transport and assignment

My assignment for circuits is finished, which is nice because it was annoying. I had the numerical answers from the book but mine just didn't match them. However, my calculations were just a bit wrong.

I haven't really accomplished anything other than that tonight. I read for a while but haven't yet managed to finish my book. It is quite good. Last night, I was reading about Pigovian taxes. Then in Civil today we were talking about transportation, and so many people in the class were disapproving of toll roads. They were against them because they think that they are just government cash grabs, though they did acknowledge that this really didn't affect them because there aren't any toll roads in Calgary/Alberta. My reading last night made me think more about this and I was thinking that toll roads are the ultimate in disincentives, as they would effectively make people pay real cost of driving.

My classmates also complained about congestion, and not the quality of the roads. I understand that most of them haven't taken any economics yet and don't understand about prisoners' dilemmas. However, they believed that congestion was caused by roads or lack thereof. Part of it is due to lack of roads, but most of the problems are due to drivers, specifically their presence on the road exacting a time/space cost on the others.

I found this amusing photo whilst searching on Flickr.

Book: The Effecient Society - Joseph Heath