THERE ARE PRODUCTIVE ASSETS IN THE GOVERNMENT'S PORTFOLIO.

I've called attention to them for years.  "Make people aware of just how much they're relying on other people's money to keep their roads passable and watch the fireworks. But it's an idea that might just catch on, after Our Political Masters have tried everything else."  It doesn't matter who gets the credit for selling the idea.

I think we should do something eminently American: we should tell the suburbs to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

That doesn't mean abandoning them. Rather, it's a call for a frank, down-to-earth conversation between the taxpayers and the suburbs; the type of conversation any responsible parent would have with a teenager who's living beyond his means. Let's start taxing users based on the amount of public money they're consuming. If we spend gobs of money on providing infrastructure to sprawling suburban streets, then let's start taxing those streets proportionately to their consumption. Who could argue with that? Why should the townhome dweller be forced to subsidize the McMansion resident?

Too often, the claim that suburban sprawl is a tax sink comes from the sort of doomsday environmentalist that would bring back the khrushchoba. The argument, though, is one that people who would rather reduce government involvement in land use can adopt.

The suburban version of the American Dream might start looking more like a nightmare if people realized the price tag.

Generally, we subsidize things in society that we want to see. The Suburban Experiment is something, however, that has never been put to a vote. While it could be argued that many people voted with their feet, we also know that nowadays people are increasingly tired of all the negative externalities it breeds within our cities: traffic, environmental degradation, loss of community, and a dangerous and hostile environment along our streets for anyone not inside a car. Despite auto-oriented suburbia’s ugly side effects, I don't even think we need to "ban" it. All we have to do is stop subsidizing it.

That sort of flips the script on "subsidize things we want to see," doesn't it? As a practical matter, almost any subsidy in practice leads to inefficiently much production of whatever is being subsidized, no matter how pretty the blackboard economics version of the policy is.

That's the way the infrastructure crumbles.  "[R]oad usage charges − also known as mileage-based user fees, distance-based fees or vehicle-miles-traveled taxes − are attracting the bulk of the academic attention, research dollars and legislative activity."  Governments, however, are not nimble institutions when it comes to pricing their productive assets.

Eric Paul Dennis, a transportation analyst at the Citizens Research Council of Michigan, said the failure of states to convert years of research into even one fully functional, mandatory program by now raises questions about whether road usage charging can really work.

“There’s no program design that I have seen that I think can be implemented at scale in a way that is publicly acceptable,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that a program can’t be designed to do so, but I feel like if you can’t even conceive of the program architecture that seems like something that would work, you probably shouldn’t put too much faith in it.”

The beat goes on. And yet, there might be a prototype in Germany.

Trucks in Germany are now paying higher tolls to use main highways, with the extra money to be invested in the country’s government-owned rail network.

The new tolls were effective July 1. The new funds will address a rail system that is suffering in places from a high level of use by both passenger and freight trains, but seeing limited investment in new track, signalling, and power systems. This is leading to daily disruptions due to infrastructure failings.

The tolls have been expanded both in terms of roads and vehicles. Tolls previously limited to the 9,400-mile Autobahn network, comparable to the U.S. interstate system, are now charged on all federal-status roads, or Bundestrasse, quasi-analogous with U.S. state highways. This increases the total road network on which tolls are assessed to around 34,500 miles. Tolls are now charged on all commercial vehicles over 3.5 tons (a typical large delivery van) rather than the previous 7.5 tons (a small truck).

I like it. One of my pet peeves, for years, has been the semis avoiding the tollways by clogging the local state and federal highways and pounding them apart.  The price might also serve the function of the special movement permits I sometimes wish for.  Whether the plans will survive the complaints of the rent-seekers is yet to be seen.

As of Jan. 1, 2024, a surcharge of €200 ($220) for every metric ton of CO₂ emitted will be added to the toll, effectively doubling the cost in many cases. Emission-free trucks (of which few are currently in use in Europe) do not have to pay this and pay reduced tolls as well. This is designed to encourage companies to buy electric or alternative-power trucks.

Organizations representing German road haulers have said the increased toll costs will harm their business and, along with an ongoing shortage of skilled drivers, will increase overall transport costs in Germany and across Europe.

The big change along with the toll increases is a legally binding commitment by the German government to invest the proceeds in the rail network infrastructure. Organisations supporting rail transport think this will make a big difference long term. National rail lobby group Allianz pro Schiene (Pro-Rail Alliance) welcomes the fact the tolls will raise €15.2 billion ($16.6 billion) annually, compared to €8 billion ($8.75 billion) previously, and that unlike before, a large part of the money will be invested in the rail network rather than put back into the road budget.

Both government and rail industry advocates believe the combination of future rail infrastructure improvements and higher road transport costs should help rail freight gain market share.

The railroad infrastructure is state property, and the European railroads might be more interested in going after retail intermodal than their North American counterparts are.  There are, however, other productive assets.

[Recent research notes] that some targeted capacity expansions are inevitable, but other congestion management strategies like operational improvements, congestion pricing, and parking management could be more beneficial.

Finally, they add that while roadways become less efficient as the density of users increases, literature overwhelmingly suggests the opposite is true for rail and bus networks. “Thus,” explain the authors, “public transport services are potentially more productive and cost-efficient compared to vehicular travel in dense city centres.”

Ultimately, the best thing for the government to do where transportation and land use policy are concerned might be to go away.

Elon Musk, the boss of Tesla, allegedly tried to kill the California high-speed rail project in 2013. A decade later the electric bullet train has announced it will be solar-powered. Industry lobbying in the 1930s helped pave the way for a US lifestyle dependent on cars and oil. That must not be replicated for electric vehicles today.

The global north cannot just bet on a Toyota- or Tesla-style decarbonisation. The volume of critical minerals needed for decarbonising the rich world on its current growth path would leave nothing for poorer nations. Sunsetting undesirable technologies and infrastructures (such as carbon-intensive motoring) must be accompanied by a recognition that we all have to live within the world’s material constraints. In the richer world that must mean prioritising mass transportation and rethinking urban planning, not vesting so much hope in our current pattern of living continuing unchanged.

It's noteworthy that a Guardian editorialist would raise a public choice argument.  It's prices that provide the most accurate signals of technologies and infrastructures that are "undesirable."  I'd be more inclined to endorse "decarbonisation" if I saw something resembling a Hotelling price pattern in the fossil fuels, and when it shows up in the rare earths, things are going to get interesting, and fast.