JediKnight

Here I will once again refer to Evgeny Kvasov and his post about roads. In short: the most natural owner for a street is the owner of the real estate that the street passes by, because the value of the real estate directly depends on the quality of the communications.

If there are many real estate owners, they have many reasons to agree on how to maintain the road, and not a single reason to create obstacles to passage — this sharply drops the value of their assets. A situation in which the houses along the street belong to some people, and the street itself to others who have no relation to these houses, is possible, but in that case, the company managing the street must have clearly fixed obligations regarding the operating mode of the street.

Houses always come first, and the street arises later, specifically so that one can move from the house to some other location. Residents may tolerate a temporary closure of the street for some alternative use if this closure is coordinated with them and they are paid for the inconvenience. But normally, they will always demand free passage and access, and strongly oppose any arbitrary action that hinders this very passage and access. Any checkpoint will be a negative externality for them, and that is already grounds for a lawsuit. Maintaining checkpoints will be quite expensive. They won’t pay off.

Now, under a state — that’s a different matter. Here, houses may belong to people, the street to the municipality, and traffic on it be regulated by the central authority. With such an approach, collisions are inevitable, where the interests of the residents are not taken into account.