Re: AltInst: Road tolls would centralize cities

Karl writes:
>> 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.
>...
>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.

Gas taxes would indeed push people back toward city centers.
Relative to tolls, however, gas taxes penalize big cars too much, and give
do too little to discourage people from driving during rush hour.

Robin Hanson
hanson@econ.berkeley.edu http://hanson.berkeley.edu/
RWJF Health Policy Scholar, Sch. of Public Health 510-643-1884
140 Warren Hall, UC Berkeley, CA 94720-7360 FAX: 510-643-8614

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Received on Thu Sep 3 22:46:28 1998