Quote:
Originally Posted by MarketsWork
A market economy will supply what consumers demand. We should embrace the opportunities that growth affords, and strive to make our Atlanta as good as it can be.
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Come on, transportation is a incredibly distorted market and you know it. Make EVERYTHING toll and then you can talk about what the market demands. As it is, we have a heavily subsidized and government regulated transportation system that favors roads over everything else. If you believe otherwise, you're viewing through a distorted lense.
Come on, where are the "libertarians" demanding a $15 toll to drive from Lawrenceville to downtown? The core guys at the libertarian think tanks are all for it, but the guy on the street who goes on and on about roads being a free market has no clue as to what roads really cost and how much of a subsidy they get, especially in using the power of government to take away land for the "common good" of drivers. Remember, GDOT has the power to take your land and pay you what they consider to be the value. MARTA has no such authority and ends up paying many times more for a right of way than what GDOT would pay. Yet another example of government distortion of the market.
So please... don't talk about what the market does and does not demand. In this environment, there is no way for you or anyone to truly know because the system has been wired for only one outcome. Sell off the interstate system and all other limited access highways to investors (the government can use the precedes to pay off the road bonds and general obligation bonds that have been used to build the roads) who will start charging tolls for what the roads cost. Don't allow new roads or mass transit to take away people's land but rather force them to pay whatever the owner of the land wants, even if that's $10,000,000,000 per sq foot. If they won't sell, pay the huge amount of money required to adjust the route around each and ever part of the project that you can't acquire the land for. Sell off the mass transit systems to private investors. In that environment, then you can start to talk about what the market wants (even that will be distorted because of past government taking of private property more for roads than mass transit will result in advantages for the roads that can not be captured in the pricing of the road when sold since it was never paid for at its true cost in the first place... but we can ignore that in the long term).
If there is any type of market in the US that is more distorted by government interference and control than transportation, I'd like to know what it is. As it is, you shouldn't even use the term "market" to describe how our transportation networks are built and funded. If you like how the status quo fits your particular lifestyle, that's fine but don't try to pass off the way things are as being any kind of free market system in action.