The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

388 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
country pay for streets and roads, whether or not they wish to
“purchase” this service, not merely those who venture out on to
them. Failure to distinguish between a customer and a victim
does not bespeak a very sophisticated analysis.
Major problem: there is a gigantic elephant in the room.
Somewhere in the neighborhood of 40,000 people in the U.S. perish
on the nation’s system of Sovietized roads.
CAR POOLS
The recently released journey-to-work figures from the 2000
census reveal what many of us have long suspected: carpooling
is a flop. Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars adding carpool
lanes to congested freeways, carpooling declined from 13.4
percent of work trips in 1990 to 11.2 percent in 2000. Carpooling’s
mode share declined in thirty-six of the largest forty metro
areas—including highly congested Los Angeles and San Francisco.
So what do we do now?
Here is another statement on this subject by Poole:
Some transit advocates have resented the use of these lanes by
carpools from the outset, reminding us that high-occupancy
vehicle (HOV) lanes were originally conceived as busways and
should be converted, accordingly. Some highway advocates
argue vociferously for converting most carpool lanes to general
purpose (GP) lanes. And the Federal Highway Administration’s
Value Pricing office tries valiantly to persuade metro
areas to convert underperforming HOV lanes to HOT lanes.
What’s been missing from this discussion has been serious
quantitative analysis of the tradeoffs involved. 22
With all due respect, it is my contention, in sharp contrast,
that what is missing from this discussion is not at all a “serious
quantitative analysis of the tradeoffs involved” but rather one
that asks whether a public entity is the sort of institution from
22 www.rppi.org/carpoollanes.html.