The Necessity of Road Privatization

The Autonomist ^ | 8/03/04 | G. Stolyarov II

[Hank Kerchief]

 

The Necessity of Road Privatization

by G. Stolyarov II

I live on the North Shore of Chicago, one of the most affluent areas in the entire United States… with some of the poorest roads I had seen anywhere in the country. Several times a week I must follow a convoluted labyrinth, bordered by orange cones and wooden signs that constantly jut out into my path, as if asking to be bumped into. I am distressed to remind myself that it had once been a single, straight traffic lane… with kilometer-long cracks and potholes. It is said that there are only two seasons in Chicago, winter and construction, and, each winter, the roads are battered so extensively that the same stretches must be incessantly repaired every consecutive year.

What should spark even more indignation, though it is elevated by Chicagoans to the status of natural law, is the fact that the North Shore and other American neighborhoods like it are experiencing road deterioration unheard of even in the ancient times! Roman engineers, for example, were remarkable at building sturdy roads to transport the imperial legions throughout Europe and the Middle East. The roads were built with primitive materials, such as stone and gravel, but their foundations were dug deep into the ground, and multiple layers of mutually reinforcing materials gave the roads immense endurance and longevity. Parts of the Via Appia in Italy are still capable of bearing the load of automobiles today, and certain Roman bridges in Spain are routinely used to channel car traffic! The ancients, with far less technology than is available in our age, had created roads with two thousand times the life expectancy of the average street on the North Shore of Chicago.

It may seem paradoxical that technological improvements correlate with deteriorating road quality and lifespan. However, technology is not to blame. Though the typical layman in Chicago will overlook it, his "public" roads are meant to require constant maintenance! A brief glimpse at the depth that a typical road stretches as it is being excavated during construction will show that it extends no further than a quarter-meter from its surface, and contains no more than two layers of asphalt or concrete. Pressure from thousands of multi-ton vehicles traversing it for 365 days is almost certain to strain the surface beyond its capacity to endure, and, once the surface gives way, the entire road must crack or collapse due to its infinitesimal thinness. The Romans' elementary solution to this fenomenon was to make the road deeper and thicker! Surely, two thousand years of engineering progress could not have nullified this commonsense observation!

Yet, while engineering has progressed, government has not. This is crucial to note, since it is the government of the City of Chicago that wields absolute control over its roads. The government creates them and has the responsibility for maintaining them, but it also has a few construction companies in its constituency. In a welfare state, where the parties supporting a politician's campaign can expect a slice of the economic "pie" in return, maintaining the ability to distribute the taxpayers' wealth to any favored special interest lobby, and retaining a veneer of legitimacy while doing so, is critical for any politician who seeks to remain in office. Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, a hereditary political dynast, surely knows this all too well. Hiring a contractor to build roads once and for all, roads that are deliberately designed to be firm to the point of virtual invincibility, which is more than possible with modern technology, only allows the mayor to favor his friends (I repeat, cronies) in the construction business with a redistribution of wealth once. But intentionally designing roads to fail each year and require repair furnishes unceasing work opportunities for the contractors, to be paid from the taxpayers' wallets!

"But that is fiscally irresponsible!" any intelligent man would exclaim. And so it is. The mayor would likely not purchase a chair for his office/throne room that breaks down and must be repaired each year, for it would be his wealth that would be diverted to the rebuilding effort. Yet, like the typical statist, he can afford to be generous with other people's, i.e. everyone else's, money, and employ a potentially infinite pool of it to guarantee himself support from his pet construction companies each and every time. Vesting such power in the hands of government is tantamount to legalizing theft, on the condition that the thieves win public favor each year by handing out "free" clothing to the populace. The next year, the clothing would become torn apart at its shoddy seams, and the populace would need to tolerate the thieves for another year, for only they would be allowed to give the people clothing!

