Trigger words: competition
Indicator sentences: One thing I want to point out first is that "competition" when it comes to roads is a rather nebulous concept.
Negotiation parts: I mean think about what we're actually talking about here. This isn't a *product* where anyone can just come on the scene and start competing...this is the limited physical space in the country. Think about highway 1. It goes from the Canadian border, all the way down the west coast to Mexico. Now if someone wanted to be a "competitor" for this, they would have to take that *same* amount of land essentially next to the existing highway, cover it in asphalt, etc. And what if a third competitor wanted to come on the scene? All of this all over again? This would be true for every road in the country, and it would consist of having half a dozen identical roads all going to the same places, essentially covering the entire country in a asphalt just to be able to say we have competing roads. It doesn't really seem practical. But ignoring the logistical difficulties for the moment, competition is thought to be a benefit because it produces the lowest most efficient price for something to be offered at. But considering what your objection is, do we *want* the lowest price? I thought you wanted to discourage driving unnecessarily, and if that's the case, we want to artificially *increase* the price from its lowest threshhold to a higher deterrant rate. If that's what we want, that brings us back to just making everything a toll road with whatever price was necessary to achieve this. For your first part: we don't have any of those issues with the railways. I don't see why highways would be any different. I'm not sure if you've had any experience with the rail system in the US, specifically freight rail, but it really sucks. Costs are continually rising, service is terrible, and they really don't care about the individual costomer at all. There isn't any competition because there is only one company that services an end user in a given area. I don't really see how this situation wouldbe any different for highways. Why would a second highway be built to serve an area that already has one? [STA-CITE]> For your first part: we don't have any of those issues with the railways. I don't see why highways would be any different. [END-CITE] Except, y'know, we absolutely do. Railways are underutilized and relatively overpriced with very little competition because breaking into the market is such a huge investment and the majority of the population doesn't see them as a viable option. Well there are a few problems with the comparison to railroads. Many of the rail systems are government owned, but even among the private railways, there is nothing even remotely comparable to the road system. First, how many competing railway tracks do you really see anyway? Do you ever see multiple rail lines with tracks going on the same route? Even if we could say that *all* rail lines did, the rail system is a very spread out setup with isolated stretches of track. That's not what we're dealing with when it comes to roads. Think if every road in the vicinity around where you live were proposed to have another road added to "compete" with it. Where would it even be put?? I don't know where you live, but imagine trying to do it in Manhattan where every square inch of space is occupied. Even if you had the room for it, you would *want* to double or triple the amount of land covered in asphalt, eliminating its use for anything else? All just so we can say that we have "competition" to roads that seemed to be functioning just fine as it is? If you mean having rights of way that are literally right next to each other then no. It's more likely they'd work out some kind of track-sharing agreement. If you mean parallel rail lines serving close-by if not the same towns/cities then yes, you do see some parallel going on the same route. In B.C. you can see the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian National Railway going parallel most of their routes until they reach Alberta.