Thursday, May 25, 2006

For whom the roads toll, it tolls for thee

Coming from the land of CalTrans, 4-level interchanges and miles and miles of freeways (that's FREE ways), I'm somewhat stymied by the idea of a toll road.

I get it, sorta.

People want to build a road.
People don't want to be taxed to pay for the road.
People agree to a toll road.
People think, "once the road construction is paid for, the toll will drop considerably since road maintenance is cheaper than initial construction."

They why does the toll on toll roads never go down?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well building a road is typically extremely expensive...now take the intrest on the loan...so if you put it at a price that would actually pay for itself then nobody would use it at first...so I think they start with a lower price then the maintenance and hope they can slowly raise it to where it pays for the intrest, maintenance, and original cost. Thus you get increasing tolls (and with an increase in tolls and less people but equal amount of money coming in, you would have less maintenance thus increasing profit to pay for the road)