There are many private highways in the United States.
The Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, begun in 1792 between Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Lancaster, Pennsylvania was the first major American turnpike. According to Gerald Gunderson's Privatization and the 19th-Century Turnpike, "In the first three decades of the 19th century Americans built more than 10,000 miles of turnpikes, mostly in New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Relative to the economy at that time, this effort exceeded the post-World War II interstate highway system that present-day Americans assume had to be primarily planned and financed by the federal government". Because electronics did not exist in that era, all tolls had to be collected by human cashiers at toll booths, creating high fixed costs that could only be covered by a large volume of traffic. As railroads and steamboats began to compete with the turnpikes, the companies started to shut down their less profitable routes or turn them over to governments. (See Category:Pre-freeway turnpikes in the United States for a listing.)
The National Bridge Inventory lists roughly 2,200 privately owned highway bridges in 41 states and Puerto Rico.
Read more about Private Highways In The United States: Indiana Toll Road, Reedy Creek Improvement District, Dalton Highway, California, Dulles Greenway, Texas, Illinois, Colorado, Toll Roads To Serve Development
Famous quotes containing the words united states, private, highways, united and/or states:
“The United States have a coffle of four millions of slaves. They are determined to keep them in this condition; and Massachusetts is one of the confederated overseers to prevent their escape.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“Man is to himself the most wonderful object in nature; for he cannot conceive what the body is, still less what the mind is, and least of all how a body should be united to a mind. This is the consummation of his difficulties, and yet this is his very being.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“I believe the citizens of Marion County and the United States want to have judges who have feelings and who are human beings.”
—Paula Lopossa, U.S. judge. As quoted in the New York Times, p. B9 (May 21, 1993)