https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-03/road-toll-proposal-grand-pacific-drive/100188294
Does the solution to the northern Illawarra's growing weekend and public holiday traffic woes lie in the dirtiest of words for motoring enthusiasts: a road toll?
During a discussion of new plans to alleviate the growing tendency for the entire length of the main road through Thirroul to look like a car park on weekends, Viv texted in to ABC Illawarra with the toll suggestion.
"Regarding Thirroul and adjacent suburbs with traffic. How about a toll to take the tourist drive?" he messaged.
- ABC Illawarra, 4th Jun 2021
What a top idea!
Installing a punitive, pecuniary penalty, in an effort to reduce traffic will absolutely work. Installing taxes upon things that we want to discourage is a good method of discouraging behaviour. As just about everything is subject to the forces of supply and demand, then deliberately increasing the price without changing the supply will generally move a market to a new equilibrium position where lower amounts of the goods and services will be demanded. Sometimes tolls and excise will have practically no effects on the amount demanded; so these kinds of taxes are a good way for governments to find new sources of revenue without much effort.
Toll roads as they are used in NSW do two things.
Firstly they act as a source of private revenue for private people, by charging motorists for using a road which as a taxpayer they've already helped to bankroll. It doesn't take much of a leap to come to the conclusion that this is yet another example of privatising profits and socialising losses; which is to be expected considering that we have an entire rentier class of people in NSW who actually contribute nothing of value but because they sit on massive amounts of capital, act as though they are entitled to the rewards of the economy.
Secondly, for people like myself who refuse to use toll roads on the basis that I think that it is morally outrageous to pay for roads which my taxation in both registration fees, taxes on motor insurance, as well as multiple 3x3 levies which everyone seems to have forgotten about; as well as people who simply can't afford to use toll roads, we run rat races on other roads because we will not use toll roads. I find the whole idea that Epping Rd through Willougby and Lane Cove is only one lane, completely morally bankrupt.
Toll roads as they are used in NSW are completely in line with tory philosophy. Remember, the word 'tory' comes from the Irish language 'toraidhe'; meaning, 'Outlaw, Robber, Brigand.' I think that it is a neat coincidence that the words predatory and obligatory also use -tory as a suffix. If you want to install a toll on a road which steals directly from people's purses, then people will go elsewhere where their purses are not being stolen from.
As for the grand question of whether or not a road toll would ease congestion on the Illawarra's Grand Pacific Drive, then of course it will. If you are a tourist and want to go down the coastal road through Waterfall, Otford, Stanwell Tops, Clifton, Austimere, Thirroul etc. and there's a toll on the road, then you are discouraged to some degree from going there. This is exactly the same argument why councils right up and down the coast in Sydney want to put parking charges for parking next to the beaches. The excuse given is that they want to reduce congestion but really, it's both a revenue raising exercise and an attempt to keep out the people from the western suburbs, the wrong people, from using their stuff.
I will personally take it as a slight and suggest that if I am not good enough to use a road, then you are not worthy enough to receive my tourist dollars. If Wollongong City Council has decided that it wants to punish me for passing through an area, then I will respond by not passing through the area. That's perfectly fine if all you want to do is reduce congestion but I do wonder what all of those businesses that get money from the passing tourist trade are going to do when people like me no longer pass by. If the locals in Bulli and Thirroul in particular are fed up with congestion and they want to sent people like me elsewhere, they are of course quite welcome to. You only have to look at towns like Jugiong and Tarcutta to know that if you remove the passing traffic, that passing tourist trade dries up to practically zero.
Heat is work, and work's a curse,
And all the heat in the universe,
Is gonna cool down,
'Cause it can't increase.
Then there'll be no more work,
And there'll be perfect peace.
Yeah, that's entropy, man!
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