Patrick I agree with you entirely. As someone who is a big fan of public transport I utterly reject the implication that also makes me a socialist. My complaint about, what I see as the over use of, private cars is that they restrict the freedom of other people to walk, cycle and use public transport. I don't see how that sits well with libertarian ideology. What's liberal about a bus with 100 people on it being slowed down by 100 cars with one person in each?

The answer for me is much more traffic segregation, like they have in Holland so that cars are free to travel as they wish and so are cyclists, pedestrians, buses and trams. Only when this is the case though, do people realise just how much more expensive in terms of time, is travelling by car through cities rather than by other means.

And since when does libertarianism mean being a loner? The implication here is that if you share space on a train with a bunch of other people or pay a railroad for a ride instead of riding around in your own personal car, you're somehow less free.

While not a libertarian myself, I know more of them than election results would suggest I should. They take the train when it's available and they certainly don't spend their time all alone, "being free."

As someone who grew up in an area with zero public transport, I can tell you that it does indeed represent freedom to many people. I was fortunate to be able to afford expensive driving lessons (required by the state) and a car when I turned 16, and the insurance on it, and the road tax, and the petrol to put in the tank. If I hadn't been, my horizons would have been very limited indeed.

I let my Ohio driving licence expire when I turned 21 (by not being in the state or indeed the country in order to renew it at that time), so now when I go home, I can't drive. It's okay, because I'm visiting with friends and family and am with them a lot, but if I ever want to "leave the jurisdiction, free to travel on [my] own schedule," I'm pretty much out of luck. In those times, a bus or train service represents freedom.

I wasn't saying I agreed with R.C.Dean, just that this is what he said. It seemed Transport Blog Relevant, hence me posting it. Perhaps my title, with no inverted commas to distance myself, suggested I agree, but otherwise ...

In truth I don't know whether I agree or not, and if so how much. I personally have a driving license, from years ago, but live as I do, where I do, in order to be able to walk everywhere, or use public transport. Driving, in England, is largely a chore, I think, not freedom at all, especially when it's cold and wet and grim. All those other cars! Urgh. Being a libertarian absolutely doesn't involve having to use a car, or shun trains and buses. Being a libertarian means choosing. Quite so.

However, I do think there may be something to the idea that particular lifestyles, psychologically speaking, give rise to particular political attitudes, which don't logically follow, but which in real life do seem to again and again. Clearly freedom includes the freedom to conform, to use buses, or to stay put behind your lace curtains. But my guess is that the disposition of Americans to travel long distances in big vehicles, and to believe in things like libertarianism in pretty large if not overwhelming numbers, are somehow related. The non car dominated cities of the East Coast seem to be rather politically anti-libertarian. The wide open spaces places, the four wheel drive places, are relatively pro-libertarian, it seems to me, and it further seems to me that what RCD says may have something to do with all this.

Since so much public transportation is a money losing proposition bulled through by statists who believe they know better than the market how to get people from here to there, there is a legitimate case that the car (which is less dependent on public subsidy) is more libertarian than the train. But that is purely because of a comparative level of subsidy, not anything inherent to the forms and modes of shaping steel and engines that each mode of transport uses. If trains were mostly run profitably and cars were a state subsidized bureaucratic mess, the comparison would still be made but it would be 180 degrees reversed.

My $0.02 US.

A question I'd genuinely like the answer to; are American's low-density car-dependant suburban sprawls the consequence of an unrestricted free market, or are they a consequence of government subsidised road building (and political lobbying by the car, oil and construction industries)?

From the Chrysler bailout to the interstate highway act to the pork they push through congress every year, the car gets plenty of subsidy, far, far more than any form of public transit. Besides, transit is not just an answer to a problem itself, it's an answer to an externality.

I also have to take issue with your statement that the east coast is anti-libertarian. Taxes may be higher and you might not be allowed to smoke anywhere you want, but you don't have support for the sort of intrusive pornography, abortion and sodomy laws that exist in this nation's soft, chewy center. Both are anti-libertarian to some extent -- it's just a matter of what you care about more, the government in your wallet, or the government down your pants.

I suggest to that if anyone wants to see a place where people truly hate the car -- others' cars -- then he should go visit any American suburb.

