"Take the next left!"
Putting Proper back in “Property” – Part 13
Somebody asked me recently, “What’s the problem with public transportation and public roads? What’s the point of your crusade to privatize them?” Excellent questions. My response: “Public roads and highways are usually poorly maintained, sometimes unsafe, and often dirty. They represent a commodity that is forced upon some people whether they want it or not – via illegitimate modes of taxation. They are a large-scale reflection of the tragedy of the commons.”
A fundamental characteristic of a free market is that creators, inventors, manufacturers, producers, and marketers bring to the table competing options to fulfill a need. Consumers, customers, and clients look at the options, consider the prices, the qualities, the availabilities, and then they choose the product that fits (for them). This model is fantastic for so many products: shoes, houses, sailboats, cell phones, breakfast cereals, insurance policies, etc.
But how in the world can it work for roads? We can’t have competing roads, competing highways, and competing bridges! It would be absurd to have two (or three … or six) interstate highways running side by side through our metropolitan areas and our countrysides. It would be downright stupid to erect a competing bridge next to such wonders as the Golden Gate Bridge. Privatization of roads? Give me a break!
In conversations on this topic, a few have granted me that private roads, sometimes called “toll roads,” may have worked or been possible, in limited situations, way back in the early days of our republic when there was lots of open land. Once there were established town squares and grids, with houses, buildings, and factories affixed to the land, the free market model, my interlocutors would inevitably point out, would be difficult or impossible to implement.
Let me be specific about ways that we could “clean up” the government-run mess known as public transportation. We could pay for our roads and highways more logically and justly by implementing user fees. This technology now exists. It has been real-world tested and proven by existing toll roads and the EZ Tag system. These tags are just one method; there are others that might prove even more economical and easy to install and implement: GPS tracking, radio frequency identification (RFID), or barcode scanners.
Ultimately, I don’t think anybody cares who “owns” the roads, highways, and bridges. We all just want them to be first rate. We want them to flow. We want them to be clean and safe … and even pleasant to drive upon. Is this too much to ask?
My recommendation to implement user fees would be linked to a cut in general taxation. I am not suggesting we add the burden of fees onto existing taxes! I am talking about running our roads and highways like a business – maybe along the lines of a non-profit organization. Revenue from user fees would accumulate and pay for basic upkeep, repairs, and maintenance (including more consistent trash and debris pickup). With the ability to pinpoint which vehicles used which routes, the data would be available to assign monies to specific neighborhoods, business districts, stretches of highway, and so forth.
Setting of user fees could also be used to regulate traffic. If a particularly crowded route is routinely packed … during morning and afternoon rush hour, charging higher than average user fees would lead to one of two scenarios. Either the drivers would self-regulate their driving due to the higher cost, or the traffic would remain high and lead to “extra” money that could be invested in widening, repaving, improving lighting, striping, etc. Either way, we see improvement.
The good news to non-drivers and occasional drivers is that their transportation expenses decrease. Of course, those who drive a great deal, whether it’s a Fed Ex delivery truck that needs to traverse the city multiple times a day or a mother with six children who carpools and runs lots of household errands, will see their transportation expenses rise under this system.
The sales tax on gasoline and diesel are already supposed to go toward transportation maintenance, and, to the extent that this is true, it is one of the few types of taxation that is moral and just. This sales tax ought to be continued – perhaps increased. What?!!! A libertarian is recommending higher taxes? Yes – IF it is a user tax! Ultimately, we libertarians are about matching costs to benefits and cutting (government) subsidization to zero.
There is another aspect to the “privatizing” structure I am recommending, and that is the localizing of decisions. Each and every city has numerous organic subsets (e.g. industry, restaurants and entertainment, agricultural, residential) that ought to be identified and given the autonomy to set the rates for the roads and highways that serve them. If a neighborhood, for instance, is tired of being overlooked (by its city council) for road repair – to fix numerous potholes and to repave several intersections, it could autonomously raise its user fees. It would also have the freedom to go out and bid the construction and repair on the open market! No more dependence on the government-run monopoly: the Department of Transportation.
Quality would be assured by virtue of self interest. A neighborhood “Transportation Committee” would oversee the repairs and hold the private repair company to its contracted responsibilities. It would occasionally behoove the neighborhood (or the commercial district) to exceed the standards of quality and safety in order to show off and attract new residents (or customers).
Transforming our centralized, subsidized, monopolized government-run transportation network into a cohesive partnership of “privatized” free-market-engaging districts and localities would be a gigantic undertaking. So was the “Big Dig” in Boston. So was the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York. Required to achieve this, more than jack-hammering and repaving, is rethinking. My system would require reclaiming rightful local (group) ownership of byways and throughways. It would require a majority of people seeing the benefit to being responsible and realizing that this always leads to better goods, better services, better values, and higher standards in every way.
