Cars and Equal Access

Ripstein's account of public rights and their origins is fascinating.

I want to examine the implications of Ripstein's account of Kant's political philosophy.

Cars and Equal Access
Ripstein presents the solution to the landlocked problem in public roads:

    "[R]oads, understood as a system of public rights of way, guaranteeing that there is a path from every piece of privately held land to every other. With a system of roads in place, everyone can enter into voluntary transactions with whomever they wish, without being subject to the choice of any other person. The rights of way need to be public, rather than endlessly many private easements, precisely because access must be guaranteed to everyone in order to reconcile property in land -- ownership of a location -- with freedom" (248-249).

Using the United States as my reference frame, the current public road system is not exactly created for the benefit of everyone such that their right to associate is not abridged by private easements.
     
     a. To use the vast majority of roads it is required that you own some sort of legal vehicle - that is, you must transact with a private third party to give you the means which allow you to use the "public" roads. This puts you under the arbitrary control of another, thereby violating your freedom.

     b. Otherwise, to utilize the public roads, you must use some form of public transportation (like a bus). If these buses are not free, then your ability to utilize the roads are subordinated to your ability to engage in the private market (with a third party) to acquire the means to pay for the bus.

     c. Imagine we were in the landlocked world Ripstein presented. If the government built roads that allowed you to access every other property but they charged you a usage fee, then, before you were capable of using the roads, you would have to engage in a private market transaction to acquire the means to pay for it. Assuming you couldn't use the roads in the first place, you would have to engage with your immediately adjacent neighbors. If you couldn't trade with any of them, you would be unable to use the roads, thus, just as before, subjecting you to the whims of third parties - thus leaving you without Kantian freedom.

   d. By extension of c, Ripstein mentions a "Gasoline tax" or a usage fee on page 253. He acknowledges their popularity but doesn't specify how it avoids the above contradiction.

   e. For further food for thought, Ivan Illich, in Tools for Conviviality, argues that speed limits in countries should not exceed bicycle speeds ( essentially 20 mph). While Illich has a whole slew of reasons for this, he primarily looks at how the acceleration of transportation is inherently inegalitarian. Because usage of highways and freeways are reserved to car owners, a certain group of people (car companies and car owners) have made private what is supposed to be public space. Because Ripstein demonstrated that arguments of convenience and utilitarianism can't be used to override questions of personal freedom, how are we to judge this?