Setting up road tolls in itself is not a bad policy; funding is needed for the development and maintenance of the roads, and collecting tolls from those using the roads can be seen as a reasonable business practice. However, when the various lords all adopt a drain-the-pond-to-catch-the-fish approach, causing untold suffering for the common people, cheap, fast, and convenient railway transportation suddenly becomes very attractive.
Li Lin's evaluation of this matter is as harsh as ever, bluntly telling Roland that the public's enthusiasm for railways is so intense that all the lords who rely on rents and tolls for their livelihoods want to break his neck. It is precisely because these self-supplied 5 Mark party members squeeze the peasants and passing merchants hard, that the railways have been able to recover their investment in just one year and start making a profit. In every sense, they are a lovely group of good people.
