Comment 26802

By Dr Downtown (anonymous) | Posted October 01, 2008 at 20:32:59

"Civic, what is so unique about roads that disqualify them from being offered by the private sector?"

Mind if I interject? The same unique thing that's why you don't have five different hydroelectric lines running down the street. It's a natural monopoly and competition would not improve its efficiency but would make it less efficient through duplication..

"A lot of people already choose to take advantage of the 407"

The 407 wasn't provided by the private sector. It was built by the government (oooh!) and sold to a company to manage it. There's no reason the government couldn't have kept the highway themselves and collected the tolls.

By the way I'm all for tolls because they send important price signals, but they don't need to be privately owned to do that--as the 407 ironically demonstrates.

"By pricing roads at their true cost, I think many people would find it cheaper to live in denser communities."

I agree with you here but see absolutely no benefit to letting private companies run roads that the government can't also accomplish. In fact the easiest way to price roads is to simply raise the tax on gasoline, something private firms couldn't do (unless you decided the government should licence the right to tax - oops, I shouldn't give you any ideas).

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