The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Congestion and Road Pricing 53
our present highway mess into something merely affecting the
“comfort, convenience, amenity, and business advantage” of our
citizens. If our transportation crisis does not sabotage “the essential
welfare of individuals and the good health of the society,”
then nothing does.
Next consider the “unrealistic expectations” charge. Robert
Bish and Robert Kirk write:
Designation of “congestion” per se as a problem is not accepted
by all economists. When one examines the travel time of journeys
to work in urban areas he discovers that travel times are
remaining constant at the same time the length of the journey
to work is increasing. Thus, in spite of congestion the actual
miles per hour speed of journeys to work is increasing rather
than decreasing. It may be that considering congestion a problem
relates more to a failure of expectations than a failure of
transportation systems. The failure to meet expectations may
result from the fact that as highway investments have been
made to handle journey-to-work traffic, an individual’s ability
to move around an urban area at off-peak hours has increased
tremendously, and he would really like to make his journey to
work at a comparable speed. Thus, even though the actual
miles per hour speed of the journey to work is increasing, the
speed of the journey to work is increasing at a much slower rate
than the speed of travel during the rest of the day, and the
“problem” is a failure to meet expectations, not an absolute
decline in speed of movement. 13
wage legislation, the problems of pollution in noninner city areas caused
by governmental failure to allow a full specification of property rights, and
the intolerably high costs of medical attention for the middle class due to
governmental restrictive licensing procedures for doctors. (See Milton
Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom [Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1962], chap. 9.) In none of these serious urban problems are the poorest
classes involved causally—although they are oft-times the greatest sufferers.
13Robert Bish and Robert Kirk, Economic Principles and Urban Problems
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974), pp. 138–39.