The Privatization of Roads and Highways - Ludwig von Mises Institute

Congestion and Road Pricing 65
potholes with such an onerous task. Nor is there any reason to
believe that government is uniquely suited to the task of successfully
subcontracting for such an operation. For subcontracting,
too, calls for no mean level of skill. And surely we cannot blithely
assume an ability to recognize the ability to maintain such a system—surely
the prerequisite for successful subcontracting.
But even if run in an impeccable manner, the surveillance
scheme would leave something to be desired. That is because it
is an engineering solution, designed to maximize the transportation
of vehicles through the highway network. As such, it is a
viable scheme. But it does nothing to end congestion. It only
transforms congestion from a situation where the waiting is disguised
in the form of slow speeds, to one where the waiting
becomes explicit in the form of long queues. It represents a shift
from slowly moving traffic with minimal queues to quickly moving
traffic with longer queues. Congestion disappears from the
traffic lanes—but reappears at the side of the highway in the
form of waiting cars.
In some ways, what electronic surveillance seeks to accomplish
is reminiscent of the phenomena of reserving tables at
restaurants. This too is an attempt to deal with overcrowding.
Explicit queues disappear, but does the problem disappear? No.
Only the place where the waiting occurs changes. And so it is on
the highways. Electronic monitoring may well bring about convenience.
But in the absence of programs designed to cut down
on the demand for road services, it cannot solve the problem of
congestion. It can only transform the congestion of slow moving
traffic into quicker movement—plus overcrowded, or congested
queues at the entrances to the highway.
(d) Planning, zoning, building new towns. There is an increasingly
popular viewpoint within the transportation community
according to which it makes little sense to try to solve the congestion
problem by itself, or in a vacuum. Rather, the true solution
lies, first, in recognizing the present lack of cooperation
between the auto and mass transportation on the one hand, and
between both of these modes of transport and the decision of