Keep tolls off existing interstate lanes

There is broad agreement on the need for sustained funding of public interstates that convey people to work, goods to market, and pave our freedom to explore America. Finding consensus on how to pay for our highways is where things get tricky. Road builders no longer sated by taxpayer-supported construction contracts that fed them for years have a misguided idea: They want Congress to lift a longstanding ban on tolling existing interstate lanes so they can put cover charges on freeways nationwide.

To avoid a public backlash, they conceal their profiteering intent by saying they want states to have “flexibility to place tolls on Interstate highways” to reconstruct them, as Patrick D. Jones of the pro-toll International Bridge, Tunnel & Turnpike Association wrote in a March 30 column. The driving public should not be fooled by that rhetoric. No matter the framing, the idea behind what is known as “devolution” is for the federal government to slough onto states Washington’s responsibility to maintain interstates. Shifting that duty to states would neglect the federal government’s obligation to sustain its Interstate Highway System. Existing interstates were built and paid for with a dedicated federal gas tax, and they are maintained with money drivers still contribute when they fuel up. A shift to devolution would burden states with an unfunded mandate. It would also cause double taxation of drivers if tolls on existing interstates result.

{mosads}Pro-tollers overlook those facts because they want even more of the public’s treasure and they see tolls as a vein from which it can be bled. They don’t care if that means Congress passing the road funding buck to states by opening the door for widespread tolling on existing interstates. Experience tells us funding roads that way creates more problems than it solves. Modern talk of highway tolling can be traced to the dawn of the Dwight D. Eisenhower System of Interstate and Defense Highways. Funding methods, including tolling, were thoroughly vetted during the interstate policy debate of the mid-1900s. Ultimately, tolling was rejected as a primary financing approach. Some states were grandfathered because they were already well into planning interstate sections as toll-financed roads. Decades later, interstates in Ohio, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, among others, have tolls whose rates frequently increase. Today, it costs a passenger vehicle $26 dollars to travel much of the New Jersey Turnpike, and $46 for a trip along a stretch of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Do Americans really want similar fees on interstates across the nation? The pro-toll crowd wants Congress to abdicate its transportation funding responsibility so state officials scrambling for transportation revenue would be more likely to pursue interstate tolls. That would be in the best interest of road builders, not the public, which would suffer if control of public interstates gets turned over to profit-focused toll authorities run by unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

The interstate tolling ban in place for decades exists for a reason. Three states with current exemptions from the ban – Missouri, North Carolina and Virginia – have shown us its importance. Since 2013, the public, business community, and elected officials in those states have coalesced to win anti-toll legislation approval. Those stakeholders realize how much tolls would harm their communities. They learned how inefficient tolls are at raising road funds – as much as one-third of revenue generated can go to administrative costs. They know electronic tolling is error-prone. Drivers too frequently get bills they don’t owe, then have to tangle with a bureaucracy to correct the error.

Other regions have come to see how tolls can destabilize local economies by altering natural travel patterns in ways that threaten business survival and property values. Tolls also harm communities by diverting heavy traffic onto secondary streets, causing taxpayers to subsidize repairs for premature road damage. They critically endanger public safety when local traffic delays rescue workers’ emergency response times. And tolls hurt family budgets. By increasing commercial transportation costs, tolls lead to greater expense for merchants and higher prices at the register for consumers.

Increased tolls on existing interstate lanes is the worst possible way to pay for roads. Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the White House from proposing expanded tolling. Nor has it stopped pro-toll road builders from encouraging new fees on highways in Connecticut, Kentucky, Missouri, and Ohio. One need only look at Texas, where public backlash has turned intense after a toll road explosion in recent years, for an eye-opener on what tolls would do to our interstates. American drivers just can’t afford that, no matter how much road builders want it.

Walker is spokesman of the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates, a diverse coalition of citizens, businesses, and public officials working to keep existing interstate lanes free from expensive tolls