Privatize Roads?

It is always more interesting to discuss topics that people rarely discuss. Public roads are not doing to well. Many are maintained poorly, traffic congestion is high, and there is little innovation at all. This results in lost productivity as people waste time on bad roads, pollution, and overall unhappiness. Roads are paid for through taxation, making it is difficult to connect use of the road with cost. Why not privatize roads? Many argue that roads are somehow different from any other service on the market, so they cannot be provided by the market. But private roads have existed, and have worked just fine. Why not allow individuals to innovate our roads?

I welcome all opinions.

 

I believe the road system should be discarded.

As should the U.S. Government in its current state.

 

Taxation is too unaccountable a solution to the problem anyway

 

It seems to me that about half of my childhood was spent in the back of the family station wagon, in traffic. I moved out of that hell hole as soon as I could. Now "traffic" to me is the guy in front of me doing less than 4 over. The lesson here is that the people that continue to live there, or in NYC, Atlanta, LA, or any other congested place do so because they value their surroundings more then they despise the means to get there. So don't expect me to pay for your decisions.

Roads are largely paid for through fuel taxes, which makes it pretty close to a pay as you go system. I think that system should be expanded so that fuel taxes pay for 100% of the road system.

If someone wants to build a private toll road then more power to them.

 

Privatization of the Indiana Toll Road has worked out well.

 

Privatize roads and then only wealthy people will use them. What about the poor folks who can't afford the tolls. I hear it cost 45 bucks to go to NY now days. Just one toll on one bridge. Ridiculous.

 

All sorts of people use the Indiana Toll Road these days.

 

Poor people generally have more spare time, so they can use the government roads.

 

God what a horrific idea. Can you imagine what greedy, shortsighted corporations would do to our transportation if they got their mitts on the entire road system? Every highway would be tolled, and every small road would be abandoned to rot.
Well, at least it might keep the rednecks away from the rest of us! Or they'd be riding horses everywhere, pooping all over the place.

 

Oooorrrr... You could put in decent city planning and public transportation and get by with a fraction of the roads.

 

Interesting. When I lived in NYC that was the time in my life I experienced the LEAST amount of traffic. Which subway did you ride? All the ones I took in Manhattan were either below or above street level.

 

Is that the one where the investors have stated that they are likely to default on their debt obligations because the road has proven to be unprofitable?

 

The subject of this thread is roads, not subways. Try taking a car into or out of Manhattan. Once the traffic was so gridlocked there was no possibility to get my car out of the garage, so I said "screw it", parked it, and had an overpriced meal at a local restaurant with no public rest room. Do you city folk not wash their hands before they eat?

And the subways in Boston sucked as well. The MBTA eventually had to take down the sign in Harvard Square that claimed "8 minutes to Park Street" because it was more like 20.

 

But in the current system, they can't. Government prevents them from doing so.

 

The biggest problem with being poor is that it takes up all your time.

 

I think we should have a certain minimum number of roads just for the sake of infrastructure and national security.

As long as it isn't an environmental concern, I don't think there's currently a rule against building roads, is there? Probably some zoning laws.

Are we talking about people building roads on their own property? That could be complicated on an interstate level. Do we use eminent domain to claim the land that the road is on, then hand it over to a private company to put a road on it that the people then have to pay to use? That doesn't sound right.

But. If someone wants to build a road, various concerns notwithstanding, why not?

 

Because it is not legal to build a road and run it like a normal free market enterprise. Even the Dulles Greenway, the only modern road funded by private sources alone in America, must go to government to have price changes approved or rejected, and cannot charge different prices depending on traffic levels. Government absolutely prevents such a market from succeeding today. If I wanted to purchase the land to build a road, and attempt to build a road and charge for its use, I would be shut down.

 

What makes you think that is what would happen? How is it that food can be provided but roads cannot?

 

Toll roads are not necessarily private. A toll is merely a form of payment. As for those who cannot afford the tolls, how could they afford the gas or the car payments? More to the point, what about poor people who can not afford to drive given the current road system?

 

As you should be. You have no right to profit from public roads.

 

Government screws up a lot of things. The only solution is less government, strictly limited as the Founders codified.

 

Public-Private Partnerships are an appropriate strategy.

 

The reason is that roads are primarily built on right-of-ways (public throughways) which means that private investors have no incentive to build roads because they cannot prevent non-payers from using those roads.

As an example, I own some land in the country but because my neighbors land is only accessible by crossing my land, a portion of my land has been converted into a right-of-way. This right-of-way guarantees that I cannot prevent my neighbor or his visitors from crossing my land to access his land. It also means that if I improve that right-of-way at my cost I cannot charge him for using those improvements.

Right-of-ways are the most sensible place to position a roadway because that portion of land is already designated as a passage. Do you advocate the abolishment of right-of-way laws? Or do you think I should be allowed to install a toll booth such that my neighbor must pay me for passage to his land?

 

How about we keep America as far away from anarchocapitalism as possible?

 

OP makes many good points. So far, the only opposition I have seen are completely irrelevent responses.