This is just more evidence that the libertarians are being supplanted in their own movement not only by pacifists but also by socialists.

The correct answer is not the type of transportation that defines a libertarian. That both modes are typically paid for with public funds make them both bad in that sense.

If the bus or rail is privately owned and built with private funds, then it's more libertarian. If roads were not paid for by the government, then they would be more libertarian.

But seeing as how the political movement for "light rail" and metro bus systems are typically a classic case of central planning and require the individual to conform to very limited schedules and stations, it is much less in line with the spirit of libertarianism.

Tim Hall: that's a classic chicken/egg problem. The big pickup in suburbanization/sprawl came post-WWII with the Levittown phenomenon (pre-fabricated housing developments, to which returning troops moved en masse when they returned home and got married), and the second driver was white flight. Would these two things have happened with lighter road subsidies? Probably. Did road subsidies make them easier? Certainly.

It should be noted that the final death of large-scale passenger rail service in the USA took place in the mid-to-late '70s, even as gas prices spiked under the Arab oil embargo and a national 55-mph speed limit was put into place to conserve fuel. That would have been the time for mass transit to take off here, but it really didn't (although Washington did get its Metro out of this time period). Cars just generally work better for us than mass transit does.

Take a look and compare population densities between the EU and the US. The US is much less densely settled at 29 people per square kilometer (I'm sourcing from wikipedia) than France (109), Italy (192), Germany (233), or the UK (244).

With that basic fact in mind (which has nothing to do with the free market or socialism) it would make sense that people don't jam themselves together tightly but tend to spread out a bit more. Low density development makes sense when you have a low density country.

When our population hits a billion, it will make sense to have something like an EU style rail system and settlement patterns. To equal the crowding in the UK, we'd need over 2 billion US residents.

Take out 9/10ths of the UK's population and see how much sense mass transit makes. It won't except for some limited areas of high population concentration like London and even there it is an iffy proposition. What a surprise, it would look much like the US. The resulting UK car culture would create localized congestion problems as people tried to jam their cars into popular bottlenecks like central London but it doesn't pay to extend mass transit because people are so used to the necessity of driving in the other 90% of the UK that mass transit usage would be very low.

I've found it a pretty universal phenomenon that europeans don't understand in their bones how big the USA actually is, nor how empty it is. They need to drive (not fly) across a significant portion of it before they understand how different it is.

In some parts of the world (mostly Asia) there are very high density cities. It the density of a city is high enough, good rail services are necessary for people to be able to get around the city. If the density is high enough and the rail system good enough, then trains make it possible to get around the city easily and quickly. (As frequencies are so high, it is possible to get from anywhere in the Tokyo metropolitan area to anywhere else simply by turning up at the station and hopping on the next train). Cars for mass transportation simply do not work in this kind of city. Most of Tokyo's railways have been built privately without subsidy, so their existence is entirely consistent with a small state.

There are benefits of living in a high density complex city, and I think that in essence these are that people in such places have more choice with respect to a lot of aspects of how they live their lives. Such cities are not possible without rail systems, and I think that good rail systems in these places increase freedom quite dramatically.

So, I think my point is simply that it depends on circumstances.

One thing to remember on this whole issue is that, as a practical matter, it is much more common for statists to subsidize and promote mass transit over private car than the other way around in circumstances when the other transportation system would be chosen by more people. In that sense, and that sense only, mass transit systems such as trains should be looked at with suspicion. They rightly have a rebuttable presumption of statist cheerleading backed up with forced taxation.

I think overall, what most people here observe, and what this blog consistently points out is the shitload of distortions caused by political meddling in the transport market whether its roads or rail. Its just as problematic as govt meddling in any other issue, although some of the softer Libertarian/conservative types don't always see it that way.

The beauty of the automobile (or rubber-tired personal transportation for bike lovers) is the element of the private (voluntary) sector competing to satisfy the needs of infinite varieties of tastes and lifestyles. With mass transit, its more prone to being one size fits all.

As long as folks have some choice in a significant component of the travel experience(private vehicles operating on poorly managed government roads) they feel "freer" than when they are at the complete mercy of the masses. This is why most libertarians are reflexively anti-mass-transit (although I am not).

