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Tragedy of Commons in Public Road

Kharisma Baptiswan

8A DIV Accounting Matriculation Class, STAN, South Tangerang

Email:kharisma.baptiswan@gmail.com

Abstract

Public goods casually explained as goods and services that are provided through public sector. Public road is

one example of those of public goods. Yet to some extent, public road loses its characteristics as public goods

due to certain factor that is tragedy of commons. This changes often cause problem for public goods users.

Quick solutions are needed to overcome this problem.

Introduction

Public goods can be defined in two ways, that

is casually and abstractly. Public goods casuallyexplained as goods and services that are providedthrough public sector (Holcombe, 1996; Heikkila,

2000; Ulbrich, 2003). But this definition cannot

capture the true spirit of public goods. Mankiw

(2009) describe public goods as goods that are

neither excludable nor rival in consumption.

Furthermore Mankiw explain these two natures asfollow. Excludable means that the property of a

good whereby a person can be prevented from

using it. Rival in consumption means the property

of a good whereby one persons use diminishes

other peoples use.

Goods that perfectly maintain these two

natures are called public goods and it is very

difficult to find examples for this kind of goods.

The closest we can get is national defense. Mankiw

explain that the defense of a country from foreign

aggressors is a classic example of a public good.

Once the country is defended, it is impossible to

prevent any single person from enjoying the benefit

of this defense. Moreover, when one person enjoys

the benefit of national defense, he does not reducethe benefit to anyone else. Thus, national defense is

neither excludable nor rival in consumption.

Another example of public goods is public road.There are also some form of goods besides public

goods. They are private goods, club/toll goods and

common goods.

Private goods are both excludable and rival in

consumption. For example a krabby patty. A

krabby patty is excludable because it is possible to

prevent someone from eating a krabby patty. A

krabby patty is rival in consumption because if one

person eats a krabby patty, another person cannot

eat the same thing. Most goods in the economy are

private goods like krabby patties: You dont get

one unless you pay for it, and once you have it, youare the only person who benefits (Mankiw, 2009).

Club goods are excludable but not rival in

consumption. An example is water service. Local

government provide water service to citizens who

pay monthly fee for that service although water, in

essence, is natural resources available to everyone.

Common resources or common goods are rival

in consumption but not excludable. For example,

fish in the ocean are rival in consumption: When

one person catches fish, there are fewer fish for the

next person to catch. Yet these fish are not anexcludable good because, given the vast size of an

ocean, it is difficult to stop fishermen from taking

fish out of it.

Tragedy of Commons in Public Road

In its basic form of service, public road is

public good but as number of users increase and

public road growth is slow, changes in publicgoods nature begin to start and traffic jam occurs.

This phenomenon is called tragedy of commons

(Garrett Hardin, 1968).

Mankiw explains tragedy of the commons as aparable that illustrates why common resources are

used more than is desirable from the standpoint of

society as a whole. We can explain this easily using

our object of choice here that is public road. At first

road is available for everyone for free, free from

charges and free from competition. But as national

economy grows, population increase and lands are

scarce, road loses its public image. Public road as

public goods is shifted become common goods, in a

way that it is still free of charges but it becomes

rivalrous consumption. In the end it is still nonexcludable but rivalrous in consumption.

Ulbrich (2003) has a term for this kind of

goods, he calls it congestible public goods. He

explain that a congestible public good is a publicgood that is nonrival under moderate use but

becomes congested under heavy use (Ulbrich,

2003). With congestion, each additional userimposes costs on the other users (Weimer and

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Vining, 1999; Hyman 2002; Bruce, 2001).

Congested public goods are sometimes also called

ambient public goods (Weimer and Vining, 1999).

The main problem in the is traffic jam, road users

would take more time to arrive at their destination.

There are various solutions to this problem,

effective solutions are proposed:

1. Implementing floating tariff for road users.Eric A. Morris (in Mankiw, 2009) propose

unique way to implement this solution. He

proposes a system to charge floating fee based

on how congested the road is. If the road is in

normal capacity then no tariff is charged. Asusers fill roads, usually at peak hours, system

increases fee proportional to degree of traffic

jam. In doing so will limit users from using

certain crowded roads. Users will be faced

with option wether to use the road or not. If

users think that paid fee is worth it, then theymay use the road.

Morris ague that to many people, this

sounds like a scheme by mustache-twirling

bureaucrats and their academic apologists to

fleece drivers out of their hard-earned cash.Why should drivers have to pay to use roads

their tax dollars have already paid for? Wont

the remaining free roads be swamped as

drivers are forced off the tolled roads? Wont

the working-class and poor be the victims here,

as the tolled routes turn into Lexus lanes?And besides, adopting this policy would mean

listening to economists, and who wants to dothat?

2. Implementing gasoline taxMankiw (2009) proposed another policy

that responds to the problem of road

congestion that is the tax on gasoline. Gasoline

is a complementary good to driving: An

increase in the price of gasoline tends to

reduce the quantity of driving demanded.

Therefore, a gasoline tax reduces roadcongestion. A gasoline tax, however, is an

imperfect solution, because it affects other

decisions besides the amount of driving on

congested roads. For example, the gasoline tax

discourages driving on uncongested roads,

even though there is no congestion externality

for these roads.

3. Optimizing mass rapid public transportationBy implementing this it also require extra

effort to changes basic mentality of citizenwho used to drive their private car. This last

solution offers better outcomes in the future ascongested road theoretically nonexistent,

reduce in air pollution and many nature

sustainability advantage.

There are maybe many other solutions

regarding public road issues but because oflimitness of this paper, these solutions are enough.

Public road is a media for people to do their

social and economic needs. Its characteristic as

public good have made public road as dependable

as ever. People need to understand that even publicroad is limited. Self constraint and optimization of

public transport are two effective ways to reduce

congestant. Self constrain reduce prestige or

lifestyle that leads to overconsumerism as well as

tragedy of commons and effective public

transportation will generate sustainable resource.

References

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good.

Retrieved 1 November 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_com

mons. Retrieved 1 November 2013.

Donijo Robbins. 2005. Handbook of Public SectorEconomics. Marcel Dekker/CRC Press

LLC.

N. Gregory Mankiw. 2011. Principles of

Microeconomics 6th

Edition. South-

Western Cengage Learning : USA.Hardin, G. (1968-12-13). "The Tragedy of the

Commons". Science (AAAS) 162 (3859) :

1243

1248.doi:10.1126/science.162.3859.1243.

PMID 5699198. Retrieved 1 November

2013.