A gulf of contrast exists between this veiled theft of a status quo and the conditions of a private market in roads. Consider this: if you were a road entrepreneur, whose foremost concern is not "public service" (I repeat, re-election), but profit, would you seek to magnify your expenses by hiring costly road maintenance crews every year? Or would you use the modern technology at your disposal and incur only marginally higher initial costs to build a road that can serve you over twenty lifetimes without requiring repair? Moreover, if you, as a private entrepreneur, were to charge tolls for each vehicle that used your road, it would be in your interest to attract as many vehicles as possible. Every day and every stretch of space which construction occupies during the road's lifetime inherently cuts your profits by the amount that the cars passing through that space during that time would have generated in tolls! If you were at all intellectually endowed (and to become a road entrepreneur you would need to be), you would realize that authorizing major repairs on a private road, after it had already been opened, is financially ruinous!

Thus, it is evident that, if roads were privatized, and the unlimited private construction of new roads were authorized, major road maintenance would cease to exist altogether; there would be no need for it! As for those minor tasks of road cleaning, such as removing pebbles and roadkill, incentives will develop for private companies to invent means of doing so without interrupting the traffic flow, since such innovations will maximize the profit that these companies receive from an increased and steady volume of traffic.

The question still remains as to why the Roman roads have a life expectancy two thousand times greater than that of American roads. Were these roads privately built? Such a contention is not as far from the truth as may seem at first glance. Unlike modern armies, Rome's was not exclusively controlled by bureaucrats or raised on public funds. Often, generals themselves would devote vast private fortunes to the gathering, equipping, and rewarding of troops, who would swear loyalty oaths to their commander, not to the Roman state. Commanders such as Marcus Crassus and Julius Caesar, both possessors of immense personal wealth, did precisely that. They needed to concern themselves with the logistical aspects of war as well, for these were what distinguished Roman armies from the barbarians they had to fight.

Roman troops would often personally labor on the roads they would later use as avenues between their outposts on the empire's borders and channels of communication with the capital. Many a Roman general's pockets may have been deep, but they were not infinitely deep. And to prevent their depletion, the generals had every incentive to render the roads they commissioned as deep as possible! One may, using Rome's history as an example, question the wisdom of privatizing the military, but the private roads that such a private military built were the most impeccable ever seen in history. Were I given a choice of the route to travel on, I would favor a Roman road over any one of the modern American monstrosities, hands down.

It is time that we renounce hours of painstaking frustration and needless confusion, which we owe to rampant statism and cronyism. We need to cease being governed by barbarians outside the borders of Reason, and rediscover elementary insights that have been waiting to be put to use for over two thousand years.

---

Mr. Stolyarov is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right and SoloHQ, writer for Objective Medicine, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the Western principles of reason, rights, and progress [http://www.geocities.com/rationalargumentator/masterindex.html].

Mr. Stolyarov is also the recipient of the February 2004 Editor's Choice Award for Outstanding Achievement in Poetry, presented by poetry.com and the International Library of Poets. He can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

You can learn about Mr. Stolyarov’s newest science fiction novel, Eden against the Colossus, at http://www.geocities.com/rational_argumentator/eac.html."

—(8/03/04)

[Hank Kerchief]

PHILOSOPHY PING

(If you want on or off this list please freepmail me.)

Hank

[inquest]

Moreover, if you, as a private entrepreneur, were to charge tolls for each vehicle that used your road....

Hold it right there. He's not talking about highway tolls here, but tolls for ordinary roads going through town that people use every day. Ain't no way in hell I'd countenance tolls on such roads. That's a prescription for feudalism. I'd rather deal with decrepit roads, thanks all the same.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

What if it could be shown that the annual toll you would pay is less than the taxes extracted from you for the current government scam?

[narby]

Toll roads are the fastest way to destroy an economy that I know of.

Drive the I-44 from Oklahoma into Missouri. At the border it goes from toll to free, and at that same instant the entire countryside goes from the 50 miles of desolation found in Oklahoma, to a growing economy fed by free off-ramps every few miles.

This country was built along transportation routes. First the ocean, then rivers, and finaly rail. Look at one of those nighttime pictures from space, and you can see the web of lights along the transportation corridors that are businesses and economic life.

When people feel there's "no cost" to travel, they do so, and inevitibly spend money when they get where they're going. That's one big reason fuel costs hurt the economy, as in Europe, where forced collectivised travel and fuel tax rates keep growth low. Even a few cents per mile of Toll kill the "it's FREE" illusion, and the reduced off-ramps of toll roads finish off the effect.

Yes, we need serious roadway improvement. But Toll roads are a dead end.

Just check out Phoenix. We built lots of freeways in the last 10 years, and our growth has been enormous. We'd have had growth anyway, but not nearly as much without the great, and free, roads.

[narby]

What if it could be shown that the annual toll you would pay is less than the taxes extracted from you for the current government scam?

The total cost isn't the issue. It's the way the cost is charged.

Everytime you charge someone on the road, you provide an incentive for them not to travel at all. No travel, no economy, period.

I hate government. I love libertarian ideals. But on the issue of good free roads, like national defense, the government is best.

There used to be lots of private roads and bridges in this country. Don't assume that the old-timers were stupid when they pursuaded the government to buy them out. They were just as smart as we are today. There was a reason why old private pike roads went away.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

I see this same intentional incompetence in building roads designed to repeatedly fall apart, there needs to be a way to get functional roads at a reasonable cost. The other problem that we have in Washington State is a mandate to pay the "prevailing wage" which is the union scale in Seattle but is excessive for the rest of the State. In other words what we have today doesn't appear to be working just like you say the old private roads didn't fulfill their intended function.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Maybe there is a compromise that could be made to work. Include with the initial bid to build roads say ten years of road maintenance and then offer continuing 5 year maintenance options if the new bid is competitive with that offered by the viable alternative companies. The government still pays the tab but the contractor has a real incentive to build quality roads that are easy to maintain.

[Capriole]

The reason Chicago's roads fall apart is because somebody's brother-in-law's cousin got the contract to build them, and he made them out of wet oatmeal and Elmer's Glue. That's the way Chicago works. And I hope serious people are not expecting them to actually last. If they lasted, then the same guy, or his son, couldn't get the contract to rebuild them in three years. It's simple logic.

[explodingspleen]

The primary failure I perceive in private toll roads (which I shall admit to once favoring) is that the primary benefitters aren't necessarily those who use the roads. For example, tourists travel to other states and cities and unload cash into the economy, spending money on hotels, resorts, that kind of thing. The hotel owners and shop keepers benefit directly, and the rest of these localities indirectly. But they would not be paying the price for these roads; only the tourists would.

There are a lot of spillover benefits that can't easily be worked out in private contracts, which make the roads, like national defense, a true public good.

[expat_panama]

good free roads, like national defense...

Good free roads are national defense.   Right after the first World War the State Highway System was set up.  After WWII the interstate system was set up by Eisenhower under the Defense Dept.   Interstate specs for bridges, roads widths, and curves are not for traffic needs, they're set so missiles can be transported when needed.  This not black helicopter/tin foil stuff, this is out my highway design texts that I read to become a civil engineer.

Interesting topic but Stolyarov writes thoughtlessly.  The sections of Roman roads that exist today have been carefully preserved, but most Europeans today travel on newly built reinforced concrete highways.  Most passenger miles are traveled on privately built residential roads that are turned over to public use so maintenance is financed by taxes. 

 

[narby]

The way to fix the road building process is to fix government. As it is, the contractors often have considerable influence on the process, and rig it in their favor.

This is not the case everywhere. In many states, the government has enough class to actually "do the right thing".

What needs to happen is the creation of some serious driver organizations who will lobby government to counter the contractor lobby. I suppose AAA should do that, but I think they've dropped the ball.

When I lived in So. California, I seriously thought of starting such an organization because they screwed up the 91 freeway between Corona and Anaheim so bad.

The 91 freeway is the ONLY path through the mountians for 15 miles to the north, 40 miles to the south. The old highway road, and old side streets through the mountains have been deliberatly shut down. Then they allowed a private company to build a toll road down the center of the freeway. No doubt because of some serious lobbying, and because the government gets a take from the tolls.

Now think about those incentives. The government has zero incentive to spend money on the free road, because it will cost them money they can give away elsewhere, and because if the freeway isn't jammed, who in their right mind would pay money to travel on the same route? So the government actually WANTS the freeway jammed, so they can milk money from a toll road.

[inquest]

The total cost isn't the issue. It's the way the cost is charged. Everytime you charge someone on the road, you provide an incentive for them not to travel at all. No travel, no economy, period.