Next time I drive my car -- like in about ten minutes -- I will remember that the state was not involved in creating the road system and that the whole system was created by voluntary donation. Not.

The heavy hand (i.e. condemnation) of the state is the foundation of the US roads and street system. To say that "statists" prefer trains strikes me as avoiding the unpleasant truth that automobile enthusiasts love the state's power (here of condemnation), too.

It's just a matter of taste where they prefer to use the state's power. And writ large, I'd have to say that there is far less state power involved in creating a mass transit line than in creating a road system: simple arithmetic tells that story.

There is a difference, I think, between a system that violates peoples' rights one time and then places everything on a pay as you go system (as many toll based roads are) and a system which not only violates private property rights at construction time but heavily subsidize and tax on an ongoing basis. It's not that one is right and the other is wrong. It is one is bad and the other is worse.

In such an imperfect world, what is the freedom advocate to do? I say pick the lesser of two evils and try to improve both systems, the bad and the worse.

Here's a proposal, what would it be worth to sell immunity rights to eminent domain? Seriously, the government could calculate the maximum inconvenience a stubborn inholder could create, value it, and sell immunity from eminent domain for a reasonable price above the inconvenience cost. All of a sudden, there would be a new alternative method of resistance to new roads, airports, or powerline rights of way.

I wouldn't expect that such things would be bought very often but they would certainly be a good educational tool and would allow truly committed people to avoid condemnation by opening up their wallet.

"Seriously, the government could calculate the maximum inconvenience a stubborn inholder could create, value it, and sell immunity from eminent domain for a reasonable price above the inconvenience cost."

Seriously, how could you evaluate the cost of not being able to condemn a particular parcel for an unforseeable use a hundred years hence?

Anyway, there is still the police power. Do you realize that fire departments do not compensate people when they have to bust through a house to get to a neighboring house which is under fire? That's because of the police power inherent in sovereignty. There are some very interesting US Supreme Court cases which OK government taking with NO compensation; it's still good law after decades (these cases are typical of war-time.)

Why do most US libertarians equate their philosophy with the right?

David Sucher - The very existence of such immunity rights would rearrange infrastructure building decisions. People would be much more careful in their decisions to build because they would know that they can't just bribe the politicians to remove inconvenient property holders if the property holders have bought up their immunity rights. As a practical matter, it would significantly increase the value of property and create situations where you could 'sell twice', first your immunity rights, then your property in the eventual condemnation.

Your fire department example is more on point. But is it just that fire departments don't have to pay compensation? Sure, it's precedent, but is it good precedent? I suggest that the political branches could improve on this.

Since you've foreseen difficulties, you could structure the rights with exceptions for temporary crossings for war, fire, and police purposes. I did not claim this was a fully formed idea, but rather that I thought of it in mid response.

Another potential difficulty would be in the creation of no development, no crossing belts around an urban area, in effect laying siege to the place. In essence, this is the inholder problem in reverse. But again, the solution lies in crafting the rights so that they cannot be used to create such a siege situation, reverting the rights back to the state in such cases without compensation. Thus, such immunity rights would be least valuable to the big property owners who generally have enough clout to protect themselves in the political process while being of value to small landholders who generally get pushed around and abused in the current political process. I think that's a pretty good result.

Ian - There are two groups of libertarians, right libertarians and left libertarians. They represent people who came to libertarianism from the conservative and liberal camps respectively. Both species of libertarians emotionally identify with their former ideological bedfellows and try to pull the entire movement into a species of right or left respectively. Lately, the US libertarians have had more defections from conservatives than from liberals so the right libertarian camp is larger and thus you have the phenomenon you observed taking over. If left libertarians were more successful at weaning away liberals into left libertarianism, you would see the opposite phenomenon occurring.

One thing to bear in mind about the "subsidy" of roads in the U.S. is that virtually all of that subsidy comes from taxes on the use, sale, registration, and possession of motor vehicles. The only subsidies from general taxation are mostly used for the construction and maintenance of local roads--which would be necessary even if there were no privately-owned vehicles (e.g. for the emergency services, mass transit, deliveries, refuse collection, etc.).

Of course, eminent domain is arguably an indirect subsidy--but that would apply to any mode of transportation infrastructure.