AUSTIN - Tolling of existing interstate highways, now banned by federal law, will become an increasingly common way of funding road projects within 10 years, transportation experts predicted at an international forum.
Congress will "unleash" states to levy the tolls by 2021 and the interstate tolling option will drive a five-fold increase in U.S. toll road mileage by 2030, Ed Regan, senior vice president of the consulting firm CDM Smith, said during a panel discussion on Tuesday at the 82nd annual meeting of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association.
"There are few other options to rebuild the interstate highway system," said Regan. "The flat tax policy in this country dictates that future transportation funding will depend heavily on tolls."
The United States currently has 5,500 miles of toll roads, but by 2030 there could be more than 25,000 miles, he said. That would include some 6,000 miles of conventional toll roads, but almost 18,000 miles of tolled interstate highways and 1,600 miles of tolled express lanes on existing non-tolled highways, he added.
"When interstate tolling comes, it will dwarf everything else," Regan said. "It will provide huge opportunities for public-private partnership concessions."
Tolling has been prohibited on existing interstate highways, unless additional lanes are added to increase traffic capacity, since the highway program began in 1956. President Obama's proposed four-year, $302 billion Grow America Act would remove the current restrictions on interstate highway tolls to provide states with additional funding for highway maintenance and construction.
States have identified hundreds of vital road projects that they cannot afford to fund with current gasoline tax revenues and some other, minor sources, Regan said.
"States face a $2 trillion bill to rebuild and maintain the 47,000-mile interstate highway system over the next 50 years," he said. "They will be paying more every two years than it cost to build the entire system in the 1950s and 1960s.The interstate highways are 50 years old, and they are falling apart."
That potential repair cost means that interstate highway tolling is inevitable, Regan said.
"The gasoline tax