the.com/toll road
Capitalism's way of saying the fast lane has a cover charge.
means A road or bridge that charges drivers a fee to use it, usually in exchange for faster or better-maintained passage.
from Toll traces back to Old English 'toln,' meaning a tax or duty paid for a service, itself borrowed from a Late Latin word 'tolonium' related to 'telonium' — a toll-booth or customs post, ultimately from Greek 'telonion,' tied to 'telos,' meaning tax or payment. Road comes from Old English 'rad,' a riding or journey, related to 'ride.' So a toll road is quite literally an ancient idea in modern asphalt: pay to pass, a practice old roads and bridges have enforced for millennia, long before E-ZPass made it beep.
- origin
- medieval lords taxed bridges and rivers first
- economics
- congestion pricing by another, politer name
- irony
- you already paid for roads with taxes
- ezpass
- invented to speed lines, mostly just speeds billing