The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

38 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
with the good example in view so consistently ignored it thereafter.
26
From Burchard’s limited perspective, it is indeed a mystery
that some should have taken this step and that, once it was taken
and proven successful, it should not have been emulated. From
the vantage point of a market in roads, the mystery disappears:
one bureaucrat stumbled, out of necessity, onto a good plan.
Having no financial incentive toward cost minimization, no others
saw fit to expand this innovation. On the market, given that
it is economical to double deck, there will be powerful forces
tending toward this result: the profit and loss system.
An authoritative reference to double decking was made by
Charles M. Noble, former Director of the Ohio Department of
Highways and chief engineer of the New Jersey Turnpike
Authority:
It seems clear that, ultimately, many urban freeways will
become double or triple-deck facilities, with upper decks carrying
the longer distance volumes, possibly with reversible lanes,
and probably operating with new interchanges to avoid flooding
of existing interchanges and connecting streets. 27
It is impossible to foretell exactly how this competition via
multiple decking might work out in the real world. Perhaps one
company would undertake to build and maintain the roads, as
well as the bridgework supporting all the different decks. In this
scenario, the road deck owner might sublease each individual
deck, much in the same way as the builder of a shopping center
does not himself run any of the stores, preferring to sublet them
26John Burchard, “Design and Urban Beauty in the Central City,” in
James Q. Wilson, ed., The Metropolitan Enigma (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday,
1970), p. 245; emphasis added.
27Noble, “Highway Design and Construction Related to Traffic Operations
and Safety,” pp. 546–47.