pay as you drive

One of the problems with privatizing the road system is the collection of payment for usage, without a system of paying specifically for each use; there is a significant neighborhood effect from one person’s economic choice benefiting or damaging another person. Up until recently the only way to collect funds for road usage was a system of tollbooths, this would clearly extend journey times, create traffic and just simply become impractical. However, the new proposal by the government to roll out a “pay as you go” system for our roads solves that problem instantly, but only if the roads are sold off to private concerns, if a system of proper competition could be set up, then it would be feasible to charger per mile, however, the same problems begin to appear as they would for the government, such as, how is it possible for the driver to calculate the cost of a journey with different price tariffs for different roads? How do we ensure proper competition in rural areas where only a single route to a destination exists? And these only scrape the barrel.

There are significant problems, but none of these are solved by a government monopoly, at least a private system with competition would keep prices generally low, there is nothing to stop the government from hiking prices. The other problem with the scheme is the idea of placing a black box into people’s cars. While this would be good in theory due to the ease of use, in practice it also has several problems, such as will the government begin to use the system to catch speeders? And how will they stop people tampering with the device to make it give false readings? All these problems and more will need to be seriously thought through before anything can be done.