by jb9152
goodnightjohnwayne wrote:I can state with great certainty that I can get in my powerful automobile and easily drive to a train station or airport - or I can just keep on going on a system of free interstate highways.Couldn't let this howler go by without a reply. While I am generally aligned with your points of view on enumerated rights, freedom, the market, and so forth, this is just nonsense.
In no way are those interstate highways "free". American taxpayers pay billions of dollars a year for their maintenance and upkeep. The fact that the average driver doesn't see that as a direct cost is not really important, except that it makes less thoughtful people believe that they haven't paid for that asphalt - that it is, in effect, "free". They have paid, many times over. There are also, in urban areas, very easily computed congestion costs that are directly related to our generally auto-centric culture. Note - I agree that we should be free to choose our mode; in that regard, I think transit needs to do a much better job in competing for trips than it does today. But even a free market guy like me sees that there's nothing "free" about sitting in a traffic jam on a taxpayer-subsidized road with no other choices.