Street Smart

Effective road transportation is crucial to economic and social well-being. Yet, in cities and rural areas worldwide, road systems suffer from traffic congestion, unsafe conditions, high costs, political corruption, waste and pork, environmental degradation, and poor maintenance. Street Smart examines private, market-based alternatives for road services, in both theory and practice. The book explores at least four such possible directions for private services, including testing and licensing vehicles and drivers; management of government-owned road facilities; franchising; and outright private ownership. The book examines contemporary examples of entrepreneurial innovation in road pricing, commercialization, and privatization in environments as diverse as California, China, Singapore, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Although political classes everywhere are reluctant to give up their lucrative sources of power and wealth, the main obstacle to the private provision of roads is public ignorance. Street Smart now traces the history of the private provision of roads under the incredibly difficult conditions prevailing before the railway age, and shows how modern road-management and pricing technologies can enable the interactions of consumers and suppliers in free markets to provide truly responsive road services.