IN THE ABSENCE OF PROFIT SIGNALS. USA Today offered a point-counterpoint on the merits of highway privatization. The editorial board used the reality of clapped-out congested interstates to suggest there might be a better way.

In the past decade, usage of interstates rose by more than 30%, according to the Department of Transportation, while additions of routes and added lanes increased capacity by only 4%. The problem is simple. Gasoline taxes and tolls, already unpopular, provide a fraction of the money needed to keep traffic from getting worse.

That's only part of the problem. Congress has used tax revenues intended for the Highway Trust Fund to reduce the federal government's operating deficit. It also passes transportation bills that provide visible projects to help influential Representatives get re-elected, without necessarily adding useful capacity. Cars with stingy gas mileage and heavier and heavier trucks affect both the tax take and the wear on the roads. Market tests, the editorial board argues, might be an improvement.

A number of states, most visibly Indiana, have proposed leasing major toll roads to private companies. By doing so, they can raise billions of dollars needed to make road improvements elsewhere.

Ideally, such leases would not be necessary. Governments would give highways and public transit systems the funds they need, and they would not shy away from raising the requisite money from the people who use them. That would ensure a network of efficient, carefully integrated transportation systems in ways that a more piecemeal approach cannot. But given the extreme resistance, which dates back decades and shows no signs of abating, leases are the best option for easing gridlock.

But the editors envision turning the private company into the heavy, collecting sufficient revenues to repair the roads where the federal, state, and local governments dare not. (This ploy is an update on the old technique of using the regulated public utility as a tax collector. Look carefully at your telephone, electric, or gas bill. You may no longer be paying for the Spanish-American War, but you're still buying a lot of stuff for the governments.)

The higher tolls that private companies will charge in return for their big payments inevitably will be unpopular. But unless the laws of supply and demand are applied to road capacity, drivers will pay in the form of lost productivity while waiting in traffic.

The editors could have done better than asking Indiana legislator B. Patrick Bauer to offer the dissent.

There is concern about the role privatization plays in operating programs that benefit a state's general population. A private company's primary motivation is to earn a profit. If profits are not being earned, a company reduces costs by cutting personnel and services.

That's the best he can do? As if school districts don't cope with shrinking enrollments by furloughing teachers and closing schools? As if highway commissions don't cope with shifting populations by deferring maintenance on less-travelled roads? Tollway privatization is no panacea: a regulated toll corporation that is not allowed to earn the replacement cost of its capital will be no more use than a tollway authority that earns insufficient revenues to rebuild the roads or a highway trust fund that does not allocate funds efficiently. On the other hand, this debate might be a good one to start. The freight railroads have recently begun to earn the replacement cost of their capital. Is it too much to ask that the highway system pass a similar test?