Should roads be privitized?

[muon2]

I can't imagine a system of entirely private roads, and I can imagine a lot of possibilities.  Consider all the different problems of scale.

At the most local level, it has been suggested that neighborhood associations maintain the roads. This is the easiest one to imagine, since there are many private homeowners associations that do just that. From experience, I can tell you that if you have a community with mixed public and private residential roads, they don't often stay that way. When a new subdivision comes in and asks for private roads, it's usually because the developer wants to cut costs. After 10 years the cheap road starts to brak down and the original ownership has started to move out, the inheritors of the area look to the municipality to fix their problems. Unfortunately, if the municipality says no, the area can become blighted and drag down the neighboring areas that do rely on public service.

At the next level up is the problem of collector streets. Every town relies on these roads to connect neighborhoods together, and to connect residences to shopping and jobs. They are primarily used by people who begin or end their trips nearby, and tolls would be horribly impractical with so many short trips. Municipalities handle these roads just fine, and consider this - what's the difference between a large homeowners association and a small suburb? Answer: Sometimes not much.

Next in scale are the regional arterials, including most state highways. If you make these into private toll roads the public will use the smaller collectors to avoid those tolls. That puts an unusual burden on the people who locally have to support roads that are not intended for heavy through traffic.

Finally there is the scale of the interstate highways. One can imagine tolls here, becaus ethey frequently exist. There are even privately-operated toll roads. Even so, there is usually a provision for full public access and emergency use of the roads. If there is not, the system would be more like the railroads with the owner's vehicles having exclusive use of the road, except for individually contracted users.

[muon2]

Well, I wouldn't mind buying the street that my house sits on just so that I can use it to block traffic and give everyone a hard time. People can always take another street, even if it adds an additional ten minutes onto their travel time. I mean, it's just like a board game! Annoying people is fun!!!

[/sarcasm]

I hate to take the point counter to the extreme free market position, but Everett has a point.  If there's a highway and an owner buys it from the goverment and doesn't want anyone on it, he could keep the road all to himself.  This would prevent many people from getting where they want, and cause an inconvinience in trying to find another route.  However You could have public roads and have the private sector charge money to maintain them.  Although I hate being moderate, I think this stance might work alright.

That seems to be the common practice already. In most local jursidictions major repair work is contracted to private firms. In some, usually smaller, jurisdictions minor maintainance is contracted out as well.

In my community the cost of outsourcing is compared to the cost of the work using municipal employees. Costs for overhead are figured in, so it's not just salaries. If the cost is lower for external work, and an appropriate bid come in, it goes to the private firm. There's not a good reason to use public dollars to pay a private firm more than it would cost to do it with paid staff.

For example, my city currently uses external private contractors for major road projects, reconstruction design engineering, traffic and use analysis, and for materials in smaller maintenance work. City staff performs road inspection and prioritization, minor patch repairs, and oversight of contractors from the bid preparation through final punch list.

The tasks do and should differ from city to city based on the cost effectiveness of tasks within the organization.