The Real Reason New Tolls Are Popping Up Everywhere 

You'll never convince local, state, or federal government to foot that upfront cost. I miss Portland's Max lines, loved those when I lived in OR

cope

Then enforce the laws against robbery and put crazy people in asylums.

I think you can convince local government to pay for something like that.

This is why we should privatize all transportation infrastructure. When people see the true cost of driving, trains will look way better. The government ruins everything.

“The neighborhood was nice until the Smith’s decided to open a slaughterhouse in our back yard. Many of the children and elderly around here have gotten sick and the tractor trailers that the Smith’s use have added potholes to the street. I’m so glad we relaxed the zoning laws in our town!”

@@barbzfurbernie4560 That's one unrealistic way of putting it. Another way is to reduce our zoning codes from 30,000 to under 100. Japan did it in under 12 and they're doing just fine. 100 should cover 99.99999% of America's needs. But hey, if you don't want multi-family housing in your neighborhood, go move to California where the houses are plenty, and at $2.5 million for a 4 bedroom on average. You know, the average amount an American would earn in their lifetime. It's OK to put small local grocery stores in neighborhoods or allow families to grow their own food and raise their own chickens. It won't work for everyone, but it will work for most people.

This is true, no amount of transit will fix traffic, infact it is true that improving transit almost never reduces congestion because induced demand works in reverse as well, for every car you take off the road, another car will be in to fill it. The best was to reduce traffic are the least sexy, if you put convenience stores in every neighborhood, and connected cul-de-sacs, you would do more to reduce traffic than doubling public transit funding would do.

@@larry6601 I think people would be more fine with small commercial activity coming into their neighborhoods before multi-family housing does. That is how it is in Japan usually, the single family home neighborhoods, often do have a convenience store nearby, but to get to the multi-family housing, you have to walk towards the train station or the main road. In those areas you will have alot of building types.

Possibly one of the dumbest, unrelated, unhinged ideas I have ever heard. This isn't going to reduce congestion, you are still going to go to big box stores. You don't even remotely understand economics. Buying power of large business is always going to outprice mom and pop stores. Most people are driving to work to commute or driving to go shopping for goods that aren't affordable to be shipped and no 7/11 run out of your neighbor's basement is going to outprice real stores with the amount of buying power they have. What is a local business run out of a house going to accomplish? Selling Etsy garbage that no one was hitting the road for either? Completely unhinged.

My thoughts exactly. Government contracting is parasitic

There are not many companies willing to do that kind of work.

Overhead cost in construction is really expensive, like insurance premium, workers comp, fringe benefits...plus environmental regulations are too strict. It can take 3-4 years to just get environmental reviews done

@@huaqingzhu5928 yeah over head is high and its the structure in place which devalues efficiency and creates these giant dumpster fires of tax revenue and profiteering off government contracts, and back pocket padding for rights to contracts.

Nope, just turns out roads are expensive!

But then those poor, poor automakers, suburban developers and oil companies who have been corrupting the government for decades would see a dip in profits!

You can't walk everywhere unless the climate is perfect year around. And even then, walking will only you get you so far within a reasonable amount of time. Most people can only average 3mph on a good day and in reasonable shape. Plus, this sort of ridiculous idea suggest people should move within walking distance to where they work and that's just beyond stupid and isn't even possible unless people are just shuffling homes non stop.

BUT MUH ZONING

They do that already it's called DOWNTOWN. And you know what happens then? Crazy high rents

@@siddheshrane there's hardly any real downtowns left in the US because most of them got bulldozed for highways. There's a reason apartments in the ones that are left are in such high demand, suburbs suck

weight per axle would even be less expansive for trucks as they have 4, 5 or even 7 axles.

Weight based tax is a scam, the only vehicles doing real damage to roads are commercial trucks. Little people in little cars do almost zero damage, so we are subsidizing trucking companies for all the damage they cause to our roads.

Yes, or revamp the EPA emission efficiency regulations that were instituted in the Obama era to apply to all consumer vehicles, including SUVs and pickup trucks which are currently excluded.

New Jersey has an interesting solution to getting the amount it needs from its gas tax. The legislature doesn’t set the price per gallon, they set a collection goal. Which they recently raised from 2 billion to 2.34 billion, I think I’m remembering the amounts right. Then the gas tax law is written so each year the tax per gallon is adjusted based on whether they met, exceeded or didn’t make the goal. This year, before the goal increase, they were charging 2 cents per gallon.

