science

Private highway

Private highway is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Private highway rather than just read about it. In short: A private highway is a highway owned and operated for profit by private industry. Private highways are common in Asia and Europe; in addition, a few have been built in the United States on an experimental basis.

Key takeaways

Private highway belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Private highway to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Private highway from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

A private highway is a highway owned and operated for profit by private industry. Private highways are common in Asia and Europe; in addition, a few have been built in the United States on an experimental basis. Typically, private highways are built by companies that charge tolls for a period while the debt is retired, after which the highway is turned over to government control. This allows governments to fulfill immediate transportation needs despite their own budget constraints, while still retaining public ownership of the roads in the long term. An obstacle to private highways is that government regulation can stifle price flexibility and introduce negotiation and paperwork requirements that increase operational expenses, while having to compete against free public roads. In addition, private highways lack some advantages that governments have, such as sovereign immunity against liability for accidents, the use of eminent domain power to acquire private property for roads and the ability to issue tax-exempt securities. Free-market roads are generally advocated by Libertarians, who consider them safer and more cost-effective than government operated roads.

History

The Interstate Highway System provided for in the Federal Aid Highway Act was a federally funded, non-toll system. According to Simon Hakim and Edwin Blackstone, "by 1989, [private] roads comprised just 4,657 miles (7,495 km) of the 3.8 million miles (6.1 million km) of streets and roads in the United States and only 2,695 miles (4,337 km) out of the 44,759 miles (72,033 km) of the interstate system."

Recent trends The National Center for Policy Analysis and the Cato Institute have proposed that the Demsetz auctions commonly used to award franchises be replaced with Present Value of Revenues auctions in order to reduce risk and thus required rates of return by private highway owners. Under this system, contractors would bid an amount equal to the present value of cash flows from user fees they are willing to accept for the project. The lowest bid would win. Boarnet and DiMento believe that private highways will become more important as the rise of gasoline-efficient hybrids causes a decline in gas tax revenues. Many highways are constructed under a "build-operate-transfer" model in which ownership ultimately goes to the government.

Around the world

Asia As of 2003, the Hong Kong government was planning to securitize five toll tunnels and a toll bridge through bond issues. India also had a private highway under-construction between the two cities of Bangalore and Mysore in the state of Karnataka. A vast number of the country's road projects have been upgraded under a public-private partnership, thus operating similar to private highways. In Indonesia, many toll roads are built by private companies, and private toll roads are being built in Bangladesh.

North America Mexico has some highways operated by private companies. In Canada, the 108 km Highway 407 ETR through the Greater Toronto Area is operated privately under a 99-year lease agreement with the provincial government. The highway uses electronic toll collection. Users who do not have a toll tag (called a transponder) in their vehicle are tracked by automatic number plate recognition, with the toll bill being mailed to the address of the plate on file. There are also some private highways in the United States.

Europe Of the 11,000 kilometers of France's highways, 8,000 km are under private concession. 3,120 kilometers of Italy's highways (comprising 56% of the country's toll roads) are controlled by Autostrade Concessioni e Costruzioni Autostrade. According to Forbes, "Autostrade was an early Electronic Age entry, computerizing to its highway system in 1988". The M6 Toll was the first private toll motorway in the United Kingdom. The project was described by urbantransport-technology.com as a "43 km dual three lane (plus hard shoulder), £485.5 million motorway" with six toll stations.

See also Private road Private highways in the United States Road pricing Shunpiking Toll road Toll roads around the world

References

Further reading Samuel, Peter: Virginia bureaucrats finally OK toll hike for Dulles Greenway Virginia, Toll Roads News, July 8, 2004.

External links IBTTA, International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association. Privatized Highways: A Toll Too Far?, The Growth Management Institute, May, 1996. A state-by-state tally of highway privatization projects in the United States, Mother Jones magazine, Jan 2007

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Private highway

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Private highway claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Private highway before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Private highway ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Private highway

In research: Private highway appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Private highway in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Private highway is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Public economics, Road transport, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Private highway outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Private highway” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Private highway in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Private highway means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Private highway out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Private highway in simple terms?

Why does Private highway matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Private highway?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Private highway.