Talk:Private highway

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[edit] Intentions

My intent is to continue expanding this article and get it to featured article status. Pictures are needed; please add if you can find any. Rad Racer | Talk 05:56, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

More info is needed about Washington state's road privatization. Rad Racer | Talk 06:42, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Walt Disney World has some private highways. They include six-lane freeways (though most of those are publicly maintained by the Reedy Creek Improvement District), but are primarily for resort access. Would they have a place in this article? --SPUI (talk) 12:02, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Sounds interesting. I saw this article: [1]. Have you seen any other useful articles? I am looking for info about private highways in other countries, also.
One issue with most of the private highways I've encountered is that there is usually some degree of public regulation, which makes it more difficult to sort out which of their problems are due to privatization, and which are due to harmful regulation.
Virginia State Highway 267, for instance, is half-privatized. The west part of the road is the private Dulles Greenway, and the east part is the public Dulles Toll Road. Since people tend to drive the entire distance when they commute to DC, the toll takes into account the cost of the entire distance; also, the Greenway's tolls are regulated by the State Corporation Commission, so it's not truly an example of pure privatization.
I've driven the Greenway and it seems like a well-designed road. It's fast and never backed up, but because the public, non-toll Route 7 runs parallel, I would only drive the Greenway if I had a rush-hour commute to some high-paying job, and needed to avoid the Route 7 traffic. Ideally, I suppose Route 7 would be privatized too and we'd have some competition going on.
The only thing I want to avoid is having too much discussion of public toll roads, like the Dulles Toll Road, since that is mostly covered in the article toll road. Rad Racer | Talk 15:34, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I'm in Orlando, so I know about the Disney roads mainly from experience. They're just like normal roads except that the signs are different (but they're also different on the RCID roads). I have some cruft-level information about when the land was transferred between Disney and the RCID, but nothing about when they actually opened. --SPUI (talk) 15:49, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Collaboration

I am in Richmond and we have the Pocahontas Parkway to show for the new public-private partnership. This one is a bit anemic volume-wise and has a stiff toll, recently increased. However, IMHO, the road would not ever have been built if it had to wait for placement on VDOT's 5 and 10 years plans, due to both the high cost and politics, and will be able to meet its debt. The high cost was due to the high level bridge over the James River. The politics are basically that it hurt the City of Richmond the most, hurt Henrico County to a lesser degree, and benefited Chesterfield County. Those 3 are the dominant factors in Richmond metro affairs. When a new exit is created for the Richmond International Airport, I think the volume will increase. Despite the high tolls, savvy commercial users will go for the time and mileage savings. Not all projects can deliver both, but this one does, even with the high toll. Mark in Richmond Vaoverland 15:16, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC) (copied from user talk page)

Sounds good, have you seen any interesting articles or other resources about that highway? I will try to get in touch with Peter Samuel also (of Toll Road News) and see what he has to say. Rad Racer | Talk 15:46, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Organization

I have reorganized the article. The background section will include a brief historical overview, bringing the subject from ancient times to the present. There will be some mostly theoretical arguments for/against, and then the section about the individual roadways. Most importantly, every fact will have a citable source, so it will be more useful for students and others looking for more information. This will take awhile though, because I know little about this subject beyond the economic theory, and have to research all the facts from scratch. Rad Racer | Talk 17:26, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)

You might want to consider putting this article into the Road transport category, as well as making a See also link to Public road (and possibly adding this article to a See also section in Public road), so that more people can find this information. --65.3.137.171 04:43, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A few private "developer toll roads" to look up

Adams Avenue Turnpike, Emerald Mountain Expressway, Foley Beach Expressway, Burnside Expressway, Poinciana Parkway - [2] --SPUI (talk) 17:30, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rename Private highways of North America?

If the definition of a private highways is that it is owned by a private company rather than government then this article should be renamed or contain some real examples from the rest of the world. The India example doesn't seem to fit the description.

The statement Private highways have been constructed all over Europe needs some justification. Italy's Autostade are still owned by the government. The Autostrade Group builds, manages and operates tolls on the network. Similarly, the M6 Toll in the UK was built, and is operated privately under a 53 year concession from the UK government.--ReddyRose 08:28, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

I doubt there is a privately held road in the world which does not suffer from government intervention. In France, the government has appointed a body who can sets toll prices, not really a market at work if you ask me, but plain old dirigisme by politicans and government bureaucrats. Intangible 22:53, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
I would have to agree that the statement all over Europe needs to be backed up. The only mentions of Europe is Italy and a 27 mile highway in the UK. That is hardly "all over Europe." I just noticed that the picture in the article is of a highway in France, but it is not mentioned in the article itself. --Holderca1 20:07, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Private Highway vs. Toll Road

I am a little unclear on what the difference is between what this article calls a private highway and a toll road. To me, a private highway is a road on private property which is typically free, but is not a thoroughfare. Or is this reference of private highway a subset of Toll Road where the tolls are collected by a private firm rather than government ran toll roads. I think it may just be that these both overlap. For example, not all Toll Roads are privately owned, and not all private highways are tolled. --Holderca1 19:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

You may want to include a link to the cross city tunnel page. This is a tunnel in central Sydney which is privately owned and had a troubled past. It has had to face a number of public boycots due to the high price of the toll. The company that constructed the tunnel was given permission to close off other roads in order to funnell traffic into the tunnel. It is still not running at its expected capacity to this day.

[edit] Naming of this article

I was thinking that we might call the article highway privatization, but that seems to pertain more to the process of bringing government highways under private ownership/operation, to the exclusion of those highways that start out as private ventures. Yet, "private" has the connotation of "confined to particular persons or groups," which may not be accurate in the case of highways such as the Dulles Greenway which are publicly accessible. For similar reasons, those who support separation of school and state often prefer to call public schools "government schools" and private schools "independent schools". What is the most appropriate nomenclature for this article? Sarsaparilla (talk) 22:09, 16 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] More articles

http://money.cnn.com/2007/09/24/smbusiness/high_tolls.fsb/index.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sarsaparilla (talk • contribs) 04:50, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Countries vs. continents

As there are potentially dozens of countries that could be listed as having private highways, I'm going to list them under continents instead. Given phenomena such as that Texas/Mexico highway, this regional approach may make good sense anyway. Sarsaparilla (talk) 13:30, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Overlap with toll roads around the world

How shall we handle the overlap of this article with Toll roads around the world? Sarsaparilla (talk) 01:07, 21 January 2008 (UTC)