@@KBergsnot true. Damage to the road is exponential, so a truck with four wheels, that weighs twice as much as a car per-axle, does four times as much damage to the road. Pickups and SUVs do a ton of damage to roads designed for cars, and the massive sprawl of suburban roads are the expensive part.

That's because you live in an urban "utopia"

​@@2x2is22You mean a cute rural town with a good train station, and frequent buses? Yeah, why?

I love my car! Driving is a lot of fun, and riding motorcycles is even better 👌

@@2x2is22 ... Which is subsidizing the suburban population. Turns out having everyone live in low-density housing is crazy inefficient.

@@joshuablaz Fully agree... Up until you realise that's not the case for many if not most people present and stuck in traffic and congestion. And that people who don't like driving are also people that makes your druve painfull in many ways, if not potentially dangerous. American drivers have a really bad reputation, and this has a role.

So you want more involved government… Who do you think got us in this situation?

@@GetThemLyrics The government got us into the situation... by subsidizing cars. If the government got out of the way every road would have to be privately owned and be a toll road. We are just asking the government to subsidize the transportation options that are more efficient now.

@@GetThemLyrics Republicans to be specific.

Yes there is, it’s called Amtrak, it’s already federal subsidized and it fucking sucks, that’s why no one uses it. And the need to go multiple states over isn’t a very large one for most people and even if it was we have planes. This isn’t Europe, we can’t do what they do because we are literally too fucking big for our own good

@@GetThemLyrics You do realize highways are a net loss to cities. They cost more to maintain than they can generate income, which is why this congestion pricing is happening. So the Government subsidize them instead of investing in public infrastructure. People actually produce something in an economy, Cars do not. Move people, not cars.

Very true

The worrying part though is nothing else has improved infrastructure wise so now that we actually have to pay the cost, it seems like we are headed towards a society where only the rich can drive. That doesn't work well when our entire society has been built and developed around car-centric infrastructure

​@thetechmaster69 The exorbitant cost of driving has always been obvious to folks with lower income. Privatized transportation was always an unfair proposition, disproportionately profiting car and oil companies at the expense of the public good. It's not that we shouldn't have cars, it's that Americans have been brainwashed to think that cars are the only way. After decades of razing neighborhoods for highways and parking, and subsidizing fuel and infrastructure costs, people are finally waking up to how unsustainable it is. People need to have reasonable options when it comes to transportation. This constant monopolistic, all or nothing mentality needs to stop.

The majority of the price of gas is taxes. That's why the oil companies are being sued for price gouging. Cars were never subsidized, car owners pay taxes that build the infrastructure, the problem is now everything is expensive and paying for construction is insane. I've seen many road projects destroyed because the concrete didn't pass inspection, this is China level incompetence

we are a disposable society. No one thinks long term.

Also it's taking a very flawed assumption that 1 mile driven cost the city/state/whatever the same amount in expected road costs regardless of the type of car.

So you just pay a fixed tax for weight? Did you watch the video? It won't keep up with inflation and rising cost of roads. You need to charge usage. Instead, you can optimize VMT by considering the weight of the vehicle, the family income of the driver etc

It should be based on VMT and gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR). If you drive more in a light vehicle, you pay less than a heavier vehicle that drives the same amount. If you have a heavy vehicle, but barely ever drive it, then you would pay less than if you drove that vehicle more.

Sounds horrible as well, if the government implemented that I would ride a bicycle no matter how far

@@not_popskgaming8150 well more people riding bicycles means less congestion, lower wear on roads. and would be a benefit.

Washington state graduates part of its license fee based on the vehicle's gross weight!

That would make too much sense.

i agree. make the heavy trucks pay for their road damage!

that's what The Netherlands has been doing for decades. they're also gonna add distance driven, currently you pay even when your car is stored unless you pause your plate. but this all works really well, we have the best roads in the world not only for quality, but also the best designed roads.

Doesn't really work if you do most of your driving in a different state than where you live. E.g. you live in Connecticut, work from home, but take frequent road trips out of state.

Subway is expensive compared to other cities but $3 really isn’t the much. Much less than driving

@sashagallaway1945 sounds incredibly cheap, why isn't that available to more people?

@@jerrik-415 call your legislators and fight for improved transit service! you should have the choice to get around your city without paying thousands every month for a car

The Bus system becomes a much more attractive alternative once all the cars go away.

Biking is cheap

I would say don't give them ideas, but at this point, this is bound to happen.

