President Trump, please consider a major expansion in your thinking. You’ve promised to rebuild America’s crumbling roads, bridges and airports, and you’ve proposed to privatize air-traffic control. Now privatize the interstate highway system, including all those bridges in need of repair and major upgrading.

The stimulus programs of 2008-09 both fell short of their promise to rebuild. And how many times do we have to learn that the gasoline tax, intended exclusively for highway construction and maintenance, isn’t used that way? The government keeps failing even to fill potholes and resurface bumpy roads.

But the richly interconnected highway network really could be auctioned. Between major highway intersections there are alternative routes that could be auctioned to different bidders, assuring drivers of a choice of toll roads, along with state and local freeway alternatives. That competition would keep tolls affordable.

Perhaps most important, surface transportation rights of way would be opened to new mass-transit innovations at a time when driverless vehicles are making their entrance. A few autobahns might also compete more effectively with short- to medium-haul airline routes, but you will need to resist airline opposition.

You should also consider auctioning off the Bureau of Land Management’s extensive grazing lands. Better incentives through ownership, or long-term leases, mean better stewardship and innovation. But neighboring farmers and ranchers won’t like the impact on their land prices.