The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

60 The Privatization of Roads and Highways
sense. If the congestion is caused by great hordes of people entering
the traffic flow at the same time, what better way of ending it
than by staggering their work hours?
But there are problems with this simple, apparently rational
view. Most restaurants, for example, are busiest during breakfast,
lunch, and dinner time, and perhaps in some cases, after show
closings, for late-night meals. In other words, restaurants suffer
from congested traffic, a peak load problem, during these times.
But were a restaurant management seriously to propose that its
customers stagger their meal times “in order to reduce and
spread out the rush hour peaks,” it would be laughed right out
of business in a trice. Its competitors would have a field day.
Many bowling alleys are open twenty-four hours a day, but
“suffer” from peaks of demand in the late afternoon and early
evening, until perhaps 10 p.m. Some have solved this peak load
problem by advertising cut-rate prices during the morning and
early afternoon hours, in order to smooth out the flow. When
such changes in consumer behavior are an endogenous result of
price reductions, customer satisfaction can be maintained. But a
mere exhortation to “stagger” travel demands can be interpreted
only as a callous disregard for the consumer of transport services.
The proponents of staggering have failed to realize that there
are economies involved in tailoring the working hours of the
labor force into a common pattern. Cooperation between complementary
labor factors of production is enhanced by a common
workday. Exhortations may induce staggering on the part of
employers of labor whose productivity benefits the most from
the common work hours. This result might ensue if these
employers are amongst those who are politically weakest, or who
are more dependent on the good will of the governmental
authorities.
In contrast, if a price reduction is offered for off-peak travel,
all employers will be tempted to accede to the wishes of their
employees for cheaper travel. The ones who actually give in and
reschedule their work forces will tend to be the ones whose