*Because instead of having five people watching each laboring worker, now there are 8 or more*

No matter how much innovation you do, a road is still going to occupy the same amount of land. As other parts of the economy have gotten more efficient (think about how much an office can make per square foot compared to a farm), land prices have increased to reflect that. It's not always corruption, it's just that roads are a bad technology for solving transportation in an economy that is growing, especially in urban areas.

bro..... nobody with an actual job enjoys riding filthy public transit with a bunch of crazy whacko's. It only works in certain cities because the alternatives are utter chaos. We see how pathetic the subways are and the only way to clean them up is by having tons of police everywhere and that will only work for so long because the cost to do that is just ridiculous.

cope

It's hilarious that every time there's a race between public transit and somebody in a car, no matter how horrible the public transit is delayed or the worst in the country.. It still always beats the car. Car culture is short-sighted

Seriously, if you want a great driving experience, you should be a hardcore advocate for public transit less cars on the road is a better experience for the people still on the road.

​@@matthewboyd8689 Not sure where you saw this, but it's absolute BS around here for sure. I can beat any public transit because they have to stop at so many dropoff and pickup points that they take forever to get anywhere. Maybe you are talking about only subway trains? I can see them winning in many cases due to the level of congestion in the streets. Or maybe you're talking about high speed trains over seas? Yeah, those win for sure if you live in and work in cities far apart.

Maybe, but watch they sell the right to run it and collect revenue to a Private Equity company.

NYC does

When will the "damn gas tax" be too much that we can't afford to travel? Communist Lenin said that the way to control the masses is with TAXES AND INFLATION!!. Look around and tell me what you see?!?!?

Fuel taxes have not increased, they have been decreasing constantly, because they are absolute money values that don't track inflation. As pointed out in the video, the federal gas tax hasn't changed since 1993, which means in reality, the federal gas tax has gone DOWN by 54%

Ky did have toll roads they did get paid off and became free roads

i think you're confusing ineptitude with corruption/complicite

We don't make ourselves poorer. Those who have power to extract wealth from us make us poorer. That's how America works now and it's all private.

This isn’t the answer. The US is wealthier than ever is real terms. You’d never guess that though 😬

A lot of infrastructure (read: suburbs) was built on loan from the feds but there isn't enough economic density to maintain them so cities go into debt for their suburbs. It was unsustainable from the start.

​@@maddog2314The interstate system is also at fault...

People forget the hero of the union, Ulysses S Grant. Was the most corrupt president we ever had and created many of the ways people exploit the tax payers. Like railroads to nowhere and purposely making mistakes so you have to re build. Remember you have contracts and can't be fired because you charge the least to build.

That is completely off base. Consumption based taxes are the only ones that make sense. Value add taxes (VAT) is a progressive consumption tax that works. If people have excessive tolls costs for work that will be negotiated between employer compensation and the worker. Besides, long commutes to have a cheaper single family home is a complete personal decision. The only real issue is the lack of cheap public rents in cities.

It's also flawed, because the guy driving his H3 Hummer with spinning rims as his commuter vehicle is causing more road damage than someone with a beat up Toyota Corolla from the 90s. If the argument is "cost to maintain" then that should be taken into account, and neither of those cars come anywhere close to the damage to roads done by larger vehicles like semi-trucks and ... wait for it... buses. Fact is weight matters for road damage and road damage is why roads need maintenance. Sometimes I see signs on the backs of buses that say "this bus is taking 80 cars off the road" (lets ignore the fact there's no where near 80 people in the bus usually) but that bus is probably damaging the road considerably more than 80 cars will.

@@Mike__B True, There are a lot of ways VMT can be optimized. But it seems to be the best option. The money collected should be used to fund public transit.

@@TheModeler99 Then the VMT needs to state that's why it's being done, maybe it does I don't live in Oregon, but this entire thesis revolves around the fact there isn't enough money to fund the roads, it's not that there isn't enough money to fund other projects it's the ROADS that are not funded which is why we need toll lanes, VMT, gas taxes etc. It's not "lets raise money for public transit"

The problem with NYC is that the MTA is using the toll roads to fund subways and not giving drivers anything in return

Go back to gravel and dirt roads, design good public transport. Asphalt is too expensive taxes destroy the middle class

*Because shackles, fox tails and cages are more comforting than freedom*

Crazy. And the express lanes sometimes still go as slow as everyone else.

This is a great idea! Car-brained commenters often ask bicyclists to "pay their fair share of road costs", yet don't realize their 4-ton gender-affirming pickup truck purchase causes 600,000 times more road wear than my 200 lb bike. The 4th power law grows crazy fast.

