InstaPatrick

Against state roads

I am against the state ownership of roads because:

I am against state ownership in general
they tend to be free at the point of use which is a form of price control which I am against
the results don’t seem to be awfully good

“...tend to be free at the point of use...”?

There are lots of exceptions. There are state-owned toll roads and toll lanes in France, Spain and the United States. There’s an electronic congestion charging scheme in Singapore. And there are plenty of toll bridges in the UK.

So, the results?

Jams, potholes, stupid rules. There is even the possibility that they’ve got a central plank of their safety policy wrong.

But aren’t the jams better where you get congestion charging?

My understanding is yes, but that is because (unlike the case with the majority of roads) someone is at least attempting some form of pricing.

So, maybe there should be pricing all over the place and everything will be just fine?

An idea that is currently up for discussion. The problem is that the state is incompetent. If it is incompetent when building and running roads there is no particular reason to think it would be any better at charging for them.

Hang about, what you seem to be suggesting is that I pay tolls in addition to the sky-high taxes I already pay.

Well, with the exception of pollution taxes, you shouldn’t be paying the taxes.

It seems awfully inconvenient having to carry change around with you.

Which is why most charging schemes nowadays don’t use cash. Examples of this include the congestion charging schemes in London and Singapore and the E-ZPass scheme in the north-eastern US.

You say you are against price controls, doesn’t that mean I would have to pay a toll to drive down my own street?

First of all, not all roads will charge. Some road owners and I am particularly thinking of the owners of roads with shopping malls and other attractions at the end of them will want people to drive down them and so won’t charge.

I think a lot will depend on how roads are privatised. Ideally, local roads would be assigned to local councils and then the councils would be privatised, hence creating ready-made super-landlords.

But if there were no pricing wouldn’t you get all the same problems you get with state roads?

Not necessarily. In the case of new developments the developers would have every incentive to provide good, free-flowing roads.

Why’s that?

Good roads mean a more desirable neighbourhood, which means more desirable houses, which means you can sell them for more. Which means higher profits.

You mentioned stupid rules?

Now strictly speaking this has nothing to do with private roads - things like speed limits apply to private roads as much as they do to anything else - at least in the UK they do. But if there were lots of private roads there might, at least, be some pressure applied to the state to allow variations in the speed limit and other regulations.

So, you think speed limits are stupid?

Yes. There are dozens of cars on the market which are capable of over 150mph. I am not sure about this, I am far from being an expert, but my guess is that they can do this perfectly safely. So, my question is why aren’t they? Why can’t we have a road where you can do 150mph? The reason is, of course, that we have a speed limit of 70mph that was set in 1968. Cars have massively improved since then but the law (typically) hasn’t. Of course, it is perfectly possible that a 150mph road would be incredibly dangerous (and last time this came up on Transport Blog there were some good technical reasons why it wasn’t currently possible) but why not let consenting road builders and consenting road users find out.

But even setting aside the 150mph car, most drivers feel that 80mph is perfectly safe. Well, subject to the conditions, of course.

But you’re not against speed limits in principle?

No. I think road owners should be able to set whatever rules they like.

But a lot of libertarians...

A lot of libertarians should know better.

OK, so road companies can set their own rules but what is to stop those rules being just as stupid as the state’s?

Profits. Companies exist to make money. If they impose stupid rules on their customers those customers will go elsewhere.

If they can.

Choices can be limited but rarely for everyone. Monopolies rarely survive. Well, in a free market they rarely survive (warning: short).

But wouldn’t this be terribly confusing, with different road owners having different limits and different signs? Hey, one might even want you to drive on the right-hand side of the road?

Well, it’s possible, but how likely is it? Compatibility sells. That’s why foot pedals are in the same order in every car you are ever likely to drive. The same would be true of roads.

But how will people get to work?

Ah, well this is where pricing really helps. Pricing will lead to fewer vehicles and faster roads. At this point buses and coaches will enter the market although you’d probably need private buses for this to work properly. Given that buses can move far more people than cars can there is every reason to think that with private roads more people rather than less will use them.

But I don’t want to travel on some smelly bus.

Buses can be very nice these days. Who’s to say that in a free market suppliers won’t leap in to provide luxury bus services? Here’s another example.

But should we be encouraging roads what with global warming and all?

The assumption being that roads means vehicles, vehicles means CO2 and other pollution. Pollution meaning global warming. That may well be true. In which case the solution is to charge the polluters. There are ways of doing this.

But if someone owns the road outside your house he could, in theory deny you access.

A good reason to make sure that you have at least some kind of interest in whatever body owns your road. Again, I think most urban roads will end up being owned by some form of super-landlord.

But how would private roads get built? you are against compulsory purchase after all.

I think there are ways of doing this.

They’ve got their safety policy wrong?

Yes, for many years now the principle has been to separate pedestrians from cars. But in a Dutch experiment they reversed that - they mixed them up. Now, I have my usual scepticism about these kinds of reports but the reports suggest that mixing cars and pedestrians both makes things safer and speeds things up. This just goes to illustrate one of the dangers of having monopoly suppliers, which tends to mean state suppliers - you don’t get the chance to experiment with alternatives.

Permalink • Roads • Last Updated: 22 April 2007

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