Privatized vs government run. In some situations a privatized provider can be more effective than a government run one. If the private company has the call center in Tennessee, their accountants, lawyers and headquarters in Phoenix, they can be cheaper than a government run organization that has all employees living in a high cost area in CA. There are also economies of scale for a private company to manage these services for many different areas. S a city getting half of the toll revenue from a private company can get more money than collecting all of it themselves and hiring people.

Some folks, if inclined towards skepticism, think that it's a form of give-away: Hand it to a private business, and bail it out when it fails. Some of these things work, and some fail. A couple of interesting privatization episodes to consider:

* Public education --> Charter schools

* Public and nonprofit colleges --> For-profit education industry

at least here in the US we have a fetish for older guys in business casual with a little bit of a beer gut that knock off early to put in a quick 9. as long as one of those guys is taking a cut, we're happy.

thats the way it seems

the idea is that an enterprising private company can manage costs and deliver services at a lower cost than a Gov run one.

Not really sure i 100% agree, but I suspect that oversite would be better with a Gov run Toll

That idea sounds fine, absent all of the evidence I've heard of where the vast majority of the toll money is going outside of the city where the toll road is.

I suppose taxes aren't much different, in that most go somewhere else. But, at least with taxes you can see a money stream back to the city and argue it up. With it going to a private company, you are sorta screwed.

Except for the fact that the cost of collecting tolls exceeds the cost of collecting a tax on fuel [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13817279

Tolls achive more than just crudely approximating a car's impact to the road system. Tolls can influence traffic behavior and congestion; which I'd guess is the point of that LA article.

Also, I'm curious how those costs look when you have open road tolling, as recently implemented in Massachusetts. No toll takers, just cameras, computers, and a call center "somewhere".

> Tolls can influence traffic behavior and congestion

That's more like "give poor people a reason not to drive on certain roads/lanes" if you take the glass half empty view of things.

There's also the cost of setting up and maintaining system that doesn't apply to fuel tax collection (since it's already in place).