Rethinking America’s Highways
A 21st-Century Vision for Better Infrastructure
9780226759302
9780226557571
9780226557601
Rethinking America’s Highways
A 21st-Century Vision for Better Infrastructure
Americans spend hours every day sitting in traffic. And the roads they idle on are often rough and potholed, their exits, tunnels, guardrails, and bridges in terrible disrepair. According to transportation expert Robert Poole, this congestion and deterioration are outcomes of the way America provides its highways. Our twentieth-century model overly politicizes highway investment decisions, short-changing maintenance and often investing in projects whose costs exceed their benefits.
In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways that is sure to inform future decisions and policies for U.S. infrastructure.
In Rethinking America’s Highways, Poole examines how our current model of state-owned highways came about and why it is failing to satisfy its customers. He argues for a new model that treats highways themselves as public utilities—like electricity, telephones, and water supply. If highways were provided commercially, Poole argues, people would pay for highways based on how much they used, and the companies would issue revenue bonds to invest in facilities people were willing to pay for. Arguing for highway investments to be motivated by economic rather than political factors, this book makes a carefully-reasoned and well-documented case for a new approach to highways that is sure to inform future decisions and policies for U.S. infrastructure.
352 pages | 5 halftones, 2 line drawings, 14 tables | 6 x 9 | © 2018
Economics and Business: Economics--Government Finance, Economics--Urban and Regional
Political Science: Public Policy
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Table of Contents
Preface
Chapter 1. Our Troubled Highway System
Chapter 2. How the Private Sector Is Reinventing America’s Freeways
Chapter 3. Where America’s 20th-Century Highway Model Came From
Chapter 4. The Rediscovery of Toll Road Companies Overseas
Chapter 5. Toll Concessions Return to America
Chapter 6. The Benefits of Long-Term P3 Concessions
Chapter 7. Critics and Controversy: Opposition to Tolling and Long-Term Concessions
Chapter 8. Highways as Network Utilities
Chapter 9. Transforming the Interstate Highways
Chapter 10. Transforming Urban Freeways
Chapter 11. Challenges to the New Vision
Chapter 12. A New Future for US Highways
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
Chapter 1. Our Troubled Highway System
Chapter 2. How the Private Sector Is Reinventing America’s Freeways
Chapter 3. Where America’s 20th-Century Highway Model Came From
Chapter 4. The Rediscovery of Toll Road Companies Overseas
Chapter 5. Toll Concessions Return to America
Chapter 6. The Benefits of Long-Term P3 Concessions
Chapter 7. Critics and Controversy: Opposition to Tolling and Long-Term Concessions
Chapter 8. Highways as Network Utilities
Chapter 9. Transforming the Interstate Highways
Chapter 10. Transforming Urban Freeways
Chapter 11. Challenges to the New Vision
Chapter 12. A New Future for US Highways
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
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