The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Overcoming Difficulties in Privatizing Roads 277
pays nothing for them. Although originally conceived as a characterization
of the fact that highways were of limited access,
without traffic lights, and thus that travelers could move “freely,”
this phrase now functions to indicate to people that they pay
nothing for them. Nothing could be further from the truth. And,
given the general rule of thumb that private services come at a
fraction of the cost of their public counterparts, it would be a
shock to learn that this would not apply to the present situation.
Thus, it is almost a given that the explicit costs of highway provision
likely to be passed on to the consumer by a private industry
would be a small part of those now imposed upon him,
implicitly, in the form of hidden and not so hidden taxes.