Our highway system and our education system have much in common. Both are dominated by government and most people assume that is necessary. In both we find aggressive lobbies that constantly push for more “investment” for the good of the country. We’ve long had public schooling and our road network has been built and maintained by government. Sure, neither is perfect, but there’s really no alternative—or so most people think.

In his recent book Highway Heist, George Mason University economics professor James T. Bennett argues that, concerning roads, the conventional wisdom is wrong. We blundered into government control of roads in the 19th century, and we have repeatedly doubled down on this mistake ever since. An assembly of special interest groups now wields enormous power over transportation policy in Washington and the result is that Americans are saddled with a highway system that is decidedly substandard. It costs too much and delivers too little.

Bennett writes:

Infrastructure in the form of roads and highways has often been seen as an economic boon, enabling producers to reach wider markets, get their products to market most quickly and cheaply, and expand their choice of suppliers; it also gives employees a broader range of choices in where to work and live, and expands options for consumers as well. It is, obviously, essential to a modern economy. But it is not so obvious that these avenues of conveyance need planning, building, and support by government, whether at the federal, state, or local level. Locating such responsibility in the public rather than the private sector means, perforce, their politicization, and consequently the misapplication of resources due to political pressures exerted by and on behalf of influential political actors.

Sources of boundless patronage / In his early chapters, Bennett explains how the United States got away from the idea that roads were properly a local concern with scant governmental involvement and adopted the belief that governments need to build and maintain this infrastructure. The story begins with a bit of carelessness at the Constitutional Convention when, with the drafting nearly complete, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts suggested adding to the power given to Congress to establish post offices the authority to establish “post roads.” Exactly what that entailed was not spelled out, but Gerry’s handiwork made it into the document by a vote of 6–5.

That troubled two of the young nation’s foremost skeptics of government power. Bennett quotes from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison saying that if the federal government became active in the building of roads, it would be “a source of boundless patronage to the executive, jobbing to members of Congress & their friends, and a bottomless abyss of public money.” Furthermore, Jefferson warned, governmental involvement would create an “eternal scramble among the members who can get the most money wasted in their State; and they will always get most who are meanest.” Prescient words, those.

Ironically, the first federal road project was instigated during Jefferson’s presidency, the National Road. Jefferson’s secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin, wanted the federal government to build a road through the new state of Ohio, saying that it was essential for “cementing the bonds of union.” Jefferson went along eagerly, his former strict constructionism forgotten. The door was now open to federal “investments” in roads, canals, railroads, and other internal improvements.

How did things turn out? Just as Jefferson had predicted. After several decades of government-funded internal improvements, the experience was so bad that Michigan, in its state constitution of 1851, included a provision banning public expenditures on them.

From bikes to a behemoth / Bennett’s story picks up again in the latter decades of the 19th century when pressure for improved roads began to come from an unexpected source: bicycle enthusiasts. As cycling grew popular, some of its devotees organized to have state governments improve the roads. Led by bicycle-maker Col. Albert Augustus Pope, cycling enthusiasts formed the League of American Wheelmen (LAW). LAW’s objective was to upgrade roads, funded by tax dollars.

In those days, road maintenance was a local matter. In communities, men were expected to devote several days per year to working to maintain the roads, which were chiefly used by farmers. Most of them were satisfied with things as they were and did not want to pay taxes for what they saw as a frivolous pastime for the affluent.

LAW’s initial efforts were rebuffed, but Pope was undaunted. He undertook a campaign to “educate” Americans on the importance of better roads. Bicycle and carriage makers joined in, realizing that their products would sell more if the roads were smoother. And he found an ally in the public education system, which favored large, consolidated school districts rather than the numerous little schools found in most of the country’s rural hamlets. Improved roads would help them achieve that goal.

