The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

284 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
due consideration would have to be given to this hypothetical
contrary-to-fact bargaining over egress and access. How, in turn,
might this be done? One possibility is to look at the market value
of rights of way in arenas where this is subject to open and free
bargaining, and then to incorporate this knowledge into newly
privatized roads. For example, Christopher Muller notes that,
with regard to his railroads, “James J. Hill encouraged settlement
by letting immigrants travel halfway across the country on his
railroad for ten dollars if they would settle along the route. He
rented entire families freight cars for little more money.” 4 The
point is, if this railroad magnate was attempting to attract people
to live on territory abutting his holdings, he must have offered
them inducements to do so. Borrowing a leaf from his and other
such offers would be of help in solving our present challenge.
Continues Muller: “Unlike other railroad builders such as Cornelius
Vanderbilt who built their railroads around a population,
Hill built a population around his railroad.” Precisely. But if you
are going to do this sort of thing, you must make attractive offers
to would-be future neighbors.
Scale. Another possible problem in road privatization stems
from dangers involving the scale of holdings. In order to put this
difficulty into context, we must reflect upon yet another objection
to road privatization: that the motorist would have to stop in
front of each house and pay a few pennies in tolls, which would
grind traffic to a virtual standstill.
The implicit assumption behind this objection is that roads
would be given out piecemeal; each property owner abutting a
street would receive a section of it stretching from one end of his
property to another, and extending halfway into the thoroughfare;
the other half would be given to his across the street neighbor.
But nothing could be further from the truth. No reasonable
privatization scheme would divide up the streets in so monstrously
unjust, to say nothing of inefficient, manner. First of all,
4http://www.railserve.com/JJHill.html; I owe this citation to Sam
Bostaph.