Ever-increasing highway congestion.
Declining gas tax revenues.
Escalating road construction costs.
They all spell one thing:
Toll Roads
Deborah Lockridge
Senior Editor
States are in a quandary when it comes to building, expanding and maintaining their highway systems. The federal gasoline tax hasn't gone up in more than a decade. Neither have most state motor fuel taxes. Owners of more fuel-efficient cars are paying taxes on fewer gallons of gas.
Meanwhile, inflation has eroded the buying power of those transportation dollars, with highway maintenance and construction more expensive than ever. Yet with gas prices at near record highs, raising taxes on fuel is not a politically wise move these days. Only a handful of states have raised fuel taxes since 2000.
So how are states going to pay for building new roads to accommodate the ever-increasing numbers of vehicles on those roads?
One answer is tolls.
While federal legislators are trying to make it easier for states to put tolls on existing highways (see accompanying story), officials in many states have already been pushing toll roads. Between 1993 and 2003, interstate toll road mileage increased 14%, and non-interstate toll road mileage rose 25%, according to the Federal Highway Administration. Those numbers may start rising, based on what many states are doing.
"Everyone's always looking for money, and tolls are definitely one aspect they look into," says Keith Goble, who follows state legislation for the Owner Operator Independent Drivers Assn. "I've seen about a dozen different states so far this year that are at least looking into it."
Among the states considering adding new toll roads are:
• Missouri, which would like to use tolls to pay for making I-70 six lanes between Kansas City and St. Louis
• Indiana, whose new governor advocated tolling highways as part of his election campaign
• Colorado, which seems close to finally building a north-south toll road at least 25 miles east of Interstate 25
• Utah, where a transportation planning task force included toll roads in its recommendations to the Legislature
• Texas, which has ordered that all new freeways, or expansion of existing ones, must be considered for tolling.
And, of course, states continue to raise tolls on existing toll roads. The New York Thruway Authority, for instance, is considering raising tolls on the 641-mile highway for the first time since 1988 - with tolls for commercial vehicles rising by 35%. Illinois hiked tolls by as much as 300% for some trucks this year, depending largely on truck tolls to finance the rebuilding and expansion of the 274-mile toll road system.
There are several trends at work in the world of toll roads.
Going Private
Some states are forging partnerships with private companies, in which the private company builds and operates a toll road in return for long-term toll revenue.
For instance, Texas recently hired a Spanish company to lead work on the first leg of the massive Trans-Texas Corridor. The Trans-Texas Corridor is an ambitious planned series of toll roads, rail lines and other transportation routes that would be funded privately, aiming to relieve congestion on highways such as Interstate 35.
The private consortium Cintra will build 316 miles of four-lane turnpike from north of Dallas to east of San Antonio. In exchange for building the highway, Cintra will get the right to charge state-approved tolls on the road for 50 years.
A public-private partnership is also behind an ambitious plan in Virginia to improve I-81 by adding truck-only toll lanes. The Virginia Department of Transportation has been working on plans to widen the 325 miles of I-81 for several years. It estimates widening the highway from four to six lanes would cost $3.4 billion and take up to 30 years.
In 2002, a consortium of seven construction companies, called Star Solutions, submitted a proposal to widen the highway to eight lanes in just 15 years, paying for it with two dedicated, tolled truck lanes in each direction. The proposal, which is being fought by the American Trucking Assns., has stalled as the Virginia DOT and the consortium continue to negotiate.
These public-private partnerships have their critics. The Southern Environmental Law Center, which monitors transportation projects in six states, issued a report finding that Virginia's program has problems.
While in theory, Virginia's law allowing private-public partnerships is "an innovative tool to tap into private sector creativity and efficiency to save time and improve transportation project delivery," says the report's author, Jim Regimbal, "it has not attracted as much private money as expected, instead allowing large construction consortiums to come up with projects that primarily use taxpayer-subsidized revenue bonds backed by tolls or local taxes, as well as governmental transportation funds."
"The report clearly shows that there is no free lunch with these projects," says Trip Pollard, director of the SELC's Land and Community Project. "Taxpayers are still on the line for many project costs, and the driving public is paying the rest through tolls."
Targeting Trucks
Virginia is not the only state that has considered trucks-only toll lanes or even separate truck toll roads.
