Robert
Poole, co-founder of the libertarian Reason Foundation and its Director
of Transportation Policy has produced a study that is bound to create
more than a ripple inside the transportation community. The study,
entitled "Interstate 2.0: Modernizing the Interstate Highway System via
Toll Finance," was officially released on September 12. It's an
impressive piece of scholarship and quantitative analysis that deserves
thoughtful consideration by all who care about the long-term future of
the nation's surface transportation system.
Poole focusses
on the Interstate Highway System which is nearing the end of its
50-year design life and which, he claims, will need to be thoroughly
reconstructed over the next two decades. In addition, he assumes that
some one hundred interchanges that are major bottlenecks will need
redesign and reconstruction and about 200 corridors will require
additional lane widenings to cope with projected traffic.
How
is this monumental, near trillion-dollar effort to be financed? ($983
billion to be exact according to the author's calculations---$589
billion for reconstruction and $394 billion for lane additions) Poole
envisions tolling the entire Interstate system using all-electronic
tolling (AET) techology (a "mileage-based user fee" in technical
lingo, assuming a fee of 3.5 cents/mile for cars and 14 cents/mile for
trucks for purposes of the analysis. In fact, current average highway
toll is closer to 10 cents/mile). Importantly, Interstate tolling would
be introduced progressively, as and when Interstate corridors are
reconstructed and widened and only if tolling adds value in terms of
smoother traffic flow ---something that Poole calls "value added
tolling" Presumably, this staged introduction of Interstate highway
tolling should help to overcome opposition to Interstate highway tolling
by familiarizing the public with the concept gradually, over time.
The
study makes only one major policy recommendation: that Congress allow
tolling of Interstate highways "for the specific purpose of
reconstruction and widening with toll revenue used only for those
purposes." The author concludes that permission from Congress is "the
one needed enabler... to begin this transition."
That
may be too facile a conclusion. Congressional lawmakers are unlikely to
act in the absence of strong pressure from their state-level
transportation consituencies. And so far, there has been scant evidence
of any grassroots interest in Interstate highway tolling. Our own
recent survey of "Can-Do" states has shown a large majority of state
officials and state legislators critical if not overtly opposed. So is
the powerful American Trucking Association which claims tolling existing
Interstates is "a wildly unpopular concept" ---and not just among
their own members but among the public at large. (Poole, on the other
hand, argues that "the public favors tolls if the alternative is taxes,"
citing a study by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program).
Even if Congress relented and abolished the current prohibition to toll
the Interstates, there might be few takers. Skeptics in and out of
Congress point to the existing three-state pilot program for Interstate
reconstruction using toll finance---a program that has remained
unimplemented for lack of legislative approvals in the three candidate
states that applied for and were awarded the slots.
So,
we hope that Mr. Poole's study will be brought not just to the
attention of the Beltway audience and the toll-advocacy community where
it will predictably meet with plaudits, but, more importantly, to the
attention of governors, state DOTs and state legislators . It is their
collective judgment that will be decisive in persuading their
representatives in Congress whether or not to lift the current
legislative restriction against Interstate tolling. A presentation at
the upcoming AASHTO annual conference on October 17-22,
followed by presentations at the next annual conferences of the
National Governors Association and the National Conference of State
Legislatures (NCSL) would be a good way to start the dialogue.
Kenneth Orski
Editor/Publisher
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