On government user fees

Yesterday, in a couple of news stories, I read about a growing trend in managing traffic in urban areas. In areas where there is heavy traffic, allow people to pay a toll to use the carpool lanes. The articles portrayed this in a favorable light. I think it's a bad idea, though, and a symptom of a greater problem we're facing in America.

Right now, in Washington, DC, all of the main arteries into the beltway (I-66, I-95, and I-270) have dedicated carpool lanes, where you have to have 2 or 3 or more people in your car to use them. These lanes frequently zip right along, while the one-occupant cars get bogged down in the regular lanes. What this proposal would do is allow people to pay to use these carpool lanes when they only have one person in the car. In some studies, this toll would vary based on time of day and congestion in both the toll lanes and in the regular lanes, so the carpool lanes would always be faster, barring a wreck or some other unplannable incident.

Over the past few years, we have seen in this country a vast increase in the number of fees that goverments charge it's citizens, and the amount of those fees has increased dramatically. Tuitions at state colleges are through the roof. City governments put access to government services on-line, but add additional user fees to pay for them. Some people in government call this "cost recovery", or a "market solution". I call this establishing first-class and second-class citizenship. First class goes to the ones who can afford to buy there way out of nuisances, second class goes to the rest of us.

The principle that all people are to be equally treated by the government goes straight out the window. As people of means are able to opt themselves out of the system, the gaps between the interests of the haves and the have-nots grows wider. The haves put their kids into private schools, then conduct campaigns to cut property taxes. Their kids aren't in public schools, what do they care about funding them? They never use the library, they can buy the books themselves. Why should they have to pay for a place for people to go read?

Government has an obligation to treat people equally, without regard for their economic status. When they set up the carpool lanes, it was to achieve a socially important goal, to reduce air pollution. Instead of social importance, we're selling society's resources to the highest bidder.