User fee argument doesn’t hold up

There are a number of flaws in Mark Thomas’s arguments supporting tolls as a user fee (Feb. 11).

He says that if you take a bus, a train or a taxi, you are paying a user fee. Cars are the only form of transportation where you’re not paying a user fee for using the roads, so it’s fair that we use tolls as a user fee for them.

This is a complete misunderstanding of the facts. When you take a bus, a train or a taxi, you’re not paying a user fee for the use of the roads, you’re paying for someone else to do the driving, for someone else to supply the vehicle and for someone else to pay for the gasoline or electricity that runs it. That’s what you’re paying, not a user fee for the roads. Someone driving a car is doing their own driving, and is paying for the car and for their own gasoline.

A user fee may make sense when someone wants to perform some voluntary activity which requires special effort or monitoring by the government — a hunting license might be an example. But there are certain basic things maintained by the government which are, like roads, there for the use of everyone, and there aren’t (and shouldn’t be) user fees for them. Education is incredibly expensive — does anyone think it should be paid for only by the people who have children in school? No — everyone in the state pays for it, and it’s the same with such things as police and fire departments, and roads. Whether you’re using them at the moment or not, they’re there for the general welfare of all, to be paid for by all, and shouldn’t require a user fee.

Mr. Thomas makes other familiar arguments. He says, “We need a way for outof-state vehicles driving through our state to share in the cost.” Out-of-state drivers already do, in the exact same way and at the exact same rate that Connecticut drivers do — by paying one of the highest gasoline taxes in the country whenever they buy gas here.

He says how estimates show that 40 percent of tolls will be paid by out-ofstate drivers. Most pro-toll arguers say this, again and again, but I have yet to hear one of them say whether this number is based on some actual solid research, or just picked out of thin air because it sounds good. Drive on the highway during rush hour, and see if four out of 10 cars are from out-of-state. If you don’t live near the border, I doubt if they will be.

Greg Darak Trumbull