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IV. Conclusions It is now time to draw this discussion to a close. I have no hard and fast conclusions as to the best way to privatize streets and highways. It is perhaps more important that they be privatized than how this task is accomplished. Once in the private sector, and these important elements of our economy will be managed in the same rational manner as all other goods and services subject to the consumer check of profits and loss. This is not to say that there is no pattern we can use, even in broad brush strokes, to guide the privatization process: it is to imagine the contrary to fact conditional wherein city streets were always provided by private enterprise, and then to tailor the present situation to resemble that as much as possible. This, by its very nature, is difficult. Imaginary constructions cannot be relied upon without misgivings. And yet, as we have seen, there are rough shapes that may be discerned through the fog. One is that the people responsible for our present plight should be excluded from the process of privatization; another, is to as closely as possible approximate real world private road conditions. When a thoroughfare is very long, thin, and isolated, as in the case of a private railroad, adopt that as a model: one owner for the entire avenue; e.g., the one dimension model. When the public sector amenity resembles, instead, a relatively large land holding, e.g., Disneyland, then one owner might be more appropriate for an entire neighborhood of streets. page 21 |