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Comment by awda | Hacker News Reader

I'd only change it to "... blaming drivers on your toll bridge when you're the one ..."

The drivers (customers) are paying for the bridge!

Sure, but they're only using the bridge to drive to McDonalds. It's McDonalds generating all that traffic -- they should pay the bridge operator too! /sarcasm.

They do. Property taxes.

Seeing as ISPs also receive money from the government and Netflix pays taxes, you could make the same pointless observation about Netflix and Verizon.

But you shouldn't. This discussion is about a direct company-to-company attempted shakedown, not inefficient procurement.

I'm not sure you mean to argue for a publicly funded Internet, but that's basically what this implies.

You've already got that as the government already pays subsidies. I'm all for basic infrastructure to be collectively owned; be it co-ops, collectives, not for profits or even the government (local, national etc). This is the way it is for roads, rubbish, sewerage, etc. If you want a premium / luxury service then feel free to pay extra. Contract out support, maintenance, sales for the infrastructure by all means, but the ownership should be a collective of the users.

Property taxes tied to the level of traffic destined for a particular commercial location? This is the first I've heard of something like this, can you tell me more?

Property taxes for a given location are determined by the size and nature of the business.

Property taxes are based on a poor approximation of what a property would be expected to sell for. The relationship between that and the size or nature of the business operating there is highly attenuated, and it's almost entirely decoupled from how much traffic a business generates on any particular road.

They don't pay taxes to toll road operators.

It's like asking Walmart to pay for the cost of the welfare that its employees take.

Wait!

Was that sarcasm? If not, and it was a serious idea then keep in mind Walmart is not the "parent" of their employees - it's not responsible for their upkeep.

Hopefully that was just sarcasm and I'm replying for no reason.

If we had usage-paid highways (which we couldn't have earlier due to missing technology but now such things start to pop up), I can imagine some remotely-located mega-store could advertise as "come to us and we'll pay your road toll - both directions!".

Usage-paid highways have been standard in some countries for ages - they just use toll bridges at every entrance and exit and deduce your price from entrance and exit position.

Subsidized parking is a similar sort of thing.

I'd say it's like blaming Toyota for the traffic jams when you close lanes on the bay bridge.

Or alternatively like planing the SF Giants or AT&T Park for the traffic jams when you close lanes on the bay bridge.

Isn't that true with all bridges though? You don't have to pay for each use, but you sure paid for the construction and potentially the upkeep (or are likely to have paid).

Some bridges, such as the Seattle Lake Washington bridge, require a toll to cross even though they're on a toll-free highway.

This is going very tangential, but no, not all bridges are directly paid for only by people driving on them.

To make public bridges into an ISP analogy, imagine: municipal and state taxes as well as tax revenue from other states (via Federal highway dollars) pay for a municipal broadband network. You may or may not actually use the service, and you pay for it either way. You likely don't have any other choice of ISP. And it's not-for-profit, and the general public and lawmakers constantly clamor and legislate for better service at lower prices.

Although not true, I always liked to think that taxes on my vehicle, fuel, and tolls paid for the infrastructure upon which I drive. I have no idea whether those are sufficient, but I'll bet in my state they state of high taxes and crappy infrastructure they are more than enough.

Generally, the taxes and tolls levied on drivers only pay for ~50% of US road spending - the balance comes out of the general tax pool on both drivers and non-drivers, so it's (arguably) heavily subsidized. (But one could argue that non-drivers benefit from the road system in terms of things delivered to them by truck, etc.)

> non-drivers benefit from the road system in terms of things delivered to them by truck

Perhaps, but they pay a delivery company for that, which pays taxes for its trucks to use those roads.

Yes, once again, at about 50% of the cost of maintaining the provided road.

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