Public Transportation

Pennsylvania is once again facing a budgetary crisis over state financing of its various transportation systems, all of which to one degree or another are publicly financed. The only independently financed public mode of transportation is the Pennsylvania Turnpike which is funded exclusively from highway tolls.

Everything else from highways, buses, trains, trolleys, to the few remaining form of water transportation are funded to one degree or another by the state government. I will need to get a breakdown of final numbers on this to see how much goes to each, but the numbers are substantial no matter what they happen to be.

What is interesting to me is how many people hate the idea of public money going to what are generally called "public transportation" such as buses and trains. These are generally run by governmentally appointed authorities. They all lose money and the usual accusation by the opponents of public transportation is that they are run by corrupt or incompetent people. My own suspicion is that these entities would lose money no matter what even if they were in private hands, but it would be difficult to undertake such a study since there are no privately run inner-city bus companies or private passenger rail companies left in the U.S.

The ones that did originally exist went out of business for various reasons, primarily because they were losing money. This was primarily because cars became very affordable to the average American and people preferred to spend their money for the convenience that a car provided rather than use public transportation. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories out there about how Detroit, Congress, local government, lawyers, and the courts worked to undermine privately owned public transportation, but in all likelihood it would have survived if were economically profitable for those companies to remain. My own very brief research into our local trolley company shows that it was losing money even as it was expanding and eventually went under because of competing private bus services.

This brings me to my next point. The role of roads in transportation and the role of government in the creation and maintenance of those roads (and especially bridges) have always been a tricky subject. Everybody wants and needs roads, but there is always a question of who is going to pay for them. Originally roads were needed for moving soldiers and moving merchant items (who knows which came first). In our modern era though, roads are now for travel and leisure. This was not the case, of course, until the invention of the automobile. Prior to that time, travel for pleasure was restricted to the extremely wealthy due to the amount of time involved, and most travel was done by rail and sea since those were much faster than horse powered transportation.

As I stated yesterday, people tend to arrive at their conclusions first and then find the rationalization after the fact. People also tend to support government spending for X if they use X and oppose government spending for X if they do not use it. X is either an essential function of government or a waste of taxpayers' money depending on whether or not someone uses it. So, of course, I am always taken back a bit by people who call themselves "fiscal conservatives" or believers in the "free market" who think that interstate highways are an essential function of government that should be subsidized by all taxpayers, including those who do not use them. As an aside, the Commonwealth Foundation, a proponent of the free market it everything else in Pennsylvania is curiously silent on the idea of applying these principles to our highway systems.

There are several arguments put forth to explain why this is so important, but the question really is, if you believe in the value of the free market as an item of faith in all other matters (based either on principle or positive results in other areas), why not in this area? I will explore the arguments against the various proposals to incorporate elements of the free market into interstate roads later, but at this point, I would just like to explore some of the different ways the free market impulse can be incorporated into the interstate highway system and why this approach should be taken.

The first method is to use toll booths that are used to fund the entity that maintains the roads. There are, of course, different ways to set up toll booth systems, but at its core, the idea of using toll booths is to make the people who use the highways pay for them. If a person chooses to use the highway, the person pays for it. If the person does not use it, they don't pay for it. This is a simple point, but the entire point behind the free market system. People are given 100% control over how their money is spent.

The second method is to make the entity itself private. While this may be difficult with federal roads, it is certainly possible with the Pennsylvania turnpike.

The third method is to privatize certain aspects of a government-run system on the cost side. This could mean not only how those working on these projects could be hired, but also how permanent employees could be hired. In other words, materials and labor could be run by private companies with governmental oversight.

To repeat, the reason I am exploring this is because of the budget crisis in Pennsylvania over the funding of transportation. Leaving aside the fact that this fight involves the various regional transportation entities, we will just focus on the roads. One article I found this morning mentions that there is an estimated $8 billion worth of repairs need to Pennsylvania roads alone - primarily for bridges. This is in addition to the current shortfall for current road maintenance. We do not have the money for this, so the idea is to find a source of funding.

There has been a strong reaction to placing toll booths on interstate highways for various reasons (as mentioned above), but the fundamental question is why not have those who use the interstate highway system pay for it? The money must come from somewhere, so why not have the users of the system be the ones who pay for it? Otherwise money will have to come from some other source not directly related to the use of the highways. More importantly, if tolls are not used, money can ONLY come from Pennsylvania citizens. The primary advantage of a toll system (whether in public or private hands) is that EVERYONE who uses it pays for it, not just Pennsylvania citizens.