I realize writing an article about who would build the roads if there was no state is beating a dead horse but this task must be done to preserve my sanity and let me clear my mind for work. So let's allow the dead horse beating to commence !
Below you will find a map to help with explaining this situation. The two arrows indicate my direction of travel from a place off the map to a place off the map. In the middle is a yellow box. Inside that yellow box is our topic: Mound Road. For scale, every green square is a square mile.
If you are from Michigan and possibly even if you aren't, you may remember Mound Road was destroyed this past winter. Cars that continued to try to drive on it were damaged. There were places where flat tires would happen to nearly 100% of cars that crossed a certain point. There are videos of this but this is just a back story I'm moving on from. I'm not even going to get mad about that. the weather and trucks destroy roads here. It would happen with or without a state.
The state has been working to fix this road ever last winter's destruction. It's October 16th, snow is about to fly, and another road damaging winter is almost here. The Mound Road construction project has become a huge menace in my life and I don't even drive on the road. Like the chicken, I just want to get to the other side.
The screen shot of the map was taken at 9:45 a.m. As you can see, every major road near my path, that crosses Mound road is burgundy. That's google's color for the worst possible traffic. A ways outside my path is a detour I often take; I-696. I-696 is closed going in that direction as it is in a behind schedule remove and replace construction project. That's another road story but I'll say one quick thing about it. The road was perfectly repaired and smooth when they started tearing it up. It was a pleasure to drive on.
Back to Mound. Because of the 696 closure, I've been taking 16 mile road, (the road north of my arrows) to work. It's a more direct but often slower rout than the 75 mph, traffic light free 696. Today, Waze told me to go north one mile to 17 mile road to cross Mound Road in a two mile round trip detour. When I got one mile from the approach, I hit the Mound Road crossing traffic. Waze told me it would take 14 more minutes to cross it than it originally thought.
I decided to turn around and head north to the first road that has a bridge over Mound, M-59. The detour makes for smooth sailing but this means driving nearly 9 extra miles to cross one road. I had been burned trying to use other roads to cross. As you can see, in the map, 45 minutes after rush hour should be over, every choice is bad. So I drove the 9 miles.
A situation like this starts having me think about solutions to this problem. How can it be that they have nearly blocked every major east west road for 9 miles in a major metropolitan system, off and on for months? Government--That's how. In my thinking above, I can easily come up with half a dozen ways to make life better for about 200,000 or so people, while fixing the weather damaged Mound Road. Then I realize, that's not the point.
The point is, I'd like to see how roads would be managed without a state doing it. I cannot imagine private company getting away with pissing off this many people. If I can come up with half a dozen ways to make this better, you can bet your ass other people, who make it their life's work could do it too. How on earth do statists get hung up on this issue? You'd think roads would drive people to anarchy. I know at least one person who was driven there by roads.