>Sure, but they're not paying for using up the finite resource of road usage at high demand times. If too many people use the road at the same time, it ceases to function as a transportation route, and no one gets good use of it.
Time and money can be converted.
If you don't wanna share the road with everyone else then commute at different times or use a different mode.
The people who's time is most valuable also tend to have the most money and options for other commute options.
>: If roads that today creep along at 30mph at rush hour start going 70mph, the drywaller can choose to live in a cheaper area further away, pay a bit extra for commuting, and still come out ahead.
You have to price out the bottom to get things flowing at peak speeds all the time.
Furthermore, expecting any transit system, rail, road, anything, to not be saturated at peak hours is unrealistic. Increasing supply or decreasing demand just reduce the time the network is saturated. Rush hour is like like dumping a bucket into a sink, you're gonna get a little standing water while the drain does its thing.
>Final point: It's common misunderstanding, but roads are NOT public goods: https://fee.org/articles/are-roads-really-public-goods/
What a BS article. His requirement of "nonrivalrous consumption" exudes damn near every other example of something that is generally considered a public good.
The "nonrivalrous consumption" part is genuinely how the term is defined in Economics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)
The term has since been morphed/co-opted into meaning something like "good for the public" in political discourse, deeply frustrating economists, and making these kinds of discussions difficult to have.
Sure, but they're not paying for using up the finite resource of road usage at high demand times. If too many people use the road at the same time, it ceases to function as a transportation route, and no one gets good use of it.
You can think of it as "equality" when a common resource is destroyed equally for rich and for poor, but it's not good for anyone, and there are better ways.
> The drywaller and the janitor have just as much right to sit in a traffic jam as you do.
I'll spell out my point more clearly: If roads that today creep along at 30mph at rush hour start going 70mph, the drywaller can choose to live in a cheaper area further away, pay a bit extra for commuting, and still come out ahead.
Final point: It's common misunderstanding, but roads are NOT public goods: https://fee.org/articles/are-roads-really-public-goods/