The United States federal government should close the United States Department of Transportation
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- CP Solves – Accidents
- Privatized roads would be safer and minimize accidents -- multiple reasons.
- CP creates efficient and safe transit -- airlines prove marketplace incentives minimize the risk of accidents.
CP Solves – Laundry ListPrivatization of roads reduces congestion and brings down costs -- solves emissions, and creates ag productivity and economic growth.Rouhani, 9 – PhD candidate Civil and Environmental Engineering Department @ UC Davis (Omid, “SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORTATION AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE”, Projections, Volume 9, MIT Journal of Planning, http://web.mit.edu/dusp/dusp_extension_unsec/projections/issue_9/issue_9_rouhani.pdf) //RI IMPROVING ROAD SYSTEM In general, sustainable development entails three dimensions: economic, environmental, and social sustainability or equity. With no exception, sustainable roads should provide economic efficiency, ecological stability, and social equity (Schwaab et al, 2001). Nevertheless, all the dimensions can be converted to monetary terms. Financial improvement can cover other aspects as will be discussed later. However, a sustainable policy should consider different impacts of pursuing this goal. The present trends in the road systems do not seem sustainable. Congestion is a growing concern for road networks. The average traffic congestion costs for OECD countries account for about 3% of their gross domestic product (GDP), about $810 billion annually: this proportion is 4.4% for South Korea (Schwaab et al, 2001). Congestion also increases greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, losses in energy and time, and criteria pollutant emissions. Reducing vehicle miles traveled (VMT) through demand management and increasing efficiency (sending an efficient price signal) are two broad policies to address congestion or in general external costs from roads. Adding capacity is another solution on the supply side. Although additional capacity may increase demand, taking into account that VMT and GDP are highly correlated (Choo et al, 2001) (even if no causal relationships are found) supports the trend of adding capacity rather than reducing VMT. In other words, the efficiency increase through adding capacity will not only decrease our fuel consumption, pollution, and accidents by providing a better service, but also increase GDP by providing a better access to socio-economic systems. For instance, a study by the World Bank found that although a better road network increases motor vehicle usage, it can reduce GHG emissions by improving agricultural and heating practices (better access to fuels and inputs) (EU road federation, 2007). Thus, the attempts to increase the efficiency of roads might be superior to policies restricting demand-VMT. Those attempts do not restrict people’s travel activity and seek to be more efficient overall. However, a combination of the two approaches can be implemented as well. Financing is another problem in transportation systems. Not only are the funds insufficient, but they are also inefficiently allocated. Transportation costs are not passed to users in the present transportation finance structure. By including the internal costs (construction and maintenance costs) and external costs (congestion, pollution, accidents) of travel, the efficiency of roads can be increased (Schwaab et al, 2001). CP Solves – AccidentsGovernment ownership of roads is the root cause of accidents -- CP reverses this and solves quickly.Block, 9 – PhD in economics from Columbia, Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University (Walter, “Privatization of Roads and Highways”, Ludvig von Mises Institute, 2009, http://library.mises.org/books/Walter%20Block/The%20Privatization%20of%20Roads%20and%20Highways.pdf, p. 5-6)//RI *Sam Peltzman - professor of Economics at the University of Chicago The explanation of apathy toward highway mismanagement that seems most reasonable is that people simply do not see any alternative to government ownership. Just as no one “opposes” or “protests” a volcano, which is believed to be beyond the con- trol of man, there are very few who oppose governmental roadway control. Along with death and taxes, state highway manage- ment seems to have become an immutable, if unstated, fact. The institution of government has planned, built, managed and maintained our highway network for so long that few people can imagine any other workable possibility. While Peltzman puts his finger on the proximate causes of highway accidents, such as excessive speed and alcohol, he has ignored the agency, govern- ment, which has set itself up as the manager of the roadway apparatus. This is akin to blaming a snafu in a restaurant on the fact that the oven went out, or that the waiter fell on a slippery floor with a loaded tray. Of course the proximate causes of customer dissatisfaction are uncooked meat or food in their laps. Yet how can these factors be blamed, while the part of restaurant management is ignored? It is the restaurant manager’s job to insure that the ovens are performing satisfactorily, and that the floors are properly maintained. If he fails, the blame rests on his shoulders, not on the ovens or floors. We hold the trigger man responsible for murder, not the bullet. The same holds true with highways. It may well be that speed and alcohol are deleterious to safe driving; but it is the road manager’s task to ascertain that the proper standards are maintained with regard to these aspects of safety. If unsafe conditions prevail in a private, multi-story