This subsidizes heavier inefficient vehicles. Gas tax makes sense in this case since if you don't travel much you don't need to use more gas

@@siddheshrane the VMT would be multiplied by a lot for vehicles of that weight.

@@siddheshraneit does not subsidize heavy vehicles. And heavy vehicles are what damage the road. There needs to be a weight tax

@@siddheshranewith a charge by weight you would, properly, charge electric cars. You would even charge them more (by size) because electric cars are very heavy in comparison.

Morning Brew is a media collective owned by Insider, Inc. who you may know for Business Insider. Insider was started by two guys in 2007, Bezos invested $5 million in 2013. In 2015 German online mass media outlet Axel Springer SE bought an 88% stake for somewhere in the $340 million range. Axel Springer bought out Bezos' 3% by 2018 making them the sole owner of Insider, Inc. Axel Springer had an annual revenue of $3.5 billion in 2019. There's a multibillion dollar company behind this video.

forgot corruption.

I agree, but it's politically unviable. Whatever Dem president did it would lose the next election and the GOP will reverse the change (if not eliminate it altogether). Welcome to American democracy where we fall victim to prisoners dilemma on pretty much every topic.

Maybe, but that's unlikely. Building transit infrastructure is much more palatable and will have a more positive effect on the balance sheet in the long run. The video also does state a few other issues that raising the gas tax wouldn't solve by itself.

People freak out here when gas hits $3.50 a gallon, then I show them the rest of the developed world's.

The problem is suburbs. Namely, we built way too many of them, and then engineered the real estate market to make suburban home ownership artificially easy to attain. (No, seriously, in what other universe would a bank willingly offer 30-year *fixed interest rate* loans?!) Suburbs additionally depend on road infrastructure being infinitely scalable and remaining free. This makes American politics extremely sensitive to the price of gasoline and the amount of congestion on the roads, because people live too far from their work to walk and too spread out to run a bus or train. Doesn't matter if the gas is relatively cheap compared to other countries. To quote Red vs. Blue, "you don't drink three gallons of milk every time you drive to work". We guzzle that shit down in bulk. Hell, the reason why Americans are oddly excited about electric cars is because electricity (at least at L1/L2 charging speeds) is way cheaper than gas. The solution to "the burden on the poorest Americans" would be to rebuild the cities like they used to be: dense, mixed-use commercial and residential areas of varying intensities. But there's two problems: - That costs shittons of money to build, so it's going to be built for rich people first, while the poor cling onto the suburbs forever because that's how ownership works - The poor are not going to like being told to move back to the cities they just escaped from Yes, these are *surmountable* problems, but they require political will we don't have, ever since the Supreme Court decided to drown the electoral system in unlimited SuperPAC money, and the rich (yes, inclusive of Trump) figured out (or really, rediscovered) half a century ago that they can just stir up endless bullshit culture war fights while they loot our pockets.

@@sIosha Transit only works in high density areas. Everywhere else, there are not enough people for frequent and dense (both mean useable!) service. And having a bus come every two hours, is not something that is actually useful. On the other hand, having a mostly empty bus drive around every 15 minutes from early morning to late night is insanely expensive.

Maybe economists know something you don't

Did you just exhale greenhouse gases? We'll have to charge you for that chap.

most other places don't have drug addicts attacking people and blowing drugs in their faces.

*To buy Phil Murphy some new hair plugs, and orthodontic procedures.*

K brokie 😂

The most expensive army in the world?

It's almost like roads are horribly expensive and nobody wants to pay the full cost of them.

@@InternetLaser Government sure doesn’t

Democrats know that the vast majority of their voters either can’t afford a car or live in urban areas with rapid transit. The SECOND you can purchase a car with food stamps, democrats will support spending money on roads.

That money stays right here in USA. It goes to defence contractors. The other country get our old stock and the defence contractor makes us new and improved stuff. Im not sayi g i agree with this. Just wanted to point out where the money goes.

You want the Imperialist Russian regime to succeed in conquering Ukraine so that it feels emboldened to launch another unprovoked invasion into another country afterward even though very likely the next country that Russia invades will be a NATO country meaning that the United States will be an active participant in the war which will cost a lot more money and will also mean that American troops will be getting wounded and American troops will be dying? Why wouldn't you prefer to spend less money to help Ukraine stop and defeat Imperialist Russia in Ukraine so that Russia learns to stop launching unprovoked imperialist invasions into other countries? Over the past three decades Russia launched at least 6 other unprovoked imperialist invasions into other countries to steal territory from those countries and every time western countries took your attitude and let Russia get away with it thinking, "We want peace. Let the Russians succeed in this invasion and afterwards the Russians will be satisfied and not launch anymore invasions" and each time the Russian regime thought, "The west is weak. Western countries will never try to stop us. Let's launch another unprovoked imperialist invasion" and the Russian regime will think the same thing if the west lets it conquer Ukraine.

