As the title says, can a highway/expressway become profitable?
Toll-booths?
Toll-booths?
Yes, but tax revenues are the same if either you build new roads or not. Are your taxes excises on fuel or possession taxes for motor vehicles?ChrisZwolle said:Every road in the Netherlands is very profitable if you take all taxes motorists pay into account. The 2012 budget for national roads is € 2.7 billion and other roads is € 1 billion. The amount of taxes paid by motorists (fuel duty, car purchase tax, car ownership tax) you'll get to about € 12 billion.
Tolling a bridge or a tunnel, that is not operating at the peak of its capacity, and having no alternative may result in huge welfare losses, although the whole business might be quite profitable.Toll bridges or tunnels with no alternatives are the most viable, while flatland toll roads with ample alternatives are sometimes a money loser, like many recent toll roads in Spain.
Well, but tolling roads with no alternatives is unethical because it limits the freedom of movement. There are no way to avoid the 30€+ toll between Courmayeur and Chamonix, so these towns very close together are pratically very distant with no commuting traffic between each other.ChrisZwolle said:Besides that, tolls are only an option for a marginal amount of the road network. You cannot toll rural roads unless it has a huge time advantage. Toll bridges or tunnels with no alternatives are the most viable, while flatland toll roads with ample alternatives are sometimes a money loser, like many recent toll roads in Spain.
For now, anyway. I can't find the article but I know we've discussed the proposed vignette-for-all-roads in Belgium.But there is not a country in the world where every route (every mile driven) is tolled.
That system is in use in most countries. It is called fuel tax.Well, I meant a toll system where you would be tolled per mile / kilometer, not a flat-fee vignette system with unlimited mileage.
I totally agree, a far more valid question.I haven't said so yet, but when this thread first appeared, I said to myself "Should a highway be profitable?"
The Netherlands created an infrastructure fund in 1926 to pay for road improvements. The fund was filled with taxes levied on motorists. So motorists have always been paying for the infrastructure in the Netherlands, unlike some other countries where earlier road construction was paid for by the general budget.I guess that in the US there was enough money to build roads, so there was no need to make them tolled. Same goes for the UK, the Netherlands or Belgium. But for poorer countries such as Spain (I'm talking about the 70s), the only option was private funding.
With some € 0.22-0.3 per kWh is a 20 kWh battery car 5-6 euro per battery charge. This is some 130 kms per charge. Lets say we would need to recharge 3 times a week. In a year some 170 recharges. In total we need 170*20=3400 kWh. This would need some 30 square meters of photovoltaic panels (some 14 pannels) with investments of some € 6 - 7 000.Charging your car for 100 kilometers costs about € 6 without additional taxes in the Netherlands. I can drive 90 kilometers for € 6 in diesel fuel - including excise duty and VAT.