July 30, 2004
He who owns the road is the state, or is he?
This came up in my posting on bus deregulation. In the first draft I wrote the following:
I think it should be fairly obvious but if someone
truly owns the road ie can do what he likes with it, then anyone whose property borders the road (assuming here that there isn't another road round the back) cannot use the road (either himself or for the purpose of having deliveries made) without permission. He is effectively a prisoner.
Now, there is a slight fly in the ointment here in that the usual definition of a state is the body that claims a monopoly of force. So, it's not quite the same but it seems pretty close - there's an awful lot of control involved.
But it occurs to me that the assumption about roads around the back may not be true. If a whole road suddenly went out of bounds the residents would find alternative means of access and pretty quickly too.
The only real danger would be if the road owner were able to surround the property with his roads.
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If a person must cross a piece of land to access another piece of land for access because there are no direct roads, wouldn't an easement be in order?
wouldn't an easement be in order?
What's an "easement"?
ease·ment, n
- (law) the privilege of using something that is not your own (as using another's land as a right of way to your own land)
- Law. A right, such as a right of way, afforded a person to make limited use of another's real property
- (Law) A liberty, privilege, or advantage, which one proprietor has in the estate of another proprietor, distinct from the ownership of the soil, as a way, water course, etc. It is a species of what the civil law calls servitude. --Kent
- an interest in land owned by another that entitles its holder to a specific limited use or enjoyment (as the right to cross the land or have a view continue unobstructed over it) —see also dominant estate and servient estate
- affirmative easement
: an easement entitling a person to do something affecting the land of another that would constitute trespass or a nuisance if not for the easement
- easement by implication
: an easement that is created by operation of law when an owner severs property into two parcels in such a way that an already existing, obvious, and continuous use of one parcel (as for access) is necessary for the reasonable enjoyment of the other parcel called also easement by necessity implied easement way of necessity
The question would be whether an easement is acceptable in a libertarian institution. As a practical matter, I think it would be. Sure, you can be very hard ass about access via your (monopoly) roads but let's face it, the practical result of such actions is a neighbor war, an ugly phenomenon where vehicle unfriendly "trash" (nail studded boards and other modern caltrops) would "mysteriously" appear on the road, making the road practically unusable without a paramilitary hazard clearance every few hours.
I would think that property that did not have easement agreements (inholders essentially) would collapse in market value so any privatization agreement to privatize roads would have to write easements into the sale otherwise what's happening is a massive, unpaid government taking at time of sale of value from the easement-less property holders.
In other words, the problem, as is so often the case in privatization "problems" is an artifact of improper government action. You would only get to the point of being hostilely surrounded without easement when you've been a victim of government theft as your easement rights in the public system were sold without you being justly compensated for them.
My problem with such arrangements is that (presumably) when you got round to privatising the road you would have to include in such "easements" all the existing rights eg access, access in a motor vehicle at all times at no cost, parking. The problem being that by the time you've lumped all these in it would be almost impossible to do anything.
I don't see any hard and fast rules about parking, snow removal, garbage collection, etc. but I think that if you have rights under the old system but lose them in the new, that is, in effect, a taking. Takings should be compensated, even partial takings. If you don't want to compensate, don't take.
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IN BRIEF
November 23, 2004
'Captain commuter' wins Sydney a free day on the trains
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Darling's saver ticket for slow-train Britain
- he's going to do everything but close them
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November 21, 2004
Tollroads Jamaican style
- worth it if only for the pic of the toll plaza
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November 20, 2004
Postive externalities come to DC
- sort of
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Railways safer than ever
- says Christian Wolmar
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Is graffiti art?
- LFTTR think the question misses the point. FWIW I think many artists clearly have a lot of talent and it's a shame they don't have an appropriate, nay, legal outlet.
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Book review
- Subterranean Railway by Christian Wolmar
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One airline, 4 crashes, 8 dead: the real price of sugar snap peas in November
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November 17, 2004
British Transport Films Collection DVD Volume One
- Surely a must for any transport afficionado. It will be released just in time for Christmas.
