The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Free-Market Transportation: Denationalizing the Roads 11
In advocating a free market in roads, on one level, we shall be
merely arguing that there is nothing unique about transportation;
that the economic principles we accept as a matter of course in
practically every other arena of human experience are applicable
here too. Or at the very least, we cannot suppose that ordinary
economic laws are not apropos in road transportation until after
the matter has been considered in some detail.
Says Gabriel Roth:
[T]here is a[n] approach to the problem of traffic congestion—
the economic approach—which offers a rational and practical
solution. . . . The first step is to recognize that road space is a
scarce resource. The second, to apply to it the economic principles
that we find helpful in the manufacture and distribution of
other scarce resources, such as electricity or motor cars or
petrol. There is nothing new or unusual about these principles,
nor are they particularly difficult. What is difficult is to apply them
to roads, probably because we have all been brought up to regard roads
as community assets freely available to all comers. The difficulty
does not lie so much in the technicalities of the matter, but
rather in the idea that roads can usefully be regarded as chunks
of real estate. 12
12Gabriel Roth, Paying for Roads: The Economics of Traffic Congestion (Middlesex,
England: Penguin, 1967), p. 16; emphasis added. See also:
The highway situation can be improved substantially by visualizing
the similarities between the highway problem and a host of
comparable problems to which economists have applied some
rather ancient ideas: namely, those of “good old supply and
demand” analysis. (O.H. Brownlee and Walter W. Heller, “Highway
Development and Financing,” American Economic Review
[May 1956]: 233)
The provision of highways involves basically the same problems
as any other economic activity. Scarce resources must be used to
satisfy human wants by the provision of goods and services, and
decisions must be made as to how much of our resources will be
devoted to one particular service, and who is going to make the
necessary sacrifice. (Winch, The Economics of Highway Planning, p.
141)