FINANCING THE PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
One hardly expects to hear anything sensible spoken in an election year, but such cynicism was shattered when Senator McCain proposed a “tax holiday” for motor vehicle fuel. The only thing that could be better for the general welfare would be absolute abolition of the tax.

The very idea of a price is that it balances supply and demand. The simplest soul can see that the supply of highway is fixed, but the demand varies from day to day, from hour to hour; hence the highways are sometimes running fast, sometimes choked. When the highway is over-loaded, the vehicles are wasting time and fuel and brake linings, but the tax collectors are contentedly collecting. Because of the fuel tax, everywhere we see STOP signs instead of YIELD signs, stop-on-red instead of go-on-green lights, maximum instead of minimum speed limits, highways divided to prevent the traffic sharing the lanes efficiently, “speed bumps” that are actually delay bumps . And in many, if not all, States, there are exhaust emission limits which demand wasteful engines.

If the highways were being managed to make a profit, there would be very expensive licence plates which gave access to county and State and Interstate highways, and less expensive ones for county and State highways, and quite cheap plates for only county roads. Where there were tolls, the tolls would be high at peak hours and low when traffic was sparse. If there were exhaust emission limits, they would be restrictive only for powerful vehicles with inter-state plates, permissive for small vehicles using county roads.

Observe that these reforms would indeed serve the general welfare; everything you consume was brought to your door by a vehicle using fuel which is, at present, taxed (unless you live in a city that is compressed into an island or peninsula, like Manhattan or San Francisco.) Do not fear that the highways would suddenly begin to deteriorate: firstly, they are already being allowed to deteriorate, and secondly, the fuel tax revenue is not dedicated to the restoration of wear and tear, it is squandered by the Congress.

Let me make plain what I am advocating. I am advocating an end to the public highways being publicly managed - which means, irresponsibly managed. I contend that they should be publicly owned but PRIVATELY managed, by the highest bidder: if any management does not succeed in attracting users and showing profits, then after five (or ten, or twenty) years someone more enterprising will bid the function away from hir.