- Disc 1 - On The Rails
- Blue Pullman (1960)
- Elizabethan Express (1954)
- Train Time (1952)
- Rail 150 (1975)
- Diesel Train Driver (1959)
- On Track for the 80's (1980)
- Cybernetica (1972)
- Disc 2 - Off The Rails
- Under the River (1959)
- Snowdrift at Bleath Gill (1955)
- This Year - London (1951)
- This is York (1953)
- The Great Highway (1966)
- A Day of One's Own (1955)
- John Betjeman Goes By Train (1962)
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November 15, 2004
Crossrail website
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November 11, 2004
Brake fault forces Virgin to cut speed on flagship tilting trains
- you know, just for once it sounds as if the HSE could be right
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November 08, 2004
TV Alert
"When trains crash", 1930 Channel 5 tonight. Talk about timing
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November 07, 2004
Ufton Nervet crash
- 6 now confirmed dead
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November 06, 2004
One person dead as train derails
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November 04, 2004
FirstGroup wants to add the tracks to its trains
- that's brave
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November 02, 2004
Car charge to rise to £6
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October 30, 2004
Psst wanna buy a railway station?
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October 26, 2004
'Kart Vader'
- He tears around Quebec City at 100mph. In a go kart. At night. Wearing black. And he films it.
Spotted by Jay Jardine.
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October 24, 2004
The downside of auto-mobile bans
- drivers text instead
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Councils ban shrines to road crash victims
- a story that neatly combines both transport and the issue of the day: mawkish sentimentality
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October 20, 2004
The air hostess, the long hair and the sun roof
- one of the more imaginative ways of staying awake at the wheel.
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Wheelchair-using MP travelled in 'cattle truck'
- so, that's just the same as the rest of us then
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23 escape from burning train
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Wikipedia accuracy under fire
- so, it's back on with the
Glossary?
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October 19, 2004
Rail chief quits after four months
- walking away from £130,000. Golly
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October 14, 2004
New comment on old posting
- Tim Hall explains the story of the Highland Railway, its new locos and its soon-to-be-ex-Chief Mechanical engineer
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Out now: DVD version of leaves on the line
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October 13, 2004
New link
- Transport Watch UK. Lots of facts, lot of comparisons. Doesn't look good for rail
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October 11, 2004
Take the car and save the planet
- walking kills, apparently
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Hybrids better than the real thing
- golly
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Don't invest in mega-projects
- says Peter Gordon
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October 05, 2004
Prescott backs plan to reopen branch rail lines
- well, he says he does
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October 04, 2004
New Glossary Entry
- the Advanced Passenger Train
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October 03, 2004
People are building their own speed cameras
- One fellow is even
selling fully functioning ones
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Pendolinos and Voyagers may prove to be one of privatisation's disasters
- says Christian Wolmar
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Omedetō gozaimasu!
- Tech Central Station on the 40th anniversary of the Shinkansen
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October 02, 2004
Compulsory purchase to go
- in US? Johnathan Pearce has some musings
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October 01, 2004
Indian railway runs out of wheels
- because it refuses to import
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All for sprawl
- Tyler Cowen links to a couple of articles including one from the NY Times magazine which is attracting a lot of attention
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Underground maps as art
- according to Brian
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September 30, 2004
Recent comment
- Uncle Roger on the difficulty in working out accurate subsidy figures
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Europe by train
- Tim Hall on Stephen Karlson's adventures
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Carpool lanes = communist gulags
- Tim Hall is beginning to get it, possibly
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September 29, 2004
P&O axes 1,200 jobs as ferry travel sails into past
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September 27, 2004
Hurtling towards a £7.6bn bill at full tilt
- Alistair Osborne on the WCRM fiasco. Actually, I thought £7.6bn was on the low side
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September 26, 2004
A double-decked shame
- RJ3 laments the passing of the Routemaster. It's
those EU bastards, I tell you
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Tilting trains are rubbish
- according to Ross Clark. Now he tells us
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Delays plummet by 28%
- says Network Rail
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September 25, 2004
New glossary item
- the Health and Safety Executive - in which I demonstrate my almost complete ignorance of this institution
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Scant improvement in train times
- according to latest figures
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September 22, 2004
EU plan will hit safe women drivers
- and it's all in the name of sex equality
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Unions gang up to demand railway renationalisation
- they mean it isn't already?
