Let us now praise the Daily Press, normally one of the more truculent voices for Business As Usual thinking in the Mainstream Media. Today’s editorial makes a key point that all too often goes missing from MSM reporting and punditry: that it matters not only how much money we raise for transportation maintenance and improvements, it matters who pays, and how.
The main thrust of the op-ed piece is to ask what ever happened to all the talk about privatization as an option for raising capital to invest in transportation improvements. That’s a worthwhile question. But more significant was a digression, towards the bottom of the piece, about the virtues of the gas tax (my italics):
It’s a simple concept: Them that use, pay. And they should pay according to demand, too. In Hampton Roads, you may have noticed, it’s pretty easy to get around the region from midnight to six in the morning. Logic suggests a system that discourages driving in peak demand periods.
“The growing stranglehold that congestion is placing on America’s transportation network calls for new ways of financing and maintaining our critical transportation infrastructure,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said recently.
The DP deserves credit for moving beyond the simplistic mantra, heard so often elsewhere, that limits the debate to how much money is needed and where to get it. In other words, if you’ll permit me to elaborate, there are two sides to the equation: supply and demand. The debate in Virginia focuses almost exclusively on the supply side (how to increase the capacity of the transportation system) and has overlooked demand (how to reduce usage of the system) through congestion pricing, zoning reforms and the overhaul of governance structures.
Let us hope that the DP follows this new line of logic. The editorialistas there will find that it opens up new realms of inquiry.