Motorists face new costs for highways (USA Today)

[jpak]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-11-19-roads-main_x.htm

Frustration over traffic gridlock and inadequate gasoline-tax funds are prompting state and local governments to try alternative ways to finance road building.

Oregon is charging some motorists a road-user fee based on miles traveled instead of the state gas tax. Georgia is considering replacing its state gas tax with a 1% statewide sales tax dedicated to road and transit projects. New Jersey is looking at converting more freeways into toll roads.

Americans spend 3.7 billion hours a year stuck in traffic delays, according to the Texas Transportation Institute's study of 85 metropolitan areas. Yet road and transit projects are languishing across the country because there's not enough money to pay for them.

The 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax — which has funded major road projects since 1956 and transit projects since 1983 — was last raised in 1993 and has not kept pace with inflation.

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[Vorta]

1. A lot of this can be attributed to corporate culture

Once upon a time there was a reason for great cities. They were ports. What is the excuse for towering office buildings in which nothing but paper and information is passed around?

Telecommuting has been the vision of the future since the videophone was conceived. The computer and fax machine heralded that telecommuting was right around the corner. Everyone from secretaries to the boss was going to be able to work from home. Now some bosses and precious few hourly employees work from home. Why? Because middle managers need to look busy. They need to wander around the floor looking over people's shoulders and thinking up cutsey bullshit to enhance the workplace. Others need to decorate cubicles for birthdays and set up banquet tables for "food day" so we all feel like one big happy family. It's a huge waste of time and money.

I thought businessmen were supposed to be smart.

[ixion]

2. I'm a telecommuter, and a big advocate of such

It would save people literally billions of hours in otherwise lost productivity. I can start working before daylight, rather than having to do the whole commuting thing (which I used to have to do). It easily saves me 3 hours a day.

Three hours.

That's three more hours to work, if need be, or three hours of MY TIME that I'm able to take back from the corporate grist mill.

And you're right: if it weren't for a bunch of middle managers (unnecessary if you have good employees), whose only job is to be a glorified baby-sitter, I think that telecommuting would have gone much further. Unfortunately, there have been those, on one hand, who've abused it, and those, on the other, who can't give up the physical proximity control thing. Between the two groups, it has made it more difficult to advance the concept.

However, in the very near future it may become a necessity.

It'll be interesting to see how middle management reacts at that point.

[CrispyQ]

3. In their "I don't want to pay taxes" frenzy,

people have forgotten what our taxes support -- our Commons. We privatize our Commons, under the selling point that corporations can do the job better & cheaper than government. Over & over again, though, we see that that is not necessarily the case, & worse, when it's privatized, We the People have no recourse. Yet people squawk on & on about the evil of paying taxes. When did we lose sight of the concept THE COMMON GOOD? Why do we have such disdain for community? It's all about me, now, everyone else be damned.