conceptualist | История британских дорог: любопытное

В современной Британии дорогами национального значения управляет Highway Agency - ведомство типа нашего Росавтодора. На своём сайте оно приводит краткий, но довольно любопытный очерк истории английских дорог.
http://www.highways.gov.uk/knowledge/brief_history.htm

In the Middle Ages, road maintenance was left to the parishes (приходы) and those people who lived in them. Each parish had the responsibility for the roads in their area and local people were forced by law to work unpaid to keep the roads maintained. This system of looking after the roads where both paid and unpaid labour was used, continued from about 1555 to 1835.

By the 18th century it became clear that this system of free and paid labour was failing and roads were becoming worn away as a result. Most of the traffic was horse carts and new wheeled vehicles. The soft dirt track roads were never built to carry those sort of vehicles and were not able to cope with this heavy traffic. It became clear that alternatives to improve the roads had to be found.

So came the era of the Turnpike trusts - an imaginative new way of getting the roads built and maintained. Turnpike trusts were made up of a group of people who would get together and ask for permission from Parliament to take over a section of road, or build a new one, for about 21 years. They would pay for its maintenance by collecting tolls from the people who used them. These roads were commonly called turnpike roads. You can still see some signs of the location of these roads where you see tiny houses on the edge of the road. It is there that the man who collected the tolls lived. Many of the roads were improved this way and the Turnpike trusts experimented with new ways to build roads, adding new methods of making roads stronger and last longer so that wheeled traffic could travel more easily.

By 1830 there were more than 1,000 Turnpike companies in England, maintaining 32,000 kilometres of road. London and other big cities were now all connected by a stagecoach network - for example it took fewer than two days to travel from London to Edinburgh by coach whereas one hundred years earlier it had taken almost a fortnight (две недели).

То есть, в 18 веке возникли частные компании, - "тернпайковские тресты" - которые выкупали у правительства старые дороги и строили за свой счёт новые. Они получали прибыль за счёт платы, собираемой с тех, кто ездил по их дорогам. И распространившись по всей стране, обеспечили удивительный результат: в 1830 году дилижанс доезжал от Лондона до Эдинбурга за 2 дня, а столетием раньше - за две недели. Вот каков созидательный эффект частного предпринимательства.

А как тернпайковская система была заменена на нынешнюю - об этом пишут не совсем ясно:

The Turnpike system of roads was not without its problems. Many of the trusts simply did not know how to look after the roads and when they were short of money they did not maintain them. They failed to provide a road network that covered the whole of the country to a similar standard. At the same time Britain saw the arrival of the first railway lines which became a very popular and safe way to travel. They were fast and more difficult for highway men to stop. People stopped using the stagecoaches and the Turnpike Trusts gradually became bankrupt. The last company closed for business in 1895.

By the end of the 19th century road administration had became the responsibility of the town and district councils, and the country and rural district councils. At the beginning of the 20th century there were no fewer than 1900 local authorities concerned with highways and a national policy for roads did not exist. The motor car had arrived in the late 1800s and in the 1900s there was a huge increase in the number of cars and lorries that wanted to use roads. Many of the lorries were heavier and needed much stronger roads. Therefore there was a need to improve and maintain the road on national basis rather than a local concern and this became a big political issue for all the country. In 1936 the Government put through an Act of Parliament which was the first Trunk Roads Act. This ensured that the Minister of Transport had direct control over the most important through routes in the country.

Если частные дороги банкротились, то их активы, включая само дорожное полотно, должны были переходить к кредиторам. А кредиторы, если конкуренция традиционных дорог с железными действительно была в то время таким уж безнадёжным делом, просто перепрофилировали бы землю под дорогами, например, распахав её или застроив. И потом, по мере умножения автомобилей и восстановления спроса на дороги, снова бы их открыли. Вместо этого всё почему-то досталось местным властям. А когда началась автомобилизация, антирыночная идеология уже настолько укрепилась, что строительство и ремонт дорог уже воспринимались как общенациональные задачи. Как-то так.