Projects like these should be sponsored by private firms. Let them put up ads/billboards on the sponsored highway. This can provide fund to finish the project.
Highways are not apps, friend.
After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
31–40 of 149 posts
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#32Unfortunately this change has resulted in something very confusing: there's a stretch of 295 going to/from the PA border in NJ that is labeled 295 North, but will take you south (or you'll go north on 295S). Once you get into PA it makes perfect sense -- it changes to 295 East/West, but NJ between the PA border and the rt. 1 intersection is labeled the opposite direction of where you're going.
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
User fees are the most "fair" way to pair for infrastructure. It's not economically efficient to collect taxes on fuel in the aggregate, and then piecemeal out highway funding by any other metric than usage (although it makes for great politics).
Could you go into more detail? I always wondered why public roads would opt for awful toll plaza back-ups over increasing the gas tax.
Trucks cause more wear and tear, not all people use highways either who purchase gas
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#34Stuff like this is why I have exactly zero faith in the US ever building the type of high speed rail systems that other countries have and we clearly need. These projects are simply to expensive for private entities to undertake alone and federal and local governments can't stay aligned long enough to see anything that last longer than an election period through to it's finish. Unless someone invents teleportation, w…
I think state to state partnerships with federal funding help could do it.
You need massive popular support for it to ensure that successive governments keep the already-made plans on time and on budget, as opposed to getting in there and tweaking everything in order to make it their own (and thereby pushing it all out by 5-10 years).
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#35Stuff like this is why I have exactly zero faith in the US ever building the type of high speed rail systems that other countries have and we clearly need. These projects are simply to expensive for private entities to undertake alone and federal and local governments can't stay aligned long enough to see anything that last longer than an election period through to it's finish. Unless someone invents teleportation, w…
Somehow this stuff got built before. There must be a way to get back into that state.
Wartime. The interstate highway system got built because Eisenhower saw firsthand how effective having a national road network is for logistics in times of war, and so it became a national security concern. The transcontinental railroad was financed by the Department of War and greatly accelerated when the Southern states seceded - Congress had been denying funding for a decade before, but the first season after the war started, it was approved.
It'll likely be the same for high-speed rail, hyperloops, and under-city tunnels. Once we're at war again there will be a huge incentive to be able to move large quantities of people across the country within hours, and ideally do so out of the reach of aerial bombardment.
It would be nice if we could do this without blowing everything up, though.
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#36Tolls. Oh yippee
User fees are the most "fair" way to pair for infrastructure. It's not economically efficient to collect taxes on fuel in the aggregate, and then piecemeal out highway funding by any other metric than usage (although it makes for great politics).
Far from it, toll roads reduce congestion on non toll roads so non toll payers also benefit from them.
If you want an improvement then paying by weight and mileage would be more fair unlike our current system which discounts trucks which do far more damage than their fuel usage accounts for. But, tolls are on net an even worse system than we already have.
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
User fees are the most "fair" way to pair for infrastructure. It's not economically efficient to collect taxes on fuel in the aggregate, and then piecemeal out highway funding by any other metric than usage (although it makes for great politics).
Could you go into more detail? I always wondered why public roads would opt for awful toll plaza back-ups over increasing the gas tax.
It's not really an issue these days. In this area, EZ-Pass is pushed hard, and makes toll plazas a non-issue for the most part. There is very little need to slow down as most can just capture your license plate number and charge you that way, making the entire experience easy. This ensures that the roads that actually get used get the money from people using them, something that doesn't happen with a gas tax.
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
User fees are the most "fair" way to pair for infrastructure. It's not economically efficient to collect taxes on fuel in the aggregate, and then piecemeal out highway funding by any other metric than usage (although it makes for great politics).
Could you go into more detail? I always wondered why public roads would opt for awful toll plaza back-ups over increasing the gas tax.
All-to-real scenario: you pay $X in gas taxes and use Road XYZ every day. Unfortunately, Road XYZ is constantly jammed and full of pot holes because all the gas tax cash is funding an extremely under-used fancy new highway connecting Nowheresville, USA to SlightlyLessNowheresville, USA. Why? Because the general assemblymen from Nowheresville and SlightlyLessNowheresville are senior members of the transportation committee.
> I always wondered why public roads would opt for awful toll plaza back-ups over increasing the gas tax.
Open-road tolling with a combination of transceivers and a "pay online later" solves this problem. Toll plazas (and the people who work them) are entirely unnecessary.
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#39Stuff like this is why I have exactly zero faith in the US ever building the type of high speed rail systems that other countries have and we clearly need. These projects are simply to expensive for private entities to undertake alone and federal and local governments can't stay aligned long enough to see anything that last longer than an election period through to it's finish. Unless someone invents teleportation, w…
Somehow this stuff got built before. There must be a way to get back into that state.
This is one of the costs of diversity. People don’t work together towards shared goals anymore since they characterize the other people benefiting as un-American/unpersons.
Re: After 60 Years, I-95 Is Complete
#40> Near the Pennsylvania border, drivers have long been forced off the interstate and onto other roadways, only to join back 8 miles away. This is a misleading overstatement. This is only true if you want to drive the roads labeled as I-95. There are indeed two segments labeled as I-95 that are discontinuous: the NJ Turnpike south until exit 6, and from Trenton southwards through PA to Delaware. But those segments are…
There's a slight inaccuracy in that diagram. While NJT does (via a short stint on I-295) intersect I-95 in Delaware on the southern end, the northern end has a rather more roundabout connection. I-95 continues up as a beltway around Trenton. But the beltway continues as I-295, which turns south and parallels the NJ Turnpike. If you're trying to go north on I-95, you end up heading south instead for ~7mi and then need…
This is correct; I knew it but didn't try to illustrate it for simplicity.