Dan Klein and the Impossibly Private Roads

On a usenet exchange regarding private roads, I once posted the fact that per capita investment in the original turnpike movement exceeded that in the contemporary US. My interlocutor said that proved it was a bad idea: they were obviously too expensive. Today, our per capita investment in personal computers far exceeds that in the US in the 1980s - are they are clearly much more expensive now than then?

I believe the source for the turnpike investment factoid came from Gabriel Roth's Roads in a Market Economy. But Roth himself might have gotten it from the Dean of Private Road History, Daniel Klein. Klein has a half dozen papers about private roads in the US on his website. And a lightning shaped scar on his forehead where He Who Shall Not Be Named ... but that's another story.












The history has four basic eras: the Turnpike era (1792-1840), the Plank Road era (1847-1853), the Western roads (1850-1902), and the modern era. Klein's contribution is mostly to the first three though he has looked at the last; Roth's book was a good reference for the modern era, but much has happened since he first published it.

I do not believe that you could take the existing system, slap toll gates onto it, and expect it to operate as well. The turnpikes were means of transportation between discrete urban centers. If we had a geography today similar to what existed then, we could expect much less shunpiking today because whipping your Prius off the freeway and cutting through a field would not be nearly as much innocent fun as doing it with a horse.*

But we don't have a similar geography. We have the stupid megalopolises that occupy the Northeast Corridor (roughly, Boston to Richmond and/or Philadelphia) and the Southwest Corner (San Angeles). Central Texas and parts of the Midwest and Florida are getting that way. In other words, pretty much the area that would see candidates if the Electoral College were abandoned. And guess what they would want: less congestion, more lanes, more roads.

It was in fact with respect to roads that I realized that libertarians have dual problems with many of their ideas: one is to articulate a vision of a better society, the other is to figure out how to get there. Others will reject these ideas until we solve both problems. Having solved them, people won't stop rejecting them since this is one area that definitely reminds us of Howard Aiken's insight, "Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats." For one thing, there's status quo bias.

For another, lots of people stand to be upset by a system of privatized roads:

1. Commuters who believe their now-obvious cash transactions are more onerous than fuel, sales, and property taxation
2. Privacy advocates who worry about electronic tracking via cameras and automated toll collection systems
3. State highway department employees who worry about lost jobs
   
4. State highway department contractors - not all, just the ones who rely on incompetence and corruption
5. State legislatures who divert fuel tax funds into the general fund
6. People who worry about the regressive nature of the toll burden
   

There isn't much to be done about most of these. The fuel taxes are probably going to have their names changed to "carbon taxes" just as they increase, so there can be no enticement of commuters with lower fuel costs to make up for the tolls. The privacy advocates are probably right, if the horror stories Radley Balko is reporting are any indication. Government employee unions are generous donors to Democrats, so they have strong beliefs about which side their bread is buttered on and they simply are not going to be convinced by claims that "In a free society, there will be more jobs for everyone and everything will be cheaper."** Nobody cares if incompetent and/or corrupt contractors are disciplined by the market encouraged to change their ways to become more socially responsible (do I know my Lakoff, or what?). The redirection of fuel taxes into the general fund is going to cause problems, especially as legislators apply the traditional spin (taking milk from poor mothers -- while charging those mothers more to drive to the grocery store -- just so someone can make a profit). Finally, tolls should be no more regressive than fuel taxes, which, as M1EK argues (and more at Env-Econ blog), are not as regressive as typically claimed. Note that the entrenched interests and the conservatives that protect them would normally be called "Progressives" to distinguish them from the theocrats normally referred to as "Conservatives".

An obvious start would be to privatize the freeways between cities or at least make them toll roads. Strangely, we are told to emulate the Europeans in devising our transportation systems, so why not the Autostrada? But that would be a superficial start. While reading one of Klein's papers, I found that one of the articles cited was contained in The Voluntary City. While looking at it on Amazon, I noted this comment in a review by Christopher Jones:

You're not the only one that wonders whether the government that is supposed to guarantee your private property rights seems more interested in making sure your vinyl siding runs the same way as your neighbor's. This is the way of things in America today, where municipal governments segregate business from housing, then wonder why everyone thinks he has to own a car.

Yes, urban "planning" requires cars which require increasingly massive highways. Then more central planning is required to mediate the effects of concentrated quantities of cars. Then public transit has to be introduced so that those who can't afford the required cars can just get around. Of course, thicker pavement and wider streets are required to handle buses and more cars. No telling how much this costs in terms of health care as dependence on the automobile and the amount of time spent in traffic for the simplest chore comes to displace a short walk or cycle ride. Meanwhile, the oil companies who provide the needed raw materials for all of this planned activity to work are scapegoated. Just one of the many ways that dedicated, sincere government employees create balance for you.

But I digress. The point I was wrestling is that the way to private roads lies right through the middle of planning, geography, and lots more entrenched interests. Here again, I like some of the ideas in A Pattern Language, including mixed use, segmenting cities into well-defined areas, etc.

It's tragic that a thing as simple as a system of private roads would be regarded today as impossible when in the past it was the primary means for funding roads. When they ridicule you for suggesting it, what can you do but marvel at the profound arrogance that allows them to believe that if they have never heard of it, and upon a millisecond's reflection cannot conceive of how such a thing might work, then such a thing must have never worked? The few anti-libertarians vaguely aware that there was such as thing seem to think it was a failure, possibly on the basis that because we no longer do it that way, it must have failed. Fortunately, we have Daniel Klein doing the research into the actual history of this institution.

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* Would Lancaster County present a special case today? Or can we trust the Amish to pay tolls?

** I'm not convinced of that as a blanket statement, either. I **hope** driving is more expensive in a world of private roads. I believe that more costs will be internalized.