Taking Politics Out of Transportation: Economist Bruce Benson on Private Roads

Americans are accustomed to government provided roads, but "a private road system is going to get you from here to there more efficiently, and with less congestion," says Bruce Benson, a professor of economics at Florida State University.

Reason.tv sat down with Benson during the Libertopia festival in Hollywood, California to discuss the limitless possibilities of private road construction.

Drawing on his research on private alternatives to pubic provision of services such as road construction and law enforcement, Benson points to America's long history of roads that were privately built by communities that wanted to connect into a system of trade. Benson predicts a return of privately built roads as our congested public infrastructure continues to degrade.

Approximately 6.5 minutes.

Interviewed by Zach Weissmueller. Camera and Editing by Hawk Jensen; animation by Austin Bragg.

Go to http://reason.tv/ down for HD, iPod, and audio versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv's YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new content is posted.

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• transportation
• bruce benson
• private roads
• toll roads
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• libertopia

[StateExempt]

@djthereplay - I never said it does not cost money, I did say that claiming government is the only way to provide a given good is essentially a question-begging argument that forecloses the possibility of all other alternatives.

But I do agree that open-access property and public goods in general are a more complicated problem for market actors to provide than most other goods and services. What Benson describes here certainly cannot be implemented in a day or two.

[djthereplay]

@StateExempt

Maybe because you do not insist that it costs our government money that our goverment prints and presses which we all share as Americans to provide the proper materials needed to do that good .

With the Postal Service Monopoly, Some Politicians are making postal workers overpay to keep the benefits of their job to a level where it brings them down.

Difference, Investing in infrastructure and safer roads, good. Sucking money out of postal workers, bad.

- Dwight

[StateExempt]

@djthereplay - Then that needs to be changed.

Just because people are not granted the option to use private alternatives to a government good and are forced to use and pay for it does not make that the best way for providing that good. An example is the postal service monopoly on mail delivery.

I find it ironic that you insist government does NOT control everything invasively, yet you also use the fact that it DOES as proof that government is somehow the only way to provide that good.

[djthereplay]

Hey Bruce Benson !,

Sorry to bust your twisted ill logistics about private roads, But any road that is not the driveway on the front yard or backyard of your house is a public road.

Don`t give me this mess about road privatization when everybody who drives a vehicle uses these roads to get from point A to point B.

Private Roads ..... nothing. Stop doing what you're accusing our government of doing which is acting like they control everything and everyone in an invasive way.

- Dwight

[djthereplay]

@LordCadby

You just made @ShwangShwing's point.

- Dwight

[Distortion0]

I'm not so sure about this. When you think about it, there's only one best way to get from point A to point B. Only one person can own that road. It's not like another firm can come in and build a second "most efficient road". So it's by nature, a non-competitive industry.

[LordCadby]

@swu880 thankyou, i like it when somebody else can see that we dont need the government to run our lives, i swear the amount of communists online that dont know how economics works *sigh* its not even just economics, they barely understand morals...

[swu880]

@swu880

The very fact that there is both unused roads and overcrowded heavy traffic roads shows massive amounts of waste- not to mention many govt roads are overpaid & underlaid

[swu880]

@LordCadby

agreed! most of these cingy statists are just that- clingy & dumb. They falsely assume that government could even get itself out of a paper bag

[ShwangShwing]

@LordCadby If you have enough money to buy an apartment and then just leave it and buy a new one somewhere else then you obviously don't have this problem.