Roads in a Market Economy

by Gabriel Roth, Milton Friedman, Daniel J. Boorstin

The author starts from the proposition that roads, being part of the 'command economy', exhibit the typical command economy characteristics of congestion, chronic shortage of funds, and insensitivity to consumer needs. As an alternative, the book presents a market economy framework, employing the tried and tested concepts of ownership, market pricing, and profitability, for the commercial provision of roads on the model of telecommunications. After setting the scene, the book looks in detail at commercial management and ways of charging for road use; road investment and provision on a commercial private and immediate steps that can be taken to advance commercialization.
This book, with its world-wide and historical vision, copious figures, tables, references and three indexes, describes the deepening crisis of motorized mobility. To relieve this crisis, the author applies the principles used to deal with other problems of scarcity in market economies. The book is both a readable and accessible resource particularly for staff in central and local government, transportation and land-use planners, economists, engineers, and for academic research and graduate courses.

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Research Fellow at the Independent Institute, has pioneered scholarly work on market-based roads, parking, and transit. Following a Rees Jeffreys Fellowship at the UK Road Research Laboratory, and studies at the Department of Applied Economics (University of Cambridge), on the economics of car parking, he worked for 20 years in five continents as a transportation economist for the World Bank. He has also authored studies for the governments of New Zealand and Sri Lanka, U.S. Agency for International Development, Inter-American Development Bank, Adam Smith Institute, International Center for Economic Growth, and other organizations, and served for three years as President of The Services Group, a consulting firm specializing in market-oriented approaches to economic development.

An author and contributor to scholarly volumes, his books include Paying for Roads: The Economics of Traffic Congestion (Penguin Books,1967); The Private Provision of Public Services in Developing Countries (World Bank, 1987); Roads in a Market Economy (Ashgate 1996); and Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads (The Independent Institute, 2006).

Reviews

[Zachary Moore]

The book is interesting in some of its core ideas about the commercialization of roads and yet Roth's proposed solutions can hardly be called "market" solutions as most of them involve private parties serving as contractors, building a road and operating it for X number of years before giving to the government, with all of the company's fees to be paid through taxation and late distributed by the state. In addition, there are proposals for things such as congestion taxes that eventually can (and have) played into the hands of people with no concern for privatizing roads but animated by a desire to discourage private automobile ownership. Given these drawbacks, the book lacks much of the punch that a true market approach to roads might provide.