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Store: An Independent Institute Book
Co-Publisher: Transaction Publishers
72 Figures • 45 Tables
© 2006 |
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STREET SMART
Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads
Edited by
Gabriel Roth
Foreword by
Mary E. Peters
Effective road transportation is crucial to economic and social well-being. Yet in cities worldwide, existing road systems suffer from government policies responsible for traffic congestion, unsafe conditions, high costs, political corruption, waste and pork, environmental degradation, and poor maintenance.
Street Smart examines private, market-based alternatives for road services, both in theory and practice. The book explores at least four such possible directions for private services, including testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned road facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. The book further traces the history of private roads in Great Britain and the United States and examines contemporary examples of entrepreneurial innovation in road pricing, privatization, and marketization in environs as diverse as Singapore, California, Ghana, Norway, and England.
The main obstacle to private road services rests with political classes reluctant to give up their lucrative sources of power, wealth and influence through current government road monopolies. However, those seeking responsive road services determined by the free interplay of consumers and private suppliers will find Street Smart making a powerful and authoritative case for the need for change and provides essential understanding of the complex issues involved.
Detailed Summary |
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgment
Foreword by Mary E. Peters
PART I Introduction
1) Why Involve the Private Sector in the Provision of Public Roads?
Gabriel Roth
PART II Theory, Arguments, and Ideas
2) De-Socializing the Roads
John Semmens
3) Do Holdout Problems Justify Compulsory Right-of-Way Purchase and Public Provision of Roads?
Bruce L. Benson
4) The Political Economy of Private Roads
David Levinson
5) Improving Road Safety by Privatizing Vehicle and Driver Testing and Licensing
John Semmens
PART III Improving the Pricing of Roads
6) Congestion Pricing: The Singapore Experience
Gopinath Menon
7) Congested Roads: An Economic Analysis
with Twin Cities’ Illustrations
Herbert Mohring
8) Estimating Congestion Prices, Revenues, and Surpluses: An Example from Manila
Gabriel Roth and Olegario G. Villoria, Jr.
9) HOT Lanes in Southern California
Edward C. Sullivan
10) How Should the Revenues from Congestion Pricing Be Spent?
Kenneth J. Button
PART IV History of Privately Provided Roads
11) The Rise and Fall of Non-Government Roads in the United Kingdom
Bruce L. Benson
12) America’s Toll Road Heritage: The Achievements of Private Initiative in the Nineteenth Century
Daniel Klein and John Majewski
13) Streets as Private-Sector Public Goods
Fred E. Foldvary
14) Private Roads to the Future: The Swedish Private Road Associations
Christina Malmberg Calvo and Sven Ivarsson
15) Role of the Private Sector in Managing and Maintaining Roads
Gunter J. Zietlow
PART V Roads to Privatization: Getting from Here to There
16) New Zealand’s Path to a Good Road
The Hon. J. K. McLay
17) Development of Highway Concessions on Trunk Roads in the United Kingdom
Neil Roden
18) Commercializing the Management and Financing of Roads
Ian G. Heggie
19) HOT Networks: A New Plan for Congestion Relief and Better Transit
Robert W. Poole, Jr. and C. Kenneth Orski
20) The Way Forward to the Private Provision of Public Roads
Peter Samuel
About the Contributors
Index
Praise for Street Smart “Street Smart, is informative, up-to-date, and a pleasure to read. If we are lucky, the book’s ideas and insights will also find their way into popular and political discourse in order to create real reform.”
—Peter Gordon, Professor of Policy, Planning and Development, University of Southern California
“What a successful and important book Street Smart is. This is a book which makes plain the importance of a market economy in roads for the efficient allocation of scarce resources and the satisfaction of the user, worldwide.”
—John Hibbs, OBE, Professor of Economics, University of Central England
“Top 10 Books of 2007: Street Smart provides a cogent challenge to the public sector's monopoly on roads. In this provocative and enlightening compilation, the leading thinkers on privatization put forth market-based solutions for providing roadways and dealing with traffic congestion. Contributors to the volume provide both historic and modern day examples of private sector road services, and outline the case for taking politics out of transportation and unleashing the power of competition. A valuable resource for understanding the argument for privatization.”
—Planetizen, The Urban Planning and Development Network
“Roads are so critical to everything in society that many presume that they must necessarily be a governmental enterprise. Street Smart dispels that faulty impression with a careful examination of the past, present, and promising future of private roads.”
—Damian J. Kulash, former President, Eno Transportation Foundation
“Street Smart should help to develop thinking on the future of the road network and should be welcomed by road users in all countries.”
—Edmund King, Executive Director, Royal Automobile Club Foundation
“Every public official—whatever their views—needs to read Street Smart to understand the depth of what is becoming a revolution.”
—Roger Toleman, Deputy Secretary, New Zealand Ministry of Transport
"In this comprehensive volume, editor Gabriel Roth has assembled 20 essays that collectively make a powerful case that streets and roads can and should be privatized by the free market. . . . Street Smart is an extremely valuable compilation of theory, arguments, and evidence in support of the proposition that a network of privately owned streets and roads operating on the user-fee principle is feasible and far superior to the old model of tax-financed, government-operated streets and roads. Road privatization should be to the early 21st century what the communications revolution was to the 20th and hopefully, this book will play an important role in bringing that about.”
