Meeting the cost of transportation infrastructure is a given no matter which way you go. It’s not as though a private company would do it for free. It seems to me the real choice is between public investment in a public entity for the common good or funneling public money into private pockets.

The politics of the Show-Me Institute are Libertarian at heart and so I doubt their studies will ever conclude that privatization is anything but a great idea.

Agree with Dan in post #1. David, are you going to continue to shill for the right wing Republican-financed plutocratic Show-Me Institute? Unbelievable! Our middle class has atrophied due to the domination of “trickle-down/supply-side” economics as advocated by the Milton Friedman/Chicago School of Economics since the late 1970’s. Privatization is the Holy Grail of Fascist Economics: socializing the costs(via citizen taxpayers) while privatizing the profits. I am not throwing the word “Fascist” out there for pure political meaning–look it up: Fascism is the Corporate State, with private property and profits intact while the people are held in authoritarian sway. A perfect fit for the hard right wingers who populate corporate think tanks like the Show-Me Institute. Just to remind you all: I like Naomi Klein’s definition of a “think tank”(paraphrasing her: made up of hacks paid to think by the makers of tanks!). Wake up, David and join the vast majority of our fellow Americans who are waking up!

I’d favor the two-pronged, modified free-market approach of (1) raising the gasoline tax (which has the added benefit of encouraging conservation) and (2) charging tolls for access to “premium” lanes on freeways.

Those who want to pay less then have the choice of doing so by modifying their driving habits in ways that are socially beneficial. But overall, those who use the roads the most will be the ones who pay the most to build and maintain them.

I don’t know if anyone commenting actually read the paper. I did. It gives a good metric for when private public partnerships are a good idea and when they’re not. They’re good when you don’t have the budget capital to fund an expensive project, but there is a urgent need, such as safety, because typically the private company fronts the state the money, and agree to be paid back over time. That makes it a zero-sum game for cost, sometimes even cheaper.

They’re also good because the people who use them pay for them. Gas taxes do work, but when you’re talking about a specific access road that is not really used by most of the state, tolling could be a better equitable solution–and when you’re talking about the saving from gas by going over something instead of around it, a toll may well be cheaper for the people using that new road or bridge that may not get built if the entire state has to pass a gas tax before it happens. And, Ted44, I think there was mention of some places where a premium lane would be a good idea. A lot of the paper framed what makes a good contract for public-private partnerships as well, and situations where public-private partnerships are NOT a good idea, Dan, because of competition from a non-toll road.

The thing about roads is that they are always a public investment, even if a private Co. builds them, because they don’t move. Once they are paid for, they become public, but unlike other types of investment, there’s no chance the company can pack up and take them somewhere else.