Our Bleak Future?

Seems the idea of public private partnerships and toll lanes is being expanded just as I predicted a year and a half ago. But the government has gotten creative and realized they don't need a contractor to charge you a toll to use our streets. They can cut the contractor out of the middle and go straight to your wallet themselves and keep all that money. The following article titled "Motorists habits spur calls for a tax increase" appeared today on WTOP, an excerpt of which stated:

"A federal commission created by Congress to find a way to make up the growing revenue shortfall in the program that funds highway repairs and construction is talking about increasing federal gas and diesel taxes."

Knowing how unpopular that would be in these tough economic times, this "esteemed" panel seems to have stolen my idea on taxing the mindless sheep that we are for the mere privilege of driving to the corner. The article goes on to state the following:

"According to a draft of the financing commission's recommendations, the nation needs to move to a new system that taxes motorists according to how much they use roads. While details have not been worked out, such a system would mean equipping every car and truck with a device that uses global positioning satellites and transponders to record how many miles the vehicle has been driven, and perhaps the type of roads and time of day."

Think this can't happen? They are doing a test of just this system now in Oregon with 300 motorists according to an article by the Associated Press titled "Oregon looks at taxing mileage instead of gasoline". And to help us ease into that steaming pot to be boiled alive, initially this fee wouldn't be much according to our great leaders, hardily even noticeable. Maybe 1/4 of a penny per mile and maybe just a little more during peak rush hours. Just enough to fund some infrastructure improvements, right? Of course, like most of these funds, they are collected for one purpose and spent on something completely different and then steadily raised whenever the politicians need a little more spending money. I thought it might take 25 years, but our politicans are more resourceful than we think when it comes to ideas on how to get more money out of our pockets. They've even cut the private contractor out and will now track us directly with GPS built in to our cars. Of course, they won't use it for any nefarious means like determining which of their citizens drives where and when. After all they're the government and they're here to help right?

It amazes me that they want to tax us when we use too much fuel in an effort to get us to conserve, and now that we aren't using enough they want to tax us for using too little. But then again, we keep electing the same people over and over again, so they begin to feel that they can do whatever they want to us and we'll thank them and ask for another.

***Propaganda Alert***

I don't dispute the area's traffic problems nor will I challenge the rising highway maintainence costs, nor the challenges of getting to and from work each day. But don't confuse these issues with one simple fact: HOT lanes take something that was fast, effective and free and changes it to slower, marginally effective and expensive.

The most important part of this is that HOV lanes are free for travel to carpoolers and off-peak commuters, HOT lanes are not! So let's split the hairs here: much has been made of a provision that HOT lanes will be free for carpoolers. How will the HOT admins decide if a car is HOV/free, and what happens when carpooling exceeds the maximum volume allowed (I think, 25%)? We will pay the HOT contractor with tax subsidies! Care to challenge that Ybarra?

HOT lanes will be slower (speeds are only "guaranteed" to be 55MPH), marginally effective (more cars in the lanes = more traffic congestion = slower and less effective traffic movement), and will cost taxpayers millions in contruction contributions, will cost off-peak SOV commuters, and will cost taxpayers when carpooling increases.

Commuting options? Don't forget that every dollar spent on traveling SOV in the HOT lanes is a dollar taken out of local economies, and out of the local tax base. HOT fares will ultimately lead to less consumer discretionary money to spend with local businesses, and the need for higher % sales taxes for the remaining local revenues generated, OR less local public services. ALL WHILE OUR HOT TOLLS/TAXES FLY OFF TO AUSTRALIA TO HELP THE HOT CONTRACTOR GET RICH! Sounds like less options to me!

Ybarra has a financial interest in selling this! She works for a PIRG that has been hired to promote this. VDOT contracting officers have to do this to make themselves look good to their bosses so they can get their raises (because they can't balance their books otherwise)!

Don't buy into the rhetoric! We have been sold up a river!

Ms Ybarra,

There is no "REASONING" with you because it is apparent by your actions while Secretary of Transportation and current association with a specific unnamed organization that you believe that private industry will self-regulate wisely and efficiently and will act only in the best interest of the traveling public, i.e., the taxpayer. Of course that theory has received quite a battering during the last 9+ months what with everything happening with Wall Street, real estate, and the auto industry now requiring government intervention. And it seems to have failed miserably despite what Alan Greenspan, Robert Rubin, and others devoutly believed. It seems libertarian ideas have taken a beating lately, huh? So let's discuss your concept of private-public partnerships, and since VDOT won't listen to anyone in Northern Virginia, maybe my fellow slugs can join in this posting and let's debate the true merits of HOT lanes. Let's get this started with just a few of many, many examples:

Maybe you can explain if public-private partnerships are so wonderful and private financing of public projects is such a magnificent libertarian idea to get government out of the transportation business, then why is VDOT providing several hundred million dollars of support money to Fluor Daniels and Transurban to rebuild bridges and overpasses on the beltway project? Doesn't sound so private now does it? Oh, and before you trot out the tired VDOT line about the bridges and overpasses being structurally unsafe, explain why only the bridges and overpasses on the HOT portion of the beltway are unsafe.

