Buen artículo de Benjamin Powell resumiendo los argumentos teóricos a favor de la privatización de las carreteras y autopistas. No estamos en realidad tan lejos de este escenario, pues a efectos prácticos las compañías concesionarias que hoy gestionan las autopistas de peaje en España actúan (en parte) como propietarios privados en materia de construcción, conservación y explotación comercial (por ejemplo, el Túnel del Cadí).
En Estados Unidos se ha experimentado con los peajes flexibles para solucionar el problema de la congestión. La 91 Express Lanes, operada por un consorcio privado, ofrece distintos precios a lo largo del día: desde $9.50 los viernes por la tarde (dirección este) a $1.25 durante la noche. El plazo de algunas concesiones es también bastante extenso, lo cual permite al concesionario tener una visión largo-placista similar a la del propietario. La Skyway de Chicago, por ejemplo, fue cedida en 2004 a la Skyway Concession Company por un plazo de 99 años.
Aunque se han introducido elementos de mercado en la gestión de las carreteras en las últimas décadas, la privatización íntegra es necesaria para permitir la experimentación descentralizada/competitiva y descubrir los usos más eficientes de estos recursos, ya sea en materia de seguridad vial (para lo cual los propietarios deberían estar exentos de las regulaciones viarias, que al imponerse uniformemente impiden la búsqueda de normas más eficientes) como en materia de congestión, peajes y desarrollo de infraestructuras.
A continuación copio varios fragmentos relevantes del artículo de Powell.
Problemas de la propiedad y gestión pública de las carreteras:
Nothing unique about roads causes them to be congested, expensive, and irrationally placed. All of these failures are a product of government ownership and operation. Congestion, like long lines, is a sign of a shortage at the legal price. The price for using most roads is zero. Drivers all pay the same gas and excise taxes whether they use a busy road or an empty stretch of country road, whether they drive at rush hour or late at night. We have a shortage of road space because people do not have to pay for road use based on the scarcity of road space relative to demand.
When government planners build roads, they have little incentive to control costs. Unlike private firms, they do not make greater profits when they keep costs down. In fact, bureaucracies often benefit by maximizing their budgets. This problem is curtailed somewhat when private firms build the roads for the government, but, even then, government planners often pick contractors based on politics rather than on efficiency.
Finally, roads are irrationally placed because they are outside the realm of profit-and-loss accounting. In private markets, investments are made on the basis of expected profits and losses. In the case of roads, this means that roads constructed should provide the highest benefit to consumers as measured by their willingness to pay for using the roads minus the cost of construction. Absent these price signals, governments are unable to identify which roads are most needed and which are wastes of money. Pork-barrel spending on roads only exacerbates this fundamental problem.
Ventajas de la propiedad privada de las carreteras:
Private companies would be allowed to construct major highways, bridges, and tunnels or to purchase existing ones from the government. The companies would then charge tolls to pay for the roads' acquisition and maintenance costs and to make a profit. Because owners would profit by better serving consumers, they would have an incentive to ensure that their roads were safe and fast and that they led to where people wanted to travel most.
(...) Private highways could use flexible tolls to minimize congestion, charging higher prices when traffic is heavy and lower prices when traffic is light. Companies could raise or lower tolls throughout the day to maintain 55 to 65mph free-flow speeds at all times. Any time congestion started to develop, prices could be raised to encourage drivers to seek alternate routes or delay their own travel. Such flexible pricing causes drivers to account for their contribution to congestion and improves efficiency by allocating scarce road space to those with the highest demand for it. (...)
Most "private" roads still operate under government regulations that set and enforce maximum speeds, drunk-driving laws, licensing requirements, and other traffic laws. Accidents between drivers are externalities on government roads. When roads are privatized, though, the externality is internalized to the owners of the road, who will lose profits if their roads are unsafe. Although it is difficult to predict what the rules would be, if private owners were free to set their own regulations and enforcement strategies, they would likely innovate new methods to ensure that their roads were safe without imposing unnecessary inconveniences on drivers.
Para una defensa más extensa y con múltiples referencias sobre la privatización de carreteras y autopistas, véase The Privatization of Roads and Highways, de Walter Block (disponible en pdf).