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September 21, 2004
Top car makers support road-jam charging
- Ford, GM, Honda, Daimler
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Journey times cut as 125mph tilting train sets record
- after £8bn and the odd bankruptcy tilting trains that actually tilt are finally here
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September 18, 2004
ABD calls for environmental audit of public transport
- all those particulates
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Camera Partnerships must come clean on real causes of accidents
- says ABD
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September 16, 2004
The Green Quadratic
- ASI paper on planning from 1988. Now available on-line
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September 14, 2004
Up with conductors
- they're really good, you know
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Speeding Britons fined in car race to Spain
- "Among the cars were Ferraris, Porsches and Rolls-Royces."
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MPs to lose free airport parking
- oh, how my heart bleeds
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The case against driving licences
- Paul Clark in Lew Rockwell
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September 10, 2004
Drivers trade privacy for insurance discounts
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September 08, 2004
Free mints infuriate delayed commuters
- some even threw them away, ingrates
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Privatize the roads! Liberate the streets! All we have to lose are our parking tickets!
- Anthony Gregory in Lew Rockwell
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M6 Toll hits 10m journey mark
- er, about a month ago
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September 07, 2004
California high-speed rail plan
- all sorts of claims being made but Peter Gordon doesn't like the
precedents
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September 06, 2004
Swedish farmer fined 1,211 kronor for illegally parking a snowmobile in Warwick
- Krister Nylander lives 205 north of Stockholm and has never been to Warwick. "They can wait till Hell freezes over and I can get to Britain on my snowmobile to pay the fine.”
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September 05, 2004
"Obsession is not too strong a word to describe how railway enthusiasts feel about railways"
- Matthew Parris goes to Peru and meets some trainspotters
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September 03, 2004
Hidden costs do not justify the level of tax on petrol in Britain
- says Graham Seargeant
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Shovelling cash
- utilities to pay for digging up roads
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Alistair Morton, builder of the Channel Tunnel, is dead
...
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Government 'willed' Railtrack to fail
- says Corbett
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Cyclists saddled with seafront speed trap
- in Bournemouth
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Historic Amsterdam tram photos
Aaaah. Where's amg going to pitch up next?
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Why so little US electrification?
- Tim Hall ponders the answer
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September 02, 2004
London Underground Map
- as it really is.
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Electric v steam
- in 1923. But who won
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Freight or passenger in the US?
- they're in conflict. Stephen Karlson considers the options
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September 01, 2004
Fares and charge up in London
- says Livingstone
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'Fair fines' planned for speeding drivers
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Railtrack is cleared over Hatfield crash
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August 31, 2004
Thousands 'ready to quit Aslef'
- where would we be without brotherly love
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August 30, 2004
Rural watchdog attacks road sign blight
- See it's not just me who can't abide the
avalanche of street furniture.
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What the traffic will bear
- Bob Poole discusses the merits of tolling
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Prague trams
- photos. Aaah
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August 24, 2004
What if you can't drive?
- Catallarchy's Sean Lynch considers the options
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97% of accidents within speed limit
- according to the ABD
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August 22, 2004
Prosecute motorway lane hogs
- says RAC
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August 20, 2004
Radio tags for congestion charge?
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World's longest road opens
- in Russia
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Sprawl is cheap
- says Iain Murray
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August 19, 2004
Strike threat to BA and Eurostar
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Toll roads are safer
- at least according to my reading of this Marginal Revolution post
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Peking metro to hit 1000km mark
- I'm not sure even London's is that long
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August 15, 2004
Squander Two calmly talks about speed cameras
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Parking anarchy in St Albans
- Police withdraw traffic wardens, Herts council won't have any until October, it's bedlam!
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The future of transport
- as seen from the past
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Trains less efficient than cars
- yes, I know, it's old news
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Ferry solution, please
- Eamonn Butler wonders how you could introduce competition to a subsidised ferry service in the Western Isles
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August 14, 2004
Drink less, speed less, save on insurance
- Marginal Revolution has the story
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If a person must cross a piece of land to access another piece of land for access because there are no direct roads, wouldn't an easement be in order?
Posted by Tom on July 31, 2004