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Product Description
The poor health of today's roads - a subject close to the hearts of motorists, taxpayers, and government treasurers around the world - has resulted from faulty incentives that misdirect government decision-makers, according to the contributors to "Street Smart". During the 1990s, bad government decision-making resulted in the U.S. Interstate Highway System growing by only one seventh the rate of traffic growth. The poor maintenance of existing roads is another concern. In cities around the world, highly political and wasteful government decision-making has led to excessive traffic congestion that has created long commutes, reduced safety, and caused loss of leisure time. "Street Smart" examines the privatization of roads in theory and in practice. The authors see at least four possible roles for private companies, beyond the well-known one of working under contract to design, build, or maintain governmentally provided roads. These include testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. Two chapters describe the history of private roads in the United Kingdom and the United States. Contemporary examples are provided of road pricing, privatizing, and contracting out are evident in environs as diverse as Singapore, Southern California, and Scandinavia, and cities as different as Bergen, Norway, and London, England. Finally, several chapters examine strategies for implementing privatization. The principles governing providing scarce resources in free societies are well known. We apply them to such necessities as energy, food, and water, so why not to "road space"? The main obstacle to private, or semi-private, ownership of roads is likely to remain the reluctance of the political class to give up a lucrative source of power and influence. Those who want decisions about road services to be controlled by the interplay of consumers and suppliers in free markets, rather than by politicians, will have to explain the need for change. "Street Smart" makes a powerful case for the need for change and sheds light on the complex issues involved.
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Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
 Must-read for privatization advocates, 2008-06-08
This book contains some essays that are very helpful for privatization advocates. In particular, "Do Holdout Problems Justify Compulsory Right-of-Way Purchase and Public Provision of Roads" demolishes the argument that eminent domain is necessary; and "Improving Road Safety by Privatizing Vehicle and Driver Testing" shows how insurers can play a key role in privatizing Departments of Motor Vehicles. Moreover, "America's Toll Road Heritage" demonstrates not only that private toll roads have worked in the U.S., but that people invested in them even in the absence of a profit and in the presence of free riders (i.e. the "shunpikers.") The lessons learned here can be used to argue for privatization of defense and many other industries that are supposedly public goods producers. Anarcho-capitalists, take note!
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
Good resource arguing for more privatization of roads, 2007-12-10
This book is an excellent collection of arguments and information that are favorably disposed toward privaatization of roads. Various aspects of privatization in different aspects of road systems throughout the world are presented and discussed. While the pros and cons are analyzed, the conclusions argue that roads will benefit through increased private sector involvement.
The largest flaw in this book is that it is blind to the important question as to whether the real issue is one of proper management and delivery of road services. While it is easy to cite examples where privatization outperformed public sector road operations, nowhere is there recognition of the alternative analysis that the problem may be one of managerment and operational systems. Roads are a public commodity which the public depends upon for access to work and pleasure, delivery of goods enjoyed by all, use by emergency services, etc. Roads thus are a public good. The private sector, by definition, must secure a profit in order to invest in roads. While it is argued, often accurately, that the motivation for profit causes improved management, it is also true that the public sector could similarly seek to improve management and operations and do so at less cost, as the need for a profit does not exist within the public sector.
This book provides good arguments that something major is required for our roads to improve. The status quo is doomed. Congestion is noted where interstate highway travel increased by 38% from 1991 to 2001 while the miles of interstate highways increased by 5%. Congested roads lessen our quality of life, when stuck in traffic, costs businesses time and money having employees less available, and literally wears people out. In 11 large urban areas, the average times of commuting rose from 24 minutes in 1982 to 55 minutes in 1992 to 62 minutes in 2002.
The book appropriately criticizes the maze of revenue sources for roads and argues about the inequities of the lack of a correlation between those paying for roads and thus using roads.
The equity issue though needs to note that roads serve all directly and indirectly. The book correctly notes that revenue sources are insufficient and pose long term dilemmas from issues including a lack of proper maintenance and massive long term congestion worries. The solution may be better direct revenues for road needs.
Innovative ideas are presented in this book. For instance, rather than turning tolls over to a private sector entity, tolling authorities could sell shares to investors. Insurance companies could issue drivers licenses and vehicle registrations, thus ensuring that those issued these documents are insured. GPS technology could calculate miles of roads used and assist in tackling the equity issues. Maintenance that is contracted out should follow performance standards. This book is a great resource on road issues.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
 A 'must' for college-level students of transportation and urban planning, 2006-08-17
Edited by Gabriel Roth, whose expertise includes twenty years of service as Transportation Economist for the World Bank, Street Smart: Competition, Entrepreneurship, and the Future of Roads is an anthology of essays by learned authors discussing both theory and practice for private, market-based alternatives for road services from licensing vehicles and drivers to management of government-owned road facilities to franchising, outright private ownership, and more. America's current road transportation system is beset with traffic congestion, unsafe conditions, high costs, political corruption, environmental degradation, pork barrel pet projects and much more. In an era of rising national debt, Street Smart is more needed than ever as a source of ideas for more economic and safer means to look after transportation infrastructure.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
Endorsement for Street Smart, 2006-05-15
Private turnpikes were commonplace in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries but they eventually succumbed to competition from railways and onerous government regulations. Street Smart makes an eloquent and convincing argument that the time is ripe for the private sector to make a comeback with a boost from modern electronic tolling technology and innovative contract designs. Chapters are organized into five parts that complement each other nicely. Early chapters explain why market forces allocate resources efficiently and describe various roles for the private sector in supplying road infrastructure and services. Later chapters describe the history of private roads and some recent, encouraging, developments with privatization, and suggest alternative ways forward in the course of privatization. Written by leading economists, engineers and other professionals, Street Smart is essential reading for academics, policy analysts and policy makers, as well as firms contemplating involvement themselves.
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