The first few years of the twentieth century saw political gridlock about paving rural roads, in part because of the free-rider problem. Residents of one county worried that if their county paved its roads, residents of an adjacent county would take advantage of them without paving its own.
This makes no sense… if I live in one county I can't just go "take advantage" of the roads in another county because they're better... I need to use the roads near me because they go where I to go. It's basically irrelevant whether the roads two counties over are better or worse.
