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I think most people these days highly undervalue a system of roads that allows anyone to go to one place to another for the low cost of road construction/maintenance. Before paved roads and trucking, railroads basically charged monopoly rates to farmers, business, etc and extracted all extra money from the system. Unless water transportation was available. In that case competition kept railroad rates in check.

That said, I would say that congestion pricing could be a good thing for road building as it gives a value on building new ones. Hopefully the Boring Company can have some success and get tunneling prices down. Then with some idea of how much people will pay to not sit in traffic, we can get some tunnels built and start enjoying life again instead of sitting on congested freeways.

With enough high-speed tunnels one could convert all surface roads to max 25 mph mixed use and return the earth to the people like all those anti-car people dream of. Work for the win-win outcome.




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