Quote:
Originally Posted by Weitz
How does fuel taxes not just do the same thing?
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For 18 of 24 hours roads do not have congestion on them so your use of a road doesn’t cost anyone else their use of the road. For these 18 hours roads are way over designed. If we assume the gas tax is notionally a user fee for roads then charging everyone the same fee for using the road regardless of time of use means non-peak users are subsidizing the peak users. In addition a user during peak periods also cause a time delay to other road users.
So we want to charge users in peak periods more to have them pay for the additional infrastructure for using that peak period as well as their portion of the delay they cause other people.