yeah, I would make the same distinction that Benjamin did. Limited-access roads should really have a funding mechanism that resembles the free market, but local roads (if they are done well) could serve enough public purposes that it becomes too hard to tease apart the various benefits and assign costs accordingly. I would just specify a couple of conditions (that I think were implied anyway):

1. The local roads should be sufficiently connected. (grids allow for a better flow)
2. Need to be complete streets. Through design features, try to avoid any kind of modal bias. This would probably mean narrower roadbeds and adequate sidewalks, maybe bike lanes for a busier street.

For instance, in discussions of “roads,” it seems to me that it might be particularly useful to make a distinction between local thoroughfares (e.g., alleys, streets, boulevards, etc.) and limited access highways.

Local thoroughfares (when publicly owned) are typically open to anyone and everyone — pedestrians, bicyclists, buses (and also, potentially, to trolley cars, elevated lines, monorails, etc.). They are necessary to the very existence of cities — being the capillaries, blood vessels, arteries and veins of cities. They are truly public spaces and they SHOULD (so it seems to me) be government regulated and subsidized. (Who else is going to create, regulate and maintain such public, non-remunerative thoroughfares?)

Limited access highways (even when publicly owned), on the other hand, are typically intended for only certain users (e.g., cars, trucks, motorcycles [?], etc.). And some limited access roadways, like NYC’s parkways, are even limited to just non-commercial traffic (i.e., private autos)! Rather than enhancing urban districts, such roadways actually damage them both directly (e.g., creating barriers, etc.) and indirectly (by favoring suburban residential and commercial development). So even if such roadways were totally free of government subsidies (a near impossibility in urban areas, however, although conceivably possible on some gigantic California or Texas ranch as a shortcut between cities) they would still be very damaging to cities.

Here are some other distinctions that I think might eventually prove useful in such discussions (and in similar related discussions, too): a distinction between roads and thoroughfares (which might also include pedestrian streets, etc.); a distinction between roads and roadbeds (are the portion of roads used by vehicles) and rights-of-way (which might also include, in addition to roadbeds, sidewalks, bikeways, bus lanes, etc.).

For instance, these later distinctions could be useful, so it seems to me, in discussions about the ideal amount of space that should be devoted to “streets,” which seemed to be the subject of a post that was linked to a few weeks ago. The linked to post seemed to feel that “streets” (with no distinction made between rights-of-way and roadbeds) take up too much space. While the author of the post may believe this to be true in any case, whether such distinctions are made or not, I would argue (as Jane Jacobs has) that “streets” (rights-of-way) constitute very important and useful urban open spaces and that the “real” problem, instead, is likely to be too much space devoted to roadbeds — especially when an overabundance of roadbed space is concentrated into just a few very wide streets (rather distributed among many small streets, that would, among other things, create lots of small blocks).

- – - – -

P.S. — Lots of great posts, recently. Hope I’ll find the time to comment on more of them.