That's the plan that the bigwigs in the United Kingdom have planned for their motorways/autoroutes.. (Link Courtesy The BRITISH BROADCASTING CORPORATION) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4610755.stm) :confused:

What makes ME balk at this -- even though I *DON'T*, for the most part, drive (Here in The States OR overseas).....The Powers That Be in certain aspects of Government here in The U.S. just might say to themselves...."Hey, THAT sounds like a GOOD IDEA!"...and proceed accordingly.. :(

You know, anything to generate more income in the municipal/stae/federal coffers...at the "little man's" expense.. :mad:

Well, I'LL just "stay tuned" and SEE just WHAT happens here.... :hmm:

It sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Let the people who use the motorways pay for their maintenance and upkeep. It would be even better to privatize the entire mess and take away the pork spent on federal highway projects in the U.S.

It would be even better to privatize the entire mess and take away the pork spent on federal highway projects in the U.S.

a really BAD idea ... unless the idea of toll booths every few miles gets you all giddy inside.

privatization is not the answer to every problem whether its roads, utilities, warfighting, mail ... I would love to see you use fed-x next christmas when you send your cards out.

a really BAD idea ... unless the idea of toll booths every few miles gets you all giddy inside.

privatization is not the answer to every problem whether its roads, utilities, warfighting, mail ... I would love to see you use fed-x next christmas when you send your cards out.


Red Herring. With transponder technology, there is absolutely no need to have toll booths every few miles. I'd rather trust the owners of assets to maintain them then to have politicians use infrastructure as vehicle to dole out pork. I suppose you favor paying $1M for bus stops which shouldn't cost more than $50K - I don't.

And last I heard, the U.S. Post Office is virtually privatized - it is funded solely from postage. It could be completely severed from all association with the government and be perfectly fine.

I had two of those toll road transponders on one of my tractors until I quit driving over the road to the northeast and stayed in state. The system isn't anywhere near going to handle the kind of billing and record keeping it would require for all the traffic out there. In fact it is an idiotic idea, but 'conservatives' aren't famous for their reasoning skills, and they love boondoogles, as long as they can buy stock options on them ... It is far simpler to just keep the poor off the highways and indulging in travelling altogether, after all; that way the well heeled can have the problem of financing the whole thing themselves, by buying stocks in road building companies and using cheap illegal labor. The rest of us can sit back and watch the morons and their 'private solutions' bring the country and its major distribution network to a standstill while they deal with every single county or township along every interstate or US Highway. How many years do you want to bet it will be before the Feds get it back? Personally, I give it about three days, when the store shelves start emptying out ...

The present state of affairs in the UK is that you pay a road tax which depends on the size of car you have. The money supposedly goes towards building better roads. There is at present only one toll road in the UK.

The idea behind this is fairly sound, ie heavy road users get taxed more, but it will probably be used to track movements and to increase taxes by stealth.

This unbelievable, half thought out idea leaves me almost speachles, yes the British government strikes again. To travel between Manchester and London under these new proposals and at the highest milage rate stated, would cost somewhere in the region of £268, to complete the 200 mile journey by road, and thats just one way, you would have to pay the same to get back home again, thats £536 for the round trip as the route uses the main motorway network. So how do we transport goods by road ? No business could sustain these costs, commuters would use the rail network, ha ha ha !!! The rail network is already so over crowded that commuters into London are standing for most of the journey, the rail track maintainance has been neglected for years and has hit an all time low, Alister Darling really needs to rethink his proposals, it would be ecomonic suicide for the UK. The backlash of such actions will rival that of the introduction of the new local government tax (poll tax) some years ago, when mine alone jumed from £120 a year to £ 750 per year. I cant see the population of the UK taking this one lying down.