A legislator in Washington state is pushing for a trucks-only toll road that would allow through trucks to bypass Seattle traffic - for a price.
State Sen. Dan Swecker proposes a 100-mile, trucks-only toll road from Chehalis, Wash., to Interstate 90. He envisions a three-lane road, one in each direction plus a passing lane, with limited exits. A private entity would construct the route and collect the tolls.
A $500,000 study by the state DOT suggested "further exploration" for a truck-only road. Swecker wants to fund another study to look at the truck tollway specifically, and hopes to have a concrete proposal ready by 2006.
"I could see the whole thing happening quite easily in a 10-year time frame," Swecker told The Olympian.
Whether truckers would use the route would depend largely on the price, notes Jim Tutton, vice president, Washington Trucking Assns. "We've been told preliminarily that it could be as high as 60 cents a mile, and that just would be prohibitive."
A California think tank recently suggested truck-only toll lanes from the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach through San Bernardino and up I-15 to the Nevada state line. A similar project in the Bay Area would link the Port of Oakland and Silicon Valley with I-5 via I-580.
That think tank, The Reason Foundation, has been extolling the idea of truck-only toll lanes for several years. In 2002, it released a report touting toll truckways, and last year released another identifying routes all over the country that could benefit from truck-only toll lanes.
The study suggested that truck-only toll lanes could be built on several long stretches of the nation's highways. The proposal called for improving road safety by separating cars and trucks - and allowing the use of larger trucks on those interstates. Unlike other toll roads, the Reason Foundation's proposal would exempt trucks using the toll lanes from federal fuel taxes and other federal user charges for those miles traveled. The ATA supported the idea, and some federal lawmakers have even tossed around the idea of launching a pilot program to test the concept.
Will Truckers Use Them?
The additional revenue that officials expect to generate with ever-higher tolls can be offset when highway users, especially truckers, abandon the toll roads in favor of free secondary roads. This cuts into the expected revenue and makes the secondary roads more dangerous and congested.
In Illinois, the state toll authority imposed a hefty toll increase on truckers the first of the year. Soon after the increase, media reports indicated a 100% increase in truck traffic on a northern stretch of an alternate route, U.S. Highway 41.
"They anticipated that the truck traffic would go up [on alternate routes], so that wasn't really a surprise," state Sen. Susan Garrett told the Chicago Tribune. "I think what was a surprise is that it went up so dramatically." (Garrett reacted by asking for increased patrols on Route 41 and threatening to introduce legislation to restrict trucks to the right lane on state highways with residential intersections.)
Illinois toll agency officials had predicted that truck traffic volume on toll roads could fall as much as 17% the first year of the toll increase, but believe trucks will return when they realize the alternate routes are too slow and congested.
That's not what happened in Ohio. An 82% toll increase between 1995 and 1999 prompted many truckers to avoid the turnpike and take smaller secondary roads instead. This year, after working with the Ohio Trucking Assn., the state cut truck tolls and raised the speed limit on its turnpike in order to lure truckers back.
"The reduction in tolls actually was not our first goal," says David Bartosic, communications director of the Ohio Trucking Association. "The idea was to get more trucks back on the turnpike and off the smaller parallel roads, where there have been some pretty nasty accidents."
As part of an 18-month trial, Class 8 tolls on the 240-mile toll road were dropped from $42.45 to $31. Officials also raised the turnpike's posted truck speed to eliminate the split speed limit - which, if it works well on the turnpike, could be extended to other highways in the state - and lowered diesel prices at service stations along the route.
The measures seem to be working. Truck traffic was 39% lower on part of State Rt. 2 in January compared to August, according to the Toledo Blade, and was down by more than 20% on many other state highways that are alternatives to the Ohio turnpike.
Ohio isn't the only state looking to higher speed limits to lure truckers to turnpikes. On Texas' giant Trans-Texas Corridor project, cars and trucks will be able to zip along at 85 mph. Advocates of a proposed toll road paralleling I-25 in Colorado say the 85-mph speed limit and easy grade would lure truckers. And Indiana lawmakers have been considering a bill that would boost speed limits on the Indiana toll road from 60 to 65 mph for heavy trucks.
The bill's sponsor, Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Howe, said higher speed limits are an incentive to get heavy trucks off state highways and onto a road with the capacity to carry them safely.
Toll Roads continued...
