One of the major issues I've had with toll roads is with the penalties for late payment (and with late payment penalties to government in general). I used toll roads on my commute often times i would take new routes depending on traffic and forget which parts required a toll.

It is mafia-like to more than double the amount owed for being late, if only for one day. I think this is a huge problem. Research and studies have shown that if you lower the penalties, you will actually collect more revenue. It is unconscionable that governments rail against late fees by banks, yet can more than quadraple in a period of six months or less.

Any scheme where you have to remember what you owe is dumb. Send a bill in the mail and have it due in 30 days like anything else.

> is with the penalties for late payment

I love when the bill doesn't show up in the mail or on the website till a day or two before it's late. Our state toll program is practically criminal.

There was a toll road I took in/near Boston crossing a single bridge where there was no way to realise as I approached, no way to pay in advance and no way to pay after realising. In a rental car, I was forced to wait on notification via the rental company and pay $50ish in charges. For a small, single bridge.

The modern toll roads in France are excellent. So quick and easy.

I bet most drivers would hate toll roads much less if they didn't clog traffic. There are a toll plazas around the U.S. that don't require drivers to slow down while driving through. Once these are the norm, I would expect tolls to be less unpopular.

Edit: I guess they're still unpopular.

My favourite tollbooth in the US was one where I handed cash to the attendant who gave me change and then paid the toll with coins by reaching outside their booth and depositing them in the machine.

Well, here in British Columbia we had toll roads that worked exactly that way.

They were very unpopular, and played a role in the governing party losing the election. So I'm afraid: that's not going to resolve the unpopularity.

True, I think. The approach used on the Mass Turnpike seems pretty good.

Extensive toll roads are inefficient. A yearly mileage based tax based on location & car weight/type is more efficient for everyone.

How would you collect a mileage-based tax? Collecting it on the spot on toll roads seems like the most straightforward way to implement it.

Here in Japan the majority of the highway system has been privatized and they all have tolls, and it seems to work just fine. Driving solo between two cities 4 hours away is often more expensive in tolls alone than taking the bullet train.

It would become part of the same process of renewing your registration and getting smog checks. It would probably be like smog checks where there are many depots to get read, run by small businesses and gas stations. I would actually just roll it into the entire smog check system we have currently.

Far more efficient than toll roads, where you have to build toll infrastructure, hire employees, do enforcement and create traffic jams at every toll booth. RFID toll trackers are not enough in preventing the traffic jams. On top of that, you don't have to build anything to implement it today to create a usage tax for roads, since smog check equipment already checks your mileage. It also applies to all roads instead of a select few roads. To determine the distribution of where the tax money should go, you use the passive traffic tracker systems we have almost everywhere.

Why would libertarians hate tolls? If anything they hate free public roads.

Privatize, charge a bundle to use them and they're happy like pigs in poop!

The libertarian sensibility is to make people who use the resource pay for it, so tolls are the correct way to pay for roads. If we could get a national system that charged based on the odometer, this would also be an option.

well insurance companies have something similar now where they track your driving using GPS.

In principle I like that because you pay for the risk you are, but in practice it sucks because I have no way to force the insurance company to just use the data to charge me insurance and not to track my peccadilloes.

> Why would libertarians hate tolls?

I think GP was saying that, however much they might like private pay-per-use roads in theory, libertarians are still annoyed with road tolls in practice.

Not that I agree with that assessment, but that seems to be the intent.