>> Their study is based on the toll lanes on the 91 Freeway in Orange
>> County.
This is a singularly bad case: a 100% toll road (even the HOV lanes are only 50% off) that was built expressly to be a replacement for the other slow ways across the county. It's a shortcut from one freeway to the next! It is by definition already a luxury! It's not at all similar to bridges/tunnels into NYC (one example we talked about) or San Francisco (the other one we talked about) where there's no alternative. You're darn right that the users should pay more for that, it's not even really public infrastructure, it's some weird hybrid. Unfortunately, it's already the case that taxpayers are paying for that one ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/91_Express_Lanes
>> They also looked at a scenario in which sales taxes collected from
>> across O.C. would be used to pay for the toll lanes.
That's the best they could do? Sales taxes are already regressive!
Man, that's what passes for academic research these days?
/jordan