Congestion pricing

Matt Yglesias thinks that commuters don’t pay enough. After comparing highway travel to free ice cream day at Ben and Jerry’s, he writes:

Put in a road somewhere and unless it’s a Bridge to Nowhere-style boondoggle, it’ll spur development along its route. And with that development comes vehicles. And soon enough it becomes too many vehicles. Access to a well-situated road is worth more than $0.00 and yet access to most well-situated roads costs just $0.00 and therefore you wind up with too many vehicles and too much traffic.

Yglesias’s analogy is ridiculously stupid. Ice cream companies are private enterprises that provide a good (delicious treats) for a cost (hard earned, non-delicious dollars). Highways, on the other hand, are public services paid for by our tax dollars for the use of all. In addition to allowing ease of travel, highways also, as Matt points out, spur development and add to our nation’s economic well being.

Now, as a fellow urbanite, I guess I understand Matt’s thinking, which goes something like this: “I don’t use roads. I do use mass transit. I have to pay for mass transit while the suburban barbarians get to use roads for free. Therefore, we should charge people who do use roads and plow that money into unprofitable mass transit.” This is, of course, asinine. Roads do more than transport commuters: they transport the vast majority of goods and services we buy on a day to day basis. Perhaps more food/DVDs/annoying Ikea furniture should be shipped by rail instead of over the highway system. But it isn’t. The roads are a public utility that we already pay for through our taxes. Charging those who use roads would be akin to charging families who attend public schools for the right to a “free” education.