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Wednesday, April 01, 2009
John Stossel :: Townhall.com Columnist
Sell the Roads!
by John Stossel
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Will Congress pass Obamacare by the end of the year?

Under President Obama's stimulus plan, the government will spend billions of your dollars building new roads and fixing old ones. They say they'll do it efficiently. I say, bull; government has never before been efficient. It isn't going to start now.

Need proof? How about rush hour?

Rush hours from hell are not natural phenomena. They're manmade -- more precisely, politician-made. But what if commuting didn't have to be a horrendous experience? What if, for example, someone wanted to add some lanes to a road or build an entirely new road?

It's happening. Private road builders are doing it. They built a double-decker underground highway in Paris. A 45-minute trip now takes 10 minutes. Three hundred-fifty cameras watch for traffic delays or accidents. Once the camera detects a problem, a crew rushes to tow the obstacle away so traffic keeps moving.

They did a similar thing in California, too, on Highway 91. Instead of building a brand-new road, a private developer added two lanes in the median strip of an existing highway. The beauty of it: Unlike government work, the private highway is all voluntary. No driver or taxpayer was forced to pay for the extra lanes. Drivers can choose to use them or not. Those who want to go faster have to pay a toll -- from a buck fifty to $9 -- depending on traffic. By paying you save time. And for some people, time is money.

The success of private roads made politicians from other states want to try leasing roads. Mayor Richard Daley did it with the Chicago Skyway. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels leased the Indiana toll road to a private company.

"We received $4 billion, free and clear, no taxes, no debt left to our kids," Daniels told me for my ABC special "Bailouts and Bull".

But many people are horrified by the idea of leasing roads to businesses. When Florida considered leasing Alligator Alley, the highway that spans Florida from east to west, people held protests and screamed about the evil of corporate profit. Politicians shelved the idea.

The governor of New Jersey gave up, too. A private highway is dying in Pennsylvania and dead in Texas.

"Privatizing existing taxpayer infrastructure is not a solution for anybody," Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon told me.

He also says that what Gov. Daniels did is wrong.

Daniels made money for the taxpayer. What's wrong with that? I asked DeFazio.

"Money that the people of Indiana could have had in the future is going to go to a private company."

"What money?" Daniels asks. "The toll road was losing money!" Continued...

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About The Author
John Stossel blogs at http://blogs.abcnews.com/johnstossel/ is an award-winning news correspondent and author of Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity: Get Out the Shovel--Why Everything You Know is Wrong.
 
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Oh, give ME a break
effing toll roads. There are certain things in this world that need to be available to everyone or else they are essentially useless to have, and roads are one of those things.

Yeah if people can't afford to drive, I guess they stay off the roads, and it reduces congestion. Brilliant...............

"All voluntary". thpthpthpthpthp

I=80
I remember about 20-25 years ago that I used to hate hitting I-80 in Pa - I just couldn't believe how bad it was - but then I figured out that the traffic was primarily trucks headed to NYC !! So how to get NYC to pay for it !!
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