Re: AltInst: Road tolls would centralize cities

On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Robin Hanson wrote:

> Charging people for using roads has long been proposed as a
> way to rationalize road traffic. The following paper suggests
> that the result of tolls would be to encourage people to live
> closer together.

[snip]

There's no reason to create a massive inconvenince by the toll-collection
system, when there's a perfectly sensible alternative to charging tolls:

Gasoline taxes.

If gasoline taxes were increased to account for the *total* cost of
driving (road maintenence/construction, atmospheric pollution,
environmental destruction due to "sprawl", etc.), people would, to
reduce their gasoline expenditures, voluntarily move back into
the cities.

        Karl
                <marX>

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Received on Thu Sep 3 21:58:57 1998