—Regulation
“Although, as a socialist, I find it difficult to accept that roads should be privatized, as a transport professional I believe that Street Smart is essential reading for those of us struggling with the problems of efficient transportation”
—Dave Wetzel, Vice Chair, Transport for London
“Street Smart assembles a first-class group of international analysts to address some of the thornier questions of the day in transportation with intelligence and clarity. Public policy will be edified by this discussion.”
—Alan E. Pisarski, Committee Chair, Transportation Research Board
“Toll roads historically are not particularly uncommon. Street Smart looks at this history and examines the prospect of reviving private roads as a major transportation tool. This book provides a clear-cut and comprehensive investigation of the prospect of either replacing or supplementing our present road system by private, market-based roads. It should start a serious and informed discussion of this important problem.”
—Gordon Tullock, University Professor of Law and Economics, George Mason University
“Roads and highways have rapidly transitioned from a relatively low profile on the public policy radar screen to one of the most vexing infrastructure issues facing public employees, elected officials and politicians at all levels of government. . . . Into this frustrating complex environment comes a timely new anthology of some of the best recent thinking on how we deal with the demand for new roads and highways. Street Smart pulls together approximately 20 contributors—not only from around the United States, but also from Sweden, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, Singapore, Germany and the Philippines. It is a diverse group of academics, engineers and economists, all of whom have stellar credentials in diverse fields relating to the finance, construction and economics of road systems. The volume is clearly organized and edited by Gabriel Roth, a transportation economist with substantial international experience with the World Bank. . . . As cutting edge as some of these discussions are, I particularly enjoyed the segment of Street Smart that reviewed the history of private roadways in America, England, and elsewhere. . . . Overall, this is an admirable work and one that should be on the shelves of America’s transportation policy makers. . . . This is a valuable work. The distinguished engineers, economists and academics who contributed to this volume are trying to lead the way. Let’s see who follows.”
—Journal of Transportation Law, Logistics & Policy
“Street Smart presents a compelling case that highway privatization can be applied in the public interest. Road users and highway advocates will learn much about the promises and pitfalls of private-road proposals and be ready to engage in this crucial debate on the future of American surface transportation.”
—Greg Cohen, President, American Highway Users Alliance
“Street Smart contains a wealth of useful theory, case studies, and practical advice about a very important piece of future road policy. Expert authors provide valuable information about how private roads can be structured, from U.S. turnpikes of the past to current-day experience all over the world.”
—Kenneth A. Small, Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of California, Irvine
“Street Smart is a fascinating and challenging book which offers original and refreshing contributions on rational market opportunities for the transport sector, in particular the private management and financing of road infrastructure. Strongly recommended.”
—Peter Nijkamp, Professor of Economics, Free University, Amsterdam
“Street Smart is a ‘must’ for college-level students of transportation and urban planning: it considers private, market-based alternative for road services both at the idea level and in practical application, considering the history of the private provision of roads before the railway age and how modern planning can look back at lessons from the past to plan for the future. Four different ideas for private services, from testing vehicles and drivers to managing road facilities and using franchise or private ownership, provide different avenues for solving many of today’s road issues, from congestion and safety issues to high costs and politics.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Private turnpikes were commonplace in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries but they eventually succumbed to competition from railways and onerous government regulations. Street Smart makes an eloquent and convincing argument that the time is ripe for the private sector to make a comeback with a boost from modern electronic tolling technology and innovative contract designs. . . . Written by leading economists, engineers and other professionals, Street Smart is essential reading for academics, policy analysts and policy makers, as well as firms contemplating involvement themselves.”
—Charles R. Lindsey, Professor of Economics, University of Alberta, Canada
“In Street Smart, Roth and his collaborators present the case for privatizing the provision and operation of roads. In addition to presenting theoretical arguments for road privatization (which largely echo standard arguments for privatizing public utilities), chapters discuss different methods of road pricing, historical experiences of privately owned roads, and policy approaches to road privatization.”
—Book News
“This book will be useful to both theorists and practitioners of road transportation. . . . And make no mistake, the book demonstrates a strong case for more reliance on private providers responding to market forces. It contains many bold statements on the efficacy of highway privatization toward meeting the public interest in more effective and efficient road transportation. Certainly, efficiency must be improved, both in the allocation of resources and in their application. These authors, for the most part, make a firm case that turning to the private sector is a significant part of the solution. . . . Economists will find much familiar in this book.”
—Journal of the Transportation Research Forum
“When roads are safe, logically designed, and well maintained, everyone benefits. Unfortunately, many of the government systems in place to build, allocate for, and manage roads around the world are either inefficient, corrupt, or both. In Street Smart, an international group of policy experts examine market-based alternatives for road services. According to the authors, the main obstacle to the private provision of roads is public ignorance.”
—The Futurist
“Believe it. Street Smart, a new transportation book on the market, says the time has come to bring streetcars back to cities.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“The raise-the-cost crowd promotes toll roads, fees that make rush-hour driving more expensive than off-peak travel, and taxes based on the number of miles you drive rather than on the amount of gasoline you buy. Free-market proponents support the pricing option, arguing that congestion is a classic tragedy of the commons. ‘The root cause of traffic congestion is the absence of property rights in roads,’ Gabriel Roth and Olegario Villoria, transportation experts, argue in Street Smart, a new book published by the Independent Institute, based in Oakland, Calif.”
—National Journal
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