Privatization of Roads and Highways: Human and Economic Factors, The


Book Description

This work is dedicated to my fellow Americans, some 40,000 of them per year who have died needlessly in traffic fatalities. It is my sincere hope and expectation that under a system of private roads and highways in the future, that this number may be radically reduced.




Last Exit


Book Description

"Proposes experiments in deregulating and privatizing the country's transportation systems to rid them of inefficiencies and significantly improve their performance in moving goods and people around the United States; the book covers roads, airports and airport traffic control, mass transit, intercity buses and railway networks"--Provided by publisher.




The Privatization of Everything


Book Description

The book the American Prospect calls “an essential resource for future reformers on how not to govern,” by America’s leading defender of the public interest and a bestselling historian “An essential read for those who want to fight the assault on public goods and the commons.” —Naomi Klein A sweeping exposé of the ways in which private interests strip public goods of their power and diminish democracy, the hardcover edition of The Privatization of Everything elicited a wide spectrum of praise: Kirkus Reviews hailed it as “a strong, economics-based argument for restoring the boundaries between public goods and private gains,” Literary Hub featured the book on a Best Nonfiction list, calling it “a far-reaching, comprehensible, and necessary book,” and Publishers Weekly dubbed it a “persuasive takedown of the idea that the private sector knows best.” From Diane Ravitch (“an important new book about the dangers of privatization”) to Heather McGhee (“a well-researched call to action”), the rave reviews mirror the expansive nature of the book itself, covering the impact of privatization on every aspect of our lives, from water and trash collection to the justice system and the military. Cohen and Mikaelian also demonstrate how citizens can—and are—wresting back what is ours: A Montana city took back its water infrastructure after finding that they could do it better and cheaper. Colorado towns fought back well-funded campaigns to preserve telecom monopolies and hamstring public broadband. A motivated lawyer fought all the way to the Supreme Court after the state of Georgia erected privatized paywalls around its legal code. “Enlightening and sobering” (Rosanne Cash), The Privatization of Everything connects the dots across a wide range of issues and offers what Cash calls “a progressive voice with a firm eye on justice [that] can carefully parse out complex issues for those of us who take pride in citizenship.”




The Privatisation and Nationalisation of European Roads


Book Description

Presenting an evaluation of the critical elements of the contractual and regulatory design of the public-private collaboration that determines the likelihood of success and failure, this unique book will be of special interest to academics, graduate st




Roads in a Market Economy


Book Description

This work, based on the propositon that roads exhibit typical command economy characteristics (congestion, chronic lack of funds), then shows roads in a market economy framework, employing concepts of ownership, market pricing and profitability to achieve




Public Sector Reform


Book Description

Deregulation, privatization and marketization have become the bywords for the reforms and debates surrounding the public sector. This major book is unique in its comparative analysis of the reform experience in Western and Eastern Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Leading experts identify a number of key factors to systematically explain the similarities and differences, map common problems and together reflect on the future shape of the public sector, exploring significant themes in a lively and accessible way.




Street Smart


Book 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. Gabriel Roth is a transport and privatization consultant and a research fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, California.




Interstate 69


Book Description

Interstate 69 is an enlightening journey through the heart of America. With this epic tale of one vast and controversial road project, Matt Dellinger brings to life the country’s complex political, social, and economic landscape. The 1,400-mile extension of I-69 south from Indianapolis, if completed, will connect Canada to Mexico through Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas. This so-called NAFTA highway has been in development for two decades, and while segments are under construction today, others may never be built. Eagerly anticipated by many as an economic godsend, I-69 has also been opposed by environmentalists, farmers, ranchers, anarchists, and others who question both the wisdom of building more highways and the merits of globalization. Part history, part travelogue, Interstate 69 reveals the surprising story of how this extraordinary undertaking began, introduces us to the array of individuals who have worked tirelessly for years to build the road—or to stop it—and guides us through the many places the highway would transform forever: from sprawling cities like Indianapolis, Houston, and Memphis to the small rural towns of the Midwestern rust belt, the Mississippi Delta, and South Texas. In an era when bridges fall, levies fail, and states lease their toll roads to foreign-owned corporations, Americans are realizing the central importance of infrastructure, how it affects our standard of living and quality of life and how it determines which places prosper and which places fade. This book illustrates vividly that the story of transportation is indeed the story of America—and that story continues. Matt Dellinger connects these dots with an absorbingly human, on-the-ground examination of our country’s struggle with development. Interstate 69 captures the hopes, dreams, and fears surrounding what we build and what we leave behind.




Reforming Infrastructure


Book Description

Electricity, natural gas, telecommunications, railways, and water supply, are often vertically and horizontally integrated state monopolies. This results in weak services, especially in developing and transition economies, and for poor people. Common problems include low productivity, high costs, bad quality, insufficient revenue, and investment shortfalls. Many countries over the past two decades have restructured, privatized and regulated their infrastructure. This report identifies the challenges involved in this massive policy redirection. It also assesses the outcomes of these changes, as well as their distributional consequences for poor households and other disadvantaged groups. It recommends directions for future reforms and research to improve infrastructure performance, identifying pricing policies that strike a balance between economic efficiency and social equity, suggesting rules governing access to bottleneck infrastructure facilities, and proposing ways to increase poor people's access to these crucial services.




Privatization and Regulation of Transport Infrastructure


Book Description

The 1990s saw an increase in the liberalisation of transport policies and a strengthening of the role of private operators and investors in transport infrastructure worldwide. The search for sustained improvement in efficiency is probably secondary to the need to find additional financing, but it is improvement in services that is at the core of the new role of the government in transport. Governments must now become fair economic regulators of many of the privately operated transport services and infrastructures. This book examines the major challenges that governments are likely to face in taking on their new role in transport.