Maybe you can explain why VDOT was so adamant about not listening to anything the public had to say about HOT lanes during their so-called "public" meetings?

Maybe you can explain why the contract with Fluor Daniels and Transurban was signed despite the contractor not being able to provide specific technical solutions to serious shortcomings, i.e., how can you discern a HOV vehicle with three or more people from the HOT vehicles with a single driver, etc.?

Maybe if you bother to read anybody else's posting, you will see that our concern is not with HOV being eliminated by the contractor or by VDOT. News flash - we know that neither the contractor nor VDOT can eliminate HOV so stop using that as justification to continue with HOT support. REMEMBER THIS. OUR CONCERN IS THAT HOV, A FORM OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION NOT REQUIRING ANY PUBLIC FUNDING, WILL NOW BE TOTALLY RELIANT ON FUNDING BY RICHMOND, AND RICHMOND CAN NOW MAKE HOV CEASE BY ELIMINATING THAT VERY SAME FUNDING. Of course, once that occurs, you and others like you will be nowhere to be found. You of all people should know that HOV funding can be eliminated as a result of budget deficits or even eliminated at the request of the contractor if they make big enough political contributions to Richmond. Of course, if you were and are, so concerned about the welfare of slugs and HOV as you profess, then you would have ensured when you were Secretary of Transportation that HOV funding on HOT lanes would be sustained by Richmond in support of improved transportation in Northern Virginia no matter what. But you did not, because you could not, and that is what worries the HOV community. The day all the Delegates and Senators in Richmond promise to never, ever eliminate funding for HOV on the HOT lanes is the day you may garner some support for HOT. Until then, you have no authority to say that HOV will be free and REMAIN FREE because you have no control over the funding stream, only the politicians do. And it is the politicians in Richmond that we all fear in Northern Virginia. I'm afraid I won't drink the Kool-Aid quite so readily as others have.

And if I'm so over the top on expanding tolls to include every street, then deny that there is a test being performed in Oregon, as we speak, that will charge drivers a fee, per mile driven. Deny that each driver will allow the government to track their vehicle by road driven, time of day, locations, etc. Deny the Associated Press and WTOP reports that a federal commission has suggested that instead of a gas tax, every driver pay a toll based on the amount of miles driven and obtained with a transponder built into the vehicle? That's not exactly a libertarian concept last time I checked. Or can libertarian values be compromised when there is a profit to be made? Maybe under the guise of public private partnerships, with which you are so enamored, private companies from Australia or even China can provide this service more efficiently than the government too? Of course eventually this wide spread tolling will occur, but it is the job of libertarian talking heads to distract everyone long enough by denying that such an outrageous idea could ever take place while at the same time these very concepts can be implemented in the background with little or no public input.

I can go on and on but I'll leave it up to the slug community to provide other examples, despite your protestations, that prove that public private partnerships are merely a way to relieve government of their responsibilities to provide basic core services to their constituents under the guise of private entities being able to do a better job more efficiently. And in the meantime, the same politicians can continue to collect the taxes used to support such endeavors in the past and now feel free to spend them on other pork projects. Of course, good thing Lehman Brothers or AIG wasn't given the contract for the HOT lanes, but then again maybe they could always claim to be too big to fail and ask for a government hand out. I don’t care for nor will I accept government intervention or regulation until I am on the verge of bankruptcy, at which point I’ll take all the government intervention, i.e., money, without any regulation. Now there's some reason for you.

continuing... A quick internet search returned this article from the Hudson Institute "FISA Is the Government's Responsibility," where the author states, "Those who would harm us... watch our comings and goings..."

And goes on to discuss how the government is looking to private businesses to provide insulation from its responsibility to protect ech citiczen's privacy. "Some in Congress want private parties, particularly deep-pocketed corporations, to be liable for the excesses and mistakes of the federal government under FISA." "By shifting liability away from the federal government for its actions, the federal government is emboldened to exceed its authority. A reasonable government official need not worry about exceeding legal authority if a private entity will be held liable."

While this discussion is about terrorism, these discussions apply to invasion of privacy issues in general, especially considering how many rights citizens have given up (without even knowing) in the name of national security. Interesting reading: The Patriot Act.

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_details&id=5271&pubType=NatSecurity

^
So glad I drive an older vehicle without all sort of electronics.


And this would bill visitors to the state how? Visitors are using the roads as well.

My truck is a 4x4. Sometimes I go offroading. Yet I'm still going to rack up mileage in state, while not on a public road...

I'd rather just pay the 18¢/gal fuel tax and be done with it.

To think someone who earns a higher paycheck than most of us thought of that bill... And even scarier, a population thought it good to elect them into power.

I fear for the future.