Want to Drive 90 in Nevada? Buy a Pass
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/want-to-drive-90-in-nevada-buy-a-pass/?hpw
To an informed political eye, the independent Nevada gubernatorial candidate Eugene DiSimone’s platform is one part Tea Party and one part nativist. He wants to deport undocumented immigrants and make state documents available in English only. He complains about lawyers and judges, who, as he said in a telephone interview, “litigate and govern our society away when what we want is freedom and commerce.”
Above all, he advocates that Nevadans “wean themselves off the federal government.” To encourage this, he proposes a novel measure that bypasses partisan ideologies.
In what Mr. DiSimone called his Free Limit Plan, he would give Nevadans and nonresidents the option to drive up to 90 miles an hour on state roads. The privilege would cost $25 a day and would conservatively generate more than $1 billion a year in new state revenue, he said.
“A year ago, when I put this plan together, every time I saw a highway patrol by the roadside, I’d pull over and ask them about it,” he said. “I stopped counting around 27 or 28 conversations, and based on what they told me, I estimate about 30 to 40 percent of drivers would be interested in doing it.”
Vehicles driven in the plan would need an annual safety inspection, which is currently not required in Nevada. Pending approval, a driver would be registered in a database and receive a transponder that, when intercepted by a highway patrol’s radar gun, would relay the driver’s participation in the plan, thereby sparing the driver a ticket and the officer a traffic stop. The vehicle’s transponder signal must also square with the vehicle’s license plate, which would also be relayed to the officer. (Drivers would be charged the $25 fee after calling a central number to state their intentions to exercise the 90 m.p.h. speed privilege during that 24-hour period.)
Mr. DiSimone sees a boon not only to the state’s depleted finances, but to private industry. “For processing out-of-state drivers, we’d have contractors set up stations at our border-highway intersections, which creates good construction jobs, plus the transponders have to be designed and built here in Nevada, and the safety inspections give a shot in the arm of the automotive shops,” he said.
He added, “There are a lot of auxiliary benefits to this.”
Nevada, Mr. DiSimone said, instituted speed limits in the 1970s because of the oil embargo. He said he believed that would not have happened if the state were not in hock to the federal government. “The state was compelled to accept them by the federal government, who could’ve withheld the highway funds, so the state posted them,” he said.
Initial feedback to Mr. DiSimone’s plan was favorable, but soured when elderly Nevadans were asked their impressions by the local media.
“Suddenly, the phone calls we were getting went from ‘You guys are doing the right thing,’ and ‘You’ve got my vote,’ to ‘You’re going to cause more vehicular deaths, even though the data doesn’t bear that out,” he said.
Despite the skepticism, Mr. DiSimone said his plan was winning fans beyond Nevada.
“I just did a radio program up in Seattle, and people wanted to know whether I could work with their legislators to make this happen,” he said. “There’s a gubernatorial candidate out in California that is going to put it on her platform. Most states can architect something similar that satisfies the driving conditions within their state.”
Drivers who do not participate in the plan but still drive 90 miles an hour would face stiff fines, Mr. DiSimone said.
“The ticket structure will be $250 for the first offense, $500 for the next, $1,000 for the one after that,” he said. “People are going to realize pretty quickly that $25 per day is a lot cheaper than all these tickets.”
______________________________________________________________
Finally a politician headed in the right direction
Now if we could only fine the Clogs driving in the left lane with a big row of cars following too close behind them we'de get somewhere.
http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/want-to-drive-90-in-nevada-buy-a-pass/?hpw
To an informed political eye, the independent Nevada gubernatorial candidate Eugene DiSimone’s platform is one part Tea Party and one part nativist. He wants to deport undocumented immigrants and make state documents available in English only. He complains about lawyers and judges, who, as he said in a telephone interview, “litigate and govern our society away when what we want is freedom and commerce.”
Above all, he advocates that Nevadans “wean themselves off the federal government.” To encourage this, he proposes a novel measure that bypasses partisan ideologies.
In what Mr. DiSimone called his Free Limit Plan, he would give Nevadans and nonresidents the option to drive up to 90 miles an hour on state roads. The privilege would cost $25 a day and would conservatively generate more than $1 billion a year in new state revenue, he said.
“A year ago, when I put this plan together, every time I saw a highway patrol by the roadside, I’d pull over and ask them about it,” he said. “I stopped counting around 27 or 28 conversations, and based on what they told me, I estimate about 30 to 40 percent of drivers would be interested in doing it.”
Vehicles driven in the plan would need an annual safety inspection, which is currently not required in Nevada. Pending approval, a driver would be registered in a database and receive a transponder that, when intercepted by a highway patrol’s radar gun, would relay the driver’s participation in the plan, thereby sparing the driver a ticket and the officer a traffic stop. The vehicle’s transponder signal must also square with the vehicle’s license plate, which would also be relayed to the officer. (Drivers would be charged the $25 fee after calling a central number to state their intentions to exercise the 90 m.p.h. speed privilege during that 24-hour period.)
Mr. DiSimone sees a boon not only to the state’s depleted finances, but to private industry. “For processing out-of-state drivers, we’d have contractors set up stations at our border-highway intersections, which creates good construction jobs, plus the transponders have to be designed and built here in Nevada, and the safety inspections give a shot in the arm of the automotive shops,” he said.
He added, “There are a lot of auxiliary benefits to this.”
Nevada, Mr. DiSimone said, instituted speed limits in the 1970s because of the oil embargo. He said he believed that would not have happened if the state were not in hock to the federal government. “The state was compelled to accept them by the federal government, who could’ve withheld the highway funds, so the state posted them,” he said.
Initial feedback to Mr. DiSimone’s plan was favorable, but soured when elderly Nevadans were asked their impressions by the local media.
“Suddenly, the phone calls we were getting went from ‘You guys are doing the right thing,’ and ‘You’ve got my vote,’ to ‘You’re going to cause more vehicular deaths, even though the data doesn’t bear that out,” he said.
Despite the skepticism, Mr. DiSimone said his plan was winning fans beyond Nevada.
“I just did a radio program up in Seattle, and people wanted to know whether I could work with their legislators to make this happen,” he said. “There’s a gubernatorial candidate out in California that is going to put it on her platform. Most states can architect something similar that satisfies the driving conditions within their state.”
Drivers who do not participate in the plan but still drive 90 miles an hour would face stiff fines, Mr. DiSimone said.
“The ticket structure will be $250 for the first offense, $500 for the next, $1,000 for the one after that,” he said. “People are going to realize pretty quickly that $25 per day is a lot cheaper than all these tickets.”
______________________________________________________________
Finally a politician headed in the right direction
Now if we could only fine the Clogs driving in the left lane with a big row of cars following too close behind them we'de get somewhere.
