Car companies in charge of highway construction

[Expat]

The railroads were built by the railroad companies. Bell put up the phone lines. Private companies electrified the cities. Cell towers are built by phone companies. Fios is being built by Verizon. What would happen if highway construction were left up to the car companies?

I understand Ike & co. saw the Interstate system as a matter of national security, but that doesn't mean the government has to build it. After all the government came to an agreement with the railroad companies during the Civil War.

I'm less interested in how plausible this is than I am in the effects of it happening.

 

[wormyguy]

Unlike railroad tracks, phone lines, electrical lines, or cell towers, it's nearly impossible to restrict a highway to only one make of car - meaning that the car companies have no incentive to build them. Although that does give me a funny mental image of the GM highway with the dedicated Cadillac lane.

 

[Mark E.]

You would see toll booths everywhere.

 

[Expat]

Yeah I was thinking that one thing that would keep the tolls down would be that the point isn't to charge for the roads but to charge for the automobiles. But Wormguy has a point, and any private road construction is probably going to have only a tangential relationship with the auto industry after a few years. There goes their reason to discount road uses.

So now we've got a world where the costs of road usage are no longer hidden but paid up-front. What happens?

Development will be higher density and built closer into the cities. More mass transit and earlier investment in better mass transit (subways and high speed rail.) Edge cities and corridor cities form. Houses are smaller and closer together to maximize profit on the more scarce "good" land. Therefore utility bills are lower and commuting costs will also likely be lowered (now that all the costs are out in the open, people can make better decisions for their pocketbooks.) Wow, could this butterfly debt culture? It's possible.

This might help keep wages lower for longer and therefore keep inflation down.

Population isn't going to spread out as quickly; the booms in the South and Southwest won't happen. The Florida boom still might; real estate was a local moneymaker, so I'd expect good state support for roads to emerge there. The Southwest is too vast though, and Phoenix will remain sleepy and unimportant.

States will likely pick up some slack on roads for the public good; at least regulating how the road companies build and maintain. I can see early cooperation in places like the Northwest to subsidize an alt-I95 to try to keep costs low.

Right, I'm well aware that that was a flight of fancy worthy of a 50s Disney cartoon
(God I hate that freakin cartoon! I didn't need Stachiatos' masterpiece to convince me a Disney-run world would be evil.)

Anyway, feel free to rip that all apart, I'm curious what people think.

 

[Dan1988]

The regular U.S. Highway System becomes more popular, and eventually the states themselves will build free alternatives at full expressway/HQDC standard, including parkways, as an alternate for those who don't want to pay the tolls. I could see a few regional schemes coming up this way - say, a New York/New England expressway/parkway system which built on the New England interstate route and U.S. Highway System built along the lines of the British motorway system and Québec's Autoroute system. Hey, it could happen alongside reinvigorated rail service.

 

[David S Poepoe]

The highways are just an extension of the present system of roads funded by both the federal, state and county governments. The automakers would never been able to afford to do such a project.

 

[Emperor Norton I]

The railroads were built by the railroad companies. Bell put up the phone lines. Private companies electrified the cities. Cell towers are built by phone companies. Fios is being built by Verizon. What would happen if highway construction were left up to the car companies?

I understand Ike & co. saw the Interstate system as a matter of national security, but that doesn't mean the government has to build it. After all the government came to an agreement with the railroad companies during the Civil War.

I'm less interested in how plausible this is than I am in the effects of it happening.

This would only beg the question, are we that anal just to prove without a doubt we're not Communists?

 

[PhilKearny]

The difference is that roads predate cars, and roads had a long history being public ways. Carriage and buggy makers or livery stables and hostelers did not construct roads. They served a network that was there throughout civilization. Automobiles came to this road system that was already in existence. The interstate system in the United States merely represented the culmination of this in the U.S.

Railroads had to be built for trains to function, phone lines had to be installed for phones to be useful. These were generally private projects in the United States. While trains could not exist without railroads, cars were there prior to the interstates.

 

[Expat]

The difference is that roads predate cars, and roads had a long history being public ways. Carriage and buggy makers or livery stables and hostelers did not construct roads. They served a network that was there throughout civilization. Automobiles came to this road system that was already in existence. The interstate system in the United States merely represented the culmination of this in the U.S.

Railroads had to be built for trains to function, phone lines had to be installed for phones to be useful. These were generally private projects in the United States. While trains could not exist without railroads, cars were there prior to the interstates.

And I certainly wouldn't expect them to disappear if there were no interstate system. But there certainly must be a spectrum of alternatives where they're not so god-awful crucial to modern life.

 

[Larrikin]

The car companies are in charge of highway construction, they just get somebody else to pay for it, been that way since the 50s.