Tolling Urban Freeways

[mplsjaromir]

I would certainly consider funding of K-12 education to be progressive.

[Anondson]

I pay $106 a month for waste water management in my suburban home. Doesn’t that cover the full cost? Also I have a well, and so do all my neighbors, so we pay the full cost of our own potable water.

May or may not pay out the full cost. For a lot of suburban growth the Met Council built out waste water access in a planned expansion outwards placing access there, funded by existing users, long before homes were built there. After however many years and decades it may have paid off the full cost of adding that area.

Drinking water in some regions of the metro, some areas are now clearly over developed and it was likely a mistake to allow development there. It might cost $200–$600M to add drinking water capacity, piped in from the river, to the north east metro suburbs because those homes and businesses are sucking the aquifer dry faster than it replenishes itself. Leading to lakes there disappearing. How many of the north east suburbs wouldn't even exist and would still be farming, if they had to pay for the capacity first before homes could get built there we likely would have homes infilled first or built in better spots.

[MNdible]

Good to see that this thread is bringing out the best in everybody.

I knew y'all could do it!

[mamundsen]

I have been mentally reading this as "Trolling Urban Freeways."

[moda253]

There's a lot of reasons besides loving cars that people choose to live in the suburbs. Even all the freeways were toll roads I'd still live out here, so it's not a 'market distortion" that makes people want to live here and not the city. Although make it too expensive to visit the city and I wonder how many people would find a job out in the suburbs rather than pay to drive in or move closer.

Ding! And how many companies will start to build in the suburbs (oops already doing that) because that's where people are.

[moda253]

Saying people should have to pay the full costs of their decisions is not punishing them. Subsidizing their decisions so they don't have to pay their true cost punishes people who don't make that decision yet still end up footing the bill.

baloney, you cannot take the massive amount of people that are out there now living under the conditions known to them at the time, bought a house with a mortgage and then subject them to this new condition. In the fantasy of all fantasies on this thread you'd have everyone moving back to the city causing massive issues with housing and foreclosures in the suburbs, creating a massive housing problem in the city and likely creating a crime hotbed in the former suburban housing. The whole idea is absolutely terrible and lacks the same foresight that got us into the mess of urban sprawl to begin with. There's no good way to put the genie back in the bottle at this point but you cannot just change the game on people. Strike that. You won't be able to do that. It would never fly anyway. Trying to tie increasing taxes or charging folks that live in the suburbs to re-social engineer society is going to do one thing become a money making stream for the government entity that enacts it. They would charge folks just enough to make sure they stay there and make as much money as possible. And they for sure aren't going to put it to transit uses which would take people out of the system that they would be paying into.

[go4guy]

The metro will continue to grow in population. Limit growth outward and let the metro naturally grow from within. It already seems to be happening.

[froggie]

Related to the subject...a long time ago I had a hair-brained idea that, instead of using ramp meters, MnDOT should've just put toll booths up on each on-ramp and charged a coin (whether a nickel, dime, or quarter) during rush hours. My thought process was that it would serve the same purpose as the ramp meter (breaking up platoons of on-ramp traffic) and also provide funding for road improvements. Of course, this was before I learned that adding toll booths to a non-grandfathered Interstate highway was a no-no...

[mattaudio]

...until we change federal law

[mulad]

One of my biggest concerns about tolling has always been the need for toll plazas, which tend to take up quite a bit of space. Interchanges between tolled and non-tolled freeways are also complicated (and I'm sure plazas have been needed between two tolled freeways too). Today, technology gives us a workaround and we have transponders that can be read at speed, with cameras to take license plate photos as a backup or alternative, but even that (particularly the camera option) may not work in all places, and there need to be some appropriate firewalls for privacy's sake.

[metro411]

The metro will continue to grow in population. Limit growth outward and let the metro naturally grow from within. It already seems to be happening.

I sense some lawsuits if that happens... http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/lawsuit ... nstitution

[mattaudio]

The metro will continue to grow in population. Limit growth outward and let the metro naturally grow from within. It already seems to be happening.

I sense some lawsuits if that happens... http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/lawsuit ... nstitution

That's why we need to stop subsidizing exurban growth, rather than trying to just limit it. It's a lot more effective to say "We won't extend water or sewer to your subdivision or strip mall because we will lose massive piles of public money" than it is to say "you're outside the urban growth boundary."

[EOst]

The metro will continue to grow in population. Limit growth outward and let the metro naturally grow from within. It already seems to be happening.

I sense some lawsuits if that happens... http://www.oregonmetro.gov/news/lawsuit ... nstitution

That's why we need to stop subsidizing exurban growth, rather than trying to just limit it. It's a lot more effective to say "We won't extend water or sewer to your subdivision or strip mall because we will lose massive piles of public money" than it is to say "you're outside the urban growth boundary."

Given the majority of residents of this state are either rural or suburban, how do you propose to get their representatives to vote for it?

[mattaudio]

Once we got bankrupt, we won't have other options.

[David Greene]

Once we got bankrupt, we won't have other options.

I'm afraid that won't work. See Detroit. The people with the political power will never pay the price. If urban areas want to lift themselves up, they have to organize and build power.

[phop]

That's why we need to stop subsidizing exurban growth, rather than trying to just limit it. It's a lot more effective to say "We won't extend water or sewer to your subdivision or strip mall because we will lose massive piles of public money" than it is to say "you're outside the urban growth boundary."

Given the majority of residents of this state are either rural or suburban, how do you propose to get their representatives to vote for it?

Many suburbs are not exurbs.

[EOst]

That's why we need to stop subsidizing exurban growth, rather than trying to just limit it. It's a lot more effective to say "We won't extend water or sewer to your subdivision or strip mall because we will lose massive piles of public money" than it is to say "you're outside the urban growth boundary."

Given the majority of residents of this state are either rural or suburban, how do you propose to get their representatives to vote for it?

Many suburbs are not exurbs.

But they have similar concerns to the exurbs. They still want highways, they still want roads.