The United States federal government should close the United States Department of Transportation

CP Solves – Emissions/Pollution

CP reduces emissions -- incentivizes private sector innovation and creates more effective emissions controls.

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. Pollution and pollution controls on automobiles would also be handled by road privatization. If auto pollution were to grow too thick, people living near the offending roads would sue the biggest, most obvious target: the road owners. Road owners would therefore charge higher fees for cars without up-to-date inspection stickers. Auto manufacturers would build pollution- control equipment into cars, and advertise how cleanly they run. Automakers do this already, but under the gun of a government that mandates pollution levels and what kind of pollution controls manufacturers use. Without government interference, engi- neers would be free to compete to provide different technologies to reduce costs and improve horsepower while providing cleaner burning engines. With the inspection stickers being coded to your automobile’s age, manufacturer, and model, there might be a sep- arate pollution rider on your monthly statement. Drivers of new Hondas might see a discount, while drivers of old belchers would pay fees that might be higher than the road tolls themselves.

CP lowers costs and reduces air pollution.

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)//RI

WALTER BLOCK: I foresee a decrease in cost in road use com- pared to now. This is the ordinary expectation when we privatize things like garbage removal, postal services. There is even a gen- eral “rule of two” promulgated by Steve Hanke, E.S. Savas, and others: it costs the public sector roughly twice as much to do any- thing as the private. I’d be amazed if roads were an exception. Air pollution, with one exception to be mentioned below, is entirely a separate issue. The reason we have it at all is due to a government failure to uphold private property rights, in that pol- lution is merely and simply an uninvited border crossing, a tres- pass of dust and other particles, as it were. So, air pollution could rise, fall or stay the same as we moved to road privatization. It all depends upon the state upholding, or failing to uphold, private property rights in this domain. The one exception is that lawsuits for pollution would be much easier with private rather than public roads. No longer would you have to sue millions of separate auto owners. Now, you could sue one or just a few road owners for being bawdy houses, not of sex, but of aiding and encouraging pollution on their property, which then leaks out onto other people’s prop- erty.1

CP decreases emissions and congestion -- only privatization creates a lasting solution.

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

Not only can privatization decrease congestion, but it can also decrease emissions by shifting speeds to more efficient parts and decreasing travel time. The speed of approximately 80 kilometers per hour represents both maximum flow and lowest emissions including GHGs (for most of the vehicle models), which is the peak part of the model. The competitive outcome is desirable from this aspect: the target of a competitive market would be providing the service mostly at the peak point of the graph. As an example of increasing efficiency by charging, each priced lane in the median of State Route 91 in Orange County, Cal carries twice as many vehicles per hour as the adjacent toll-free lanes during peak-hours based only on a good balance of demand and capacity (DeCorla-Souza, 2008).
More evidence.

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

Privatization of transportation infrastructure has gained increasing attention in recent years mainly due to the lack of funds in the transportation sector. Privatization can be considered as an approach to roadway sustainability. Two different aspects of privatization can help sustainability. Private participation increases funding and investment opportunities and transformation to private ownership, which provides clear property rights can help the process of environmental charging. On the other hand, increasing the efficiency of roads through optimal pricing and optimal investment, a byproduct of privatization, can indirectly decrease the externalities produced by transportation. Transportation sector revenue increase, another byproduct of privatization, can be used to fund transit systems and other publicly owned infrastructures. Differentiating between vehicle classes can help the process of emissions reduction using a rebate policy. Further work will focus on how this rebate policy should be designed.

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