Friday, December 07, 2007

An Economic Analysis of Toll Roads in San Antonio

This is a big issue here. There was an op-ed article on this in the San Antonio Express-News yesterday by John Merrifield, economics professor at UTSA. You can read it here. One of the big points is that if you build special lanes for toll payers, they will only be used when the rest of the lanes are very congested. Why pay to use the toll lanes when the free lanes are moving pretty fast? So you end up building lanes that don't get used much. But things still move slowly during rush hour and that may be the time to have tolls. That would cut down on the congestion and speed things up.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I can not believe we haven't had toll roads before now. Traffic is absolutely ridiculous. I believe it would be proper to say that congestion is a negative externality. I don't believe in wasting time, so I am on board to pay the premium, in the event I am ever in congestion.