In 1892, this Good Roads Movement held a national convention in Chicago, where members set their sights on the enactment of legislation establishing a National Highway Commission. Never mind the lack of constitutional authority for any such entity, said its chief architect, Civil War hero Gen. Roy Stone. It was just “a simple, harmless bill” that was needed because the United States had “the worst roads in the civilized world.” It was passed in 1893 and the commission was housed in the Agriculture Department to help mollify farmers.

President Theodore Roosevelt was a supporter of the Good Roads Movement. He argued that improving the nation’s roads would not only improve the economy but also “elevate the social and intellectual status of the open country.” About the same time, the old “post roads” language came to the fore. The Post Office came up with the concept of Rural Free Delivery (RFD), which would save inhabitants the expense of going into town to pick up their mail. The catch was that the Post Office would only do RFD on roads that were up to its standards. By that tactic, all those rural roads were brought under federal authority.

Ike liked roads / World War I did much to promote centralization of power in Washington, but the big effect on roads wasn’t felt until after the war. In 1919, in a huge publicity stunt, the War Department organized a “Transcontinental Motor Train” to drive military vehicles from coast to coast. One of the vehicles was a tank, commanded by a young Army officer named Dwight Eisenhower. The big point was to show the supposed need for federal authority and funding for highway building and maintenance. Nevertheless, the federal gas tax had to wait until 1932, when it was passed as an “emergency” measure to replenish depleted federal coffers.

After leading Allied forces to victory in World War II, Eisenhower was elected president in 1952. One of his objectives was to build a great highway network across America—our version of the German Autobahn. The Good Roads people smelled the money and went about selling the idea in every way they could: national defense, motorist safety, more jobs, saving time, and better evacuation if nuclear war should eventuate. Opposition was negligible and, Bennett writes, Ike’s concept had the “sheen of bipartisanship” about it.

But there was plenty of fighting over the details. How would it be paid for? The final bill required a 50/50 federal/​state split and the creation of a Highway Trust Fund to be filled with money from the federal gas tax. Tolls would be forbidden on the new Interstate Highway System (IHS). Eisenhower signed the bill in 1956 and soon the work began at a frenzied pace.

Bennett devotes considerable space to the plight of the many Americans who were displaced by highway construction, nearly all of them poor. Many politicians exulted in this “elimination of blight” from cities. Only years later did some politicians, mostly on the left, take notice of the considerable human toll. Bennett notes that it was 1962 before the feds passed a law stipulating that the states had to provide housing information (but not moving expenses) for the tens of thousands of renters who were forced from their dwellings.

Once the IHS network was completed, the road lobby needed a way to keep the spending levels high, particularly during the fiscally frugal Reagan administration. At just the right moment, “policy entrepreneur” Pat Choate published America in Ruins, which put a thin intellectual veneer on the notion that our roads were now “crumbling” and more “investment” would pay off handsomely. It helped to fend off efforts to economize on highway projects, as did the tactic of deliberately underestimating project costs in order to get them approved.

Cause for hope? / Bennett sees some reason for optimism that American highway policy might move in a sensible direction, which is to say toward direct user fees. He points out that the gas tax turns all electric vehicle drivers into free riders, a situation that seems unsustainable, and that improvements in toll technology are reducing the opposition to toll roads. Also, federalism is making something of a comeback and Bennett believes that the states would make better use of resources without the heavy hand of Washington.

Even if it’s unlikely that we will ever get government entirely out of the road business—Bennett’s ideal—at least we can lessen the inefficiency we now endure.

Highway Heist inspires this thought: What if the United States had left the development of roads to free enterprise? We left the development of vehicles up to market competition, at least until federal meddling began with fuel economy standards and now subsidies for electric vehicles. If we had similarly left the development of roads to the free market, we would probably have a rather different highway system than we do now, one that’s more efficient and that wouldn’t have inflicted such a large human cost with its construction. The natural progress of capitalism would have brought us from the early days of plank toll roads to modern highways without all the “heist.” As with other matters where government intervention distorted or prevented private action—here I’m thinking of unemployment insurance, retirement income, welfare, schooling, and the provision of money—government road building has given America decidedly suboptimal results.