tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4622776924781844427.post3781317344106389727..comments2024-03-23T13:43:27.051-04:00Comments on Tax, Society & Culture: Report on outsourcing public services to for-profit corporationsAllisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16733465339926078146noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4622776924781844427.post-4369288453054141442014-04-29T10:41:11.688-04:002014-04-29T10:41:11.688-04:00I have mixed feelings on this issue. Clearly most ...I have mixed feelings on this issue. Clearly most of the examples given in the paper are failures. I do strongly believe though and am believing even more that transportation infrastructure especially should be based on user fees. Just the other day I was driving on a toll road and was shocked how much better maintained it was than the free highways near my house(both toll and free are in the same state). To be clear the toll road(Mass Pike I-90) wasn't in 100% great shape but at least it didn't have potholes the size of my car like some free highways.<br /><br />One of the most surprising decisions I have to say in Canada was the removal of tolls in Quebec in the 1980s and early 1990s. I am actually old enough to remember tolls on the Champlain Bridge. What is even more shocking is when Champlain tolls were removed in 1990 Canada was running huge budget deficits. In fact I saw a blog post saying if tolls had been kept on the Champlain bridge and raised in line with inflation after 1990 there would have been enough money by now to have replaced the bridge without direct taxpayer assistance.<br /><br />I don't know all the details of some of the other tolls removed early in the 1980s but at one point highway 10 and highway 15 were both tolled. I wonder if Quebec had kept these tolls the highway network would be as run down as it is today.<br /><br />*In the US tolls in the states that had/have them were typically setup as a corporatized/independent authority and thus were more difficult to get rid of even if politically advantageous. My understanding though is both New York and Massachusetts had windows were at the time they could have eliminated tolls in the late 1980s and choose not to do so. Of course if they had done so road maintenance by now would have even been a bigger mess. Massachusetts recently put back in place some tolls that were eliminated in the late 1990s in order to raise more money for road maintenance.<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfigavNsSggTimhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03894651289037073128noreply@blogger.com