parking lot, or in a shopping mall, or in the aisles of a department store, the entrepreneur in question is held accountable. It is he who loses revenue unless and until the situation is cleared up. It is logically fallacious to place the blame for accidents on unsafe conditions, while ignoring the manager whose responsibility it is to ameliorate these factors. It is my contention that all that is needed to virtually eliminate highway deaths is a non-utopian change, in the sense that it could take place now, even given our present state of knowledge, if only society would change what it can control: the institutional arrangements that govern the nation’s highways. Privatized roads would be safer and minimize accidents -- multiple reasons.Block, 9 – PhD in economics from Columbia, Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University (Walter, “Privatization of Roads and Highways”, Ludvig von Mises Institute, 2009, http://library.mises.org/books/Walter%20Block/The%20Privatization%20of%20Roads%20and%20Highways.pdf, p. 15)//RI **we don’t endorse gendered language As far as safety is concerned, presently there is no road manager who loses financially if the accident rate on “his” turnpike increases, or is higher than other comparable avenues of trans- portation. A civil servant draws his annual salary regardless of the accident toll piled up under his domain. But if he were a private owner of the road in question, in competition with numer- ous other highway companies (as well as other modes of transit such as airlines, trains, boats, etc.), completely dependent for financial sustenance on the voluntary payments of satisfied cus- tomers, then he would indeed lose out if his road compiled a poor safety record (assuming that customers desire, and are willing to pay for, safety). He would, then, have every incentive to try to reduce accidents, whether by technological innovations, better rules of the road, improved methods of selecting out drunken and other undesirable drivers, etc. If he failed, or did less well than his competition, he eventually would be removed from his position of responsibility. Just as we now expect better mouse- traps from a private enterprise system which rewards success and penalizes failure, so could we count on a private ownership setup to improve highway safety. Thus, as a partial answer to the challenge that private ownership would mean the deaths of mil- lions of people in traffic accidents, we reply, “There are, at present, millions of people who have been slaughtered on our nation’s highways; a changeover to the enterprise system would lead to a precipitous decline in the death and injury rate, due to the forces of competition.”
Every year, thousands of people lose their lives in highway accidents. Fatal crashes are variously attributed to vehicle speed, intoxication of the driver, lack of safety regulations, or mechanical failures. These are proximate causes, but government management and control are major factors as well. While there will always be some accidents, as long as customers want safety, pri- vate owners will compete to provide it. If a good safety record on a road attracted customers, it would be in the interest of owners to provide it. Owners of airlines know the importance of safety and regular maintenance of their aircraft, for they face the consequences when safety fails. If the cause is believed to be the airline’s,. customers choose another carrier. As a result, air transportation is extremely safe But today’s highway monopoly means that there is no monetary incentive for government to improve its safety record. People have to drive regardless of the safety of the road. Marketplace competition solves much better than public ownership -- creates efficiency and reduces the risk of accidents.Bradley, 9 – PhD, Von mises Institution (Edmund, “Privatization of Roads and Highways”, Ludvig von Mises Institute, 2009, http://library.mises.org/books/Walter%20Block/The%20Privatization%20of%20Roads%20and%20Highways.pdf, p. IX)//RI Lest you think your money would be going up in exhaust fumes, remember that market firms, who must please customers to stay in business, provide everything better and less expensively than government, without that nasty moral hangover of forcing people to pay for things they may not use or want. Your gasoline price already includes forty to fifty cents per gallon in taxes for road building and maintenance. This means I’m paying twenty-five to thirty-three dollars per month for road use now. With privatization of roads, that cost would go down, probably considerably. It happens every time anything is moved from government hands into private hands. There are other benefits that would follow road privatization. The private roads that exist now have fewer accidents than pub- lic roads, probably in part because they’re better maintained: If private road builders let potholes remain, get reputations for high accident rates, or do repairs during rush hour, they have to deal with complaints and with people choosing other roads. Directory: files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Integer programming and game theory files -> 4 Integer Programming files -> Bpa vehicle Window Repair Scenario #1 task: Procure vehicle window relacement. Objective files -> Pop Warner History files -> North Carolina Inclusion Initiative Mapping Where Children with ieps are Being Served Purpose files -> Fall 2013 Spring 2014 Program Data: Standard 1 Exhibit 4d files -> Hanban – asia society confucius classrooms network 2010 request for proposal files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations Download 1.4 Mb. Share with your friends:
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