, but they have the downside of taxing based on number of vehicles, rather than miles driven.
A per capita license tax might actually be a good solution, you pay it for having a drivers license, regardless of how many or what vehicle you own. EVs have to pay up, those of us that want to own more than one vehicle are not penalized for doing so, and people that don't own a vehicle but use another person's pay for their driving.
Fine private businesses $50 for each traffic control device they post that doesn't follow the MUTCD.
You'd make enough money off of Chick-Fil-A alone to build the rest of I-69.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:28:39 PM
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
This was discussed earlier in the thread I believe. The reason you don't want to do this is it creates a perverse incentive for people to drive on balding/bald/duct taped tires. Taxing a safety feature is generally not a good idea.
It's also not terribly fair if you pick up a nail or other road hazard. The risk is roughly equal to everyone, though hanging out by home improvement stores and home building sites seem to increase one's chances a bit...
Tires already come with a scrap / disposal fee in almost every state, though it's nominal ($1-4). Not sure if doubling it for the sake of infrastructure would really help nor hurt much; I doubt too many would put off tires over a $4-10 increase, but a slight increase in used tire sales might occur.
Quote from: formulanone on February 10, 2022, 10:55:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:28:39 PM
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
This was discussed earlier in the thread I believe. The reason you don't want to do this is it creates a perverse incentive for people to drive on balding/bald/duct taped tires. Taxing a safety feature is generally not a good idea.
It's also not terribly fair if you pick up a nail or other road hazard. The risk is roughly equal to everyone, though hanging out by home improvement stores and home building sites seem to increase one's chances a bit...
Tires already come with a scrap / disposal fee in almost every state, though it's nominal ($1-4). Not sure if doubling it for the sake of infrastructure would really help nor hurt much; I doubt too many would put off tires over a $4-10 increase, but a slight increase in used tire sales might occur.
I came here to suggest diverting the waste tire disposal fee from that fund to the Road Fund.
Very few times in my life have I ever paid the disposal fee, because I've most always kept my old tires and brought them home with me.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 11, 2022, 10:52:48 AM
Quote from: formulanone on February 10, 2022, 10:55:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:28:39 PM
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
This was discussed earlier in the thread I believe. The reason you don't want to do this is it creates a perverse incentive for people to drive on balding/bald/duct taped tires. Taxing a safety feature is generally not a good idea.
It's also not terribly fair if you pick up a nail or other road hazard. The risk is roughly equal to everyone, though hanging out by home improvement stores and home building sites seem to increase one's chances a bit...
Tires already come with a scrap / disposal fee in almost every state, though it's nominal ($1-4). Not sure if doubling it for the sake of infrastructure would really help nor hurt much; I doubt too many would put off tires over a $4-10 increase, but a slight increase in used tire sales might occur.
I came here to suggest diverting the waste tire disposal fee from that fund to the Road Fund.
Very few times in my life have I ever paid the disposal fee, because I've most always kept my old tires and brought them home with me.
At least you can get around that, the stupid battery fee is baked into the price of the thing so you can't doge it.
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 11, 2022, 11:23:41 AM
so you can't doge it.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnysroads.com%2Ffiles%2Faaroads%2Fdoge.png&hash=49e5790777b691b5c671f0ff9326b6bbcd3c64fa)
(by vdeane)
Quote from: 1 on February 11, 2022, 11:39:58 AM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 11, 2022, 11:23:41 AM
so you can't doge it.
(https://www.aaroads.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fnysroads.com%2Ffiles%2Faaroads%2Fdoge.png&hash=49e5790777b691b5c671f0ff9326b6bbcd3c64fa)
(by vdeane)
Although I was thinking of dodge, I think you could also doge the core charge on a battery, maybe by taking the core out of an old battery, putting sand in, and turning that in as the core, so you get to keep the core and not pay a new core charge. That would be much doge.
Why would anyone want to keep the old battery core? Anytime I need a battery for anything, be it a vehicle or a farm/garden implement, I just take an old one to the store and drop it off when I'm picking up the new one.
Quote from: hbelkins on February 11, 2022, 02:00:53 PM
Why would anyone want to keep the old battery core? Anytime I need a battery for anything, be it a vehicle or a farm/garden implement, I just take an old one to the store and drop it off when I'm picking up the new one.
First, so you don't have to pay that stupid core charge.
Second, battery cores can be useful for materials salvage, such as when you want to create a weight for ballast, etc.
Quote from: formulanone on February 10, 2022, 10:55:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:28:39 PM
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
This was discussed earlier in the thread I believe. The reason you don't want to do this is it creates a perverse incentive for people to drive on balding/bald/duct taped tires. Taxing a safety feature is generally not a good idea.
It's also not terribly fair if you pick up a nail or other road hazard. The risk is roughly equal to everyone, though hanging out by home improvement stores and home building sites seem to increase one's chances a bit...
Tires already come with a scrap / disposal fee in almost every state, though it's nominal ($1-4). Not sure if doubling it for the sake of infrastructure would really help nor hurt much; I doubt too many would put off tires over a $4-10 increase, but a slight increase in used tire sales might occur.
You make a good point that I did not consider with the proposal, but perhaps that could be another formula for credit based upon usage percentage. I know it appears complicated, and just about everything in life appears to be these days to try to get something fair out of it (which again, rarely happens).
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 12, 2022, 11:35:21 AM
Quote from: formulanone on February 10, 2022, 10:55:35 PM
Quote from: HighwayStar on February 10, 2022, 04:28:39 PM
Quote from: Life in Paradise on February 10, 2022, 03:49:53 PM
Suggestion for alternative road funding: Tires
Remove/phase out the federal tax for gasoline/diesel and subsequently replace/phase in a tax on tires based upon (will need to be researched) the mileage expectancy of a particular tire as well as its load bearing basis (to take care of trucks' heavy road usage). This would be a major hit initially (alas a phase in), but it would allow fuel to go down, include electric vehicles since they also run on tires, new car tire cost could be included at time of purchase, and would hopefully be able to appropriately compensate for road usage. Plus your teenager burning rubber would definitely feel the pain replacing his/her tires. Now to get the states to jump on board...all would need to otherwise you would have "tire havens" where the cost of tires would be less.
This was discussed earlier in the thread I believe. The reason you don't want to do this is it creates a perverse incentive for people to drive on balding/bald/duct taped tires. Taxing a safety feature is generally not a good idea.
It's also not terribly fair if you pick up a nail or other road hazard. The risk is roughly equal to everyone, though hanging out by home improvement stores and home building sites seem to increase one's chances a bit...
Tires already come with a scrap / disposal fee in almost every state, though it's nominal ($1-4). Not sure if doubling it for the sake of infrastructure would really help nor hurt much; I doubt too many would put off tires over a $4-10 increase, but a slight increase in used tire sales might occur.
You make a good point that I did not consider with the proposal, but perhaps that could be another formula for credit based upon usage percentage. I know it appears complicated, and just about everything in life appears to be these days to try to get something fair out of it (which again, rarely happens).
One funding source will not be enough to pay for new infrastructure. It will probably be a lot of things like fees, some toll roads, taxes, etc that will be combined to help pay for it. Much like now, except very little will be collected from the gas tax. Even now, California's highest in the nation gas tax is only 57.66¢ (https://www.investopedia.com/gas-taxes-and-what-you-need-to-know-5118477). The difference in gas prices in California and the cheapest prices in other states is more a symptom of just being California than just the tax.