The tax should be higher for heavier vehicles. Nothing prevents people from using light scooters and motorcycles, which do much less damage to the roads

@@RussianBot382 definitely something to consider. Especially with massively heavy electric cars that don't give a tax gas at all, that's really not a bad idea at all. Look at the fucking Hummer EV, just shy of 10,000 lb. Maybe a tax after a certain weight?

You could argue that the existing gas tax regime is similarly regressive for the same reasons.

@@ethanfloyd3920 definitely don't disagree with that. Unlike income though that's going to be really hard to be extremely hard to be progressive on taxation-wise. Believe me, I live in California and we drive all the fucking time because our cities are so big and public transportation, when it exists, pretty inefficient. I love public transportation and would absolutely use it, but it makes my commute to work over an hour instead of 12 minutes. It's straight up faster to bike to work. But then you have to deal with the safety issues around that because people do not respect bicyclist at all lol

@@Gavo172 motorcycles here where i live get cucked on insurance lol.. not sure if thats a problem in the USA yet but it sure as hell is in ontario, canada.. know a guy who used to own a kawasaki dealership.. he shut it down back in the early 2000's when they universally raised the price of motorcycle insurance because they consider it to be unneccesary, unlike a car.. (they then cuck you on the car as well) no joke once got an insurance quote for 68k canadian pesos for 1 year of minimum coverage on a sport bike..thats more than 5x the price of the bike for a year of insurance with a clean record.

not legal

This is not true. I take the NJ turnpike every day.

Wow, never seen someone so confidently spew bullshit like that. I literally live in NJ and this has never happened.

@@cake7986 YEA

And airplanes. Watch the engines as a plane take off.

Which emissions are you talking about? If it’s GHGs, then cars (“Light Duty Vehicles”) account for 58% of US transport emissions. Ships and boats account for only 3%. (2021 EPA data). As for other emissions, NOx and ozone will probably track with CO2 (it happens any time you burn something). The one exception might be PM, since that depends more on the fuel type and engines.

I agree! - it shouldn't be an undue burden onto low-income commuters. Thankfully the cities that are implementing it all have extremely robust public transportation systems (in NYC, the vast majority of people, wealthy or low-income, already use transit to commute!) that will only see more investment from the congestion charges. Unfortunately not a lot of other places in this country have transit that's a fully viable alternative to driving just yet, so we need to make these other modes viable first before having a congestion pricing discussion.

@@gl0w0 lol NYC is also a dumpster fire

It's supposed to replace or add to gas tax. In rural areas if you drive a lot of miles you use a lot of road and until EVs and hybrids, use a proportional amount of gas and pay tax on that.

@@GeraldMMonroe that angle of it definitely makes sense. As a replacement for gas tax, I could see some potential benefits.

Not the job of non-rural people to subsidize people who choose to live in a rural area. They can pay for their lifestyle or move.

@@Droidman1231 I’m curious, how do you view urban populations as subsidizing rural ones currently? While gas tax is (as shown) insufficient for all areas, both urban and rural communities are sort of sustaining themselves through it. But I’m only able to see some of the issue, so I’d love to hear more about that.

@@bigredproductions777 Suburbs and rural are less dense, this requires more investment in infrastructure that serves less people. Building a mile of roads, power lines, water, sewer, etc. in a city serves a lot more people than a mile in a rural or suburban area would. This means repairing and maintaining those services will cost more because there isn't as much benefit/income for the cities/town/state from it. A mile long road in a city will have homes/apartments, restaurants, hotels, grocery stores, and more, all these pay taxes. A mile long road in suburb or rural area may have a few hours and maybe a store, but the cost to build and maintain the road remains the same. Those people living in the rural area will use the roads far more than people in cities so city-dwellers are paying for roads they may rarely or ever use. Suburbs almost always pay less in property taxes. You see tax increases more commonly in dense cities than rural areas. Single-family homes are incredibly inefficient use of land. Not to demonize them but single family homes have their place, but they provide a very low tax base for states. If you are curious about diving more into these topics, check out Strong Town. They wrote a great article recently about why Houston is going broke which serves as a good example of what you were curious about. www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/4/1/heres-the-real-reason-houston-is-going-broke