TREAT THE ROADS LIKE PRODUCTIVE ASSETS.

A Hot Air contributor called Beege Welborn would prefer you didn't.  In San Diego, a regional plan that might ... for the first time in forever ... ensure that the infrastructure doesn't crumble is horrible.  "A new plan from San Diego County's Regional Transportation Agency wants to make driving so expensive that you'll be forced to take the bus or the train."  The horror!  Here are the details.  "The plan adds three new half-cent sales tax increases, over 800 miles of San Diego County freeway lanes converted to toll lanes, and a mileage tax for every mile driven to pay for their $165 billion public mass transit plan."  Apparently money collected from motorists can only be used for road projects, even though that money is never enough; while money collected by other taxes must be used to make up the shortfall.  "It’s a bait and switch -- freeway dollars, gas tax dollars, and registration fees promised for road improvements instead pay for costly public mass transit projects that less than 3% of the public uses."  That leads Ms Welborn to conclude, "They have no intention of fixing the roads."  Well, no.  Somebody will write a federal appropriation into some future infrastructure porkulus.

Why should road socialism be any different from any other socialism, and why do conservative populists think road socialism is fine?