Essay 34 (Who should pay for roads)

The number of cars keeps increasing, so road systems should be expanded. Some people think the government should pay for it, while others think the car owners should pay for it. What’s your opinion?

Unless roads are developed to accommodate the increasing number of cars, it would aggravate the rising traffic problems in our cities.  However, it is unfair for the government to expect car owners to bear the cost of expanding roads due to a number of reasons.

In the first place, car owners are already burdened by various types of taxes levied on them by the government at the time of purchase of the car and on a periodic basic.  Increasing number of cars would naturally boost the tax revenue of the government.  This money should be used for widening existing roads, building new highways and constructing bridges and flyovers.  For example, in many cities of India, ideally a large number of flyovers are built by government funding.  It is quite unreasonable to charge car owners to pay toll for these new developments.

Furthermore, it is the responsibility of a responsible government to provide the basic infrastructure like efficient roads to the people.  If tax revenue is not sufficient for this purpose, Governments usually perform these responsibilities by availing loans.  For instance, international financial institutions like World Bank and International Monitory Fund lend huge amounts of money to governments at lower interest rates for such purposes.  This would mean that there is hardly any need for governments to require car owners to pay for such expenses.

On the other hand, there are people who believe that since it is the car owners who need better roads, they should pay for its construction.  This argument would, in fact, seriously downplay the basic responsibility of the government to provide people with infrastructural facilities. 

In conclusion, from the above arguments it is clear that government should bear the cost of improving the road system, in order to handle the growing traffic problems associated with large number of cars.

You have read this post. Why don't you write down your opinion it. I greatly appreciate it.