| | In his initial post, Rick Andrews questioned the practicality of privatizing the roads and infrastructure, on the grounds that private toll roads would be less efficient than public roads without tolls.
But if roads were privatized, they'd be a lot more efficiently managed than they are today under public ownership. Toll charges would be no problem, because there are now electronic devices, such as transponders, that can be automatically debited as the driver passes a certain point on the road. This is already being done in many cities throughout the world. And since the private owners would find it in their interest to charge tolls, they would set them at the profit maximizing price, which would even out the flow of traffic, making it more efficient.
The reason that charging a profit maximizing toll would even out the flow of traffic is that during peak periods, the owners would raise the toll in response to the increased demand, which would thin the traffic by weeding out those drivers who didn't have to use the roads during that time of day. And during slack periods, such as the middle of the day or late at night, the toll would be lowered in response to a fall in demand, which would encourage people who could use the roads during that time of day to use them in preference to the more crowded times. Thus, you would have a shift in traffic from the more crowded times to the less crowded, which would make it more convenient for people to drive during rush hour. This would put an end to the traffic jams and the long lines of cars moving at a snail's pace. And it would all be due to the operation of the profit motive, which does not exist under publicly owned roads.
The profit motive would also encourage the constructions of alternative arteries and thoroughfares when the demand for driving space reached critical mass. Under public ownership, there is no profit motive to build new roads, which is another reason we have a shortage of road space. Remember the Soviet Union with its long lines of hapless consumers waiting to purchase items that were in short supply? Well, that's the equivalent of what you have today on our publicly owned roads -- long lines of cars waiting to use the roads in order to travel to their destination. You have a shortage of road space, just as you had a shortage of goods and services under Communism. It's the same principle, just a different application. Public ownership never works. It didn't work for bread and shoes in the Soviet Union, and it doesn't work for streets and highways in the United States.
It's time that we turned the roads over to private enterprise. Letting the owners charge what the traffic will bear is the best way to make the traffic more bearable!
- Bill
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