Congestion Pricing and a Utah Highway Corporation

Re: congestion pricing

Charging for what used to be free, and charging for something that is as basic an input to the daily life of many people as the food they eat, is a political non-starter. The experience of Manhattan, a literal island, with excellent transit access, suggests how very very difficult this is politically. Don't know if you are following the efforts to impose it there or not--but every special interest group is gunning like mad for a carve-out. (London saw plenty of them). 

Every limited access highway should have congestion pricing imposed ASAP. Using roadway capacity (and producing pollution) is a cost to the public, and the public should be paid for suffering it. (And to recoup the public investment).  Maybe we should be operating our limited access facilities at arms length--a regulated utility like Questar or Utah Power, where similar network phenomena are in effect.  But that's not possible, because freeway lane miles are (nominally) part of the national network. Still, there ought to be a 'Utah Highway Corporation', the only agency permitted to add capacity on limited access facilities, and charged with adding it only when financially feasible.