Happy New Year. Pennsylvania Turnpike tolls are going to rise 5 percent for all customers on Sunday, Jan. 4.
Obviously one needs money to maintain a transportation infrastructure.
Just as obviously a lot of the money — maybe even most — collected by the federal government and Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the guise of doing such is not.
High salaries for bureaucrats and inflated costs for construction should not be considered part of maintaining an infrastructure.
They should be considered corruption. Our lives would be richer and freer with less corruption.
End things like prevailing wage, which inflate the cost of public construction by about 20 percent.
Kill the scandal-ridden Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission and move its responsibilities to the slightly less scandal-ridden PennDOT.
For that matter, kill the turnpike system altogether. Make the roads freeways. Traffic bottlenecks are removed, salaries for toll-collectors disappear as does the cost of maintaining toll booths or EZ Pass lanes, and we no longer have to worry about how the revenue is going to be collected when adding ingresses and egresses. This means more ingresses and, especially, egresses which means much greater transportation efficiency.
Hat tip, Bob Guzzardi.