The issue goes beyond merely the effect it'll have on the economic growth rate. It's ultimately a freedom issue, not an economic issue. If tolls can be charged on any type of road - again, not just major highways - then you will make serfs out of people. The power to tax involves the power to destroy, and the power to tax people's freedom of movement involves the power to effectively keep them prisoners in their homes and in their towns. No, thank you.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

There are many areas with private water companies and water is almost as essential to any practical use of land as is access. I lived on a private road for many years and the only difficulty was in getting agreement on paying to pave the road because there was nothing in the deeds covering road maintanece. We worked out a voluntary agreement. For the most part neighbors work together out of mutual necessity. In Colorado the roads to the mines and many of the mining towns were built privately and that did not prevent ingress and egress. I would agree that trying to change back now would be near impossible but what do you think of an option I offered in reply 8.

[inquest]

There are many areas with private water companies and water is almost as essential to any practical use of land as is access.

I wasn't referring to practicality of use. People who own land don't necessarily have a natural right to resources from outside that land. But they do (or should) have a basic right to go from Point A to Point B using some kind of public thoroughfare. To tax that right is extremely dangerous.

I lived on a private road for many years and the only difficulty was in getting agreement on paying to pave the road because there was nothing in the deeds covering road maintanece. We worked out a voluntary agreement. For the most part neighbors work together out of mutual necessity. In Colorado the roads to the mines and many of the mining towns were built privately and that did not prevent ingress and egress.

It doesn't sound like in these cases that tolls were charged, which is what I was arguing against. I have no problem with voluntary arrangements for road maintenance.

I would agree that trying to change back now would be near impossible but what do you think of an option I offered in reply 8.

I think it's making the situation more complicated than it needs to be. If the problem is as the author describes, that government is deliberately making roads built to crumble so it can keep spending taxpayer's money, then the solution is to get the word out about it to as many people as possible, so they can exert pressure on their elected officials to stop the nonsense. You can try various tinkerings as you suggested in order to make it work more smoothly, but that's just going to depend on the honesty of those charged with awarding the contracts, etc. So the only real solution is the one that gets the voters directly involved. (unless, of course, we were to go with the option of voluntary arrangements with no public funding)

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Would you favor nationalizing the railroads or allowing any one to use the tracks for free? There are places in Alaska where the railroad is the only practical means of access. Toll roads can be a hassle but some form of congestion pricing would be a solution to the overcrowding of current roads is some cities.

[inquest]

Would you favor nationalizing the railroads or allowing any one to use the tracks for free? There are places in Alaska where the railroad is the only practical means of access.

Railroads are different, because they exist for a specialized purpose. No doubt there are going to be some places where they would be the only practical means of access. There are other places, I'm sure, where there are no practical means of access. Such places tend not to have large populations. I've been referring to ordinary towns and cities, where people use the roads for their daily business. Those should not be taxed or tolled or whatever.

Toll roads can be a hassle but some form of congestion pricing would be a solution to the overcrowding of current roads is some cities.

But not the only solution. Cities have been successful at reducing congestion by having good public transportation facilities. Another idea, rather than impose tolls, is to hike parking rates, as well as limit the size of parking garages. Other solutions involve rational zoning laws to encourage a mix of functions (business, residential) in the same location, so people won't ordinarily need to go as far in order to do what they need to do.

And then in the far-out category: We could have covered elevated people-mover walkways (toll-supported, even) that criss-cross through and among the buildings. Just a thought.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Maybe in the future we will have personal aircraft that take off from your driveway and fly to your destination or Star Treks transporter will solve the problems. Unfortunately we live with what is currently available and every option has trade offs. Government is too often used as a means to pass the true costs off on someone else.

Congestion pricing would offer an effective way to discourage those whose travel is not time sensitive. Public transportation amounts to the equivalent of a toll.

[inquest]

Public transportation amounts to the equivalent of a toll.

Not true. No one is constrained to use public transportation in order to get somewhere. As long as there is an option that's free of charge and available to everyone (i.e., roads), then it doesn't have the same dangerous effect of a toll at all.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

Cars aren't free and under most any comparison cost more than the fare for public transit. I live near Seattle and we have several Islands where ferries are the only real option. Tolls for access to your property are a fact of life for friends of mine.