The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

56 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
price is a very small one suggests that they are not really as serious
as they have been made out to be. Indeed, one might say
that, by definition, a serious problem is one that people are willing
to pay a considerable price to have solved. 16
There are some commentators who are even rash enough to
apply this reasoning to the problems of safety. Robert Baker, for
example, says: “A highway system of much safer proportions is
obviously available, but the [costs in terms of] loss of mobility
would be completely intolerable.” 17 And according to Martin
Wohl:
Those who are stuck in traffic congestion . . . would rather make
the same trips without congestion, everything else being equal,
that is, providing they did not have to pay more for less congestion,
or relinquish another amenity achieved by their choice
of transportation mode.
Traffic congestion can be reduced, and even eliminated, in a
number of ways—but usually not for free. It generally will cost
society, or some group within it, something to achieve such a
goal. 18
Wilbur Thompson is one writer who contends that traffic
congestion is actually a rational outcome because of the costs
involved in alleviating it:
The urban traffic problem, like most problems, arises out of the
frustration of trying to reconcile a number of partly incompatible
goals. Urbanites would like to move about their area (1)
quickly, (2) comfortably, (3) cheaply, (4) mostly at the same
time, and (5) mostly to or from the same places. . . .
16 Banfield, The Unheavenly City, p. 10.
17Robert Baker, The Highway Risk Problem (New York: John Wiley and
Sons, 1971), p. 2.
18Martin Wohl, “Must Something Be Done About Traffic Congestion?,”
Traffic Quarterly (July 1971): 403–04.