> Rich neighborhoods often have much better roads than poor neighborhoods under our current system. I don't know that it would be any worse under a system where roads were privatized.
Do they? Better how? Maybe they're slightly better in the "potholes get fixed sooner" sense, but I'm worried more about poor/rural roads being abandoned because they're not profitable to maintain. Or worse, shunted back to government in a "privatize the profit, socialize the costs" scenario.
I'm curious to see a detailed plan if there's one floating around that has some steam behind it, as a lot of this of course depends on the details of how privatization is implemented. But if the argument starts and ends with "Well, privatizing things is inherently good, why should roads be different?" then I'm strongly against. If you want to up-end a perfectly functional transit system in a radical and poorly-understood way, the upside has to be a lot clearer than "I don't know that it would be any worse under a system where roads were privatized"!
Do they? Better how? Maybe they're slightly better in the "potholes get fixed sooner" sense, but I'm worried more about poor/rural roads being abandoned because they're not profitable to maintain. Or worse, shunted back to government in a "privatize the profit, socialize the costs" scenario.
I'm curious to see a detailed plan if there's one floating around that has some steam behind it, as a lot of this of course depends on the details of how privatization is implemented. But if the argument starts and ends with "Well, privatizing things is inherently good, why should roads be different?" then I'm strongly against. If you want to up-end a perfectly functional transit system in a radical and poorly-understood way, the upside has to be a lot clearer than "I don't know that it would be any worse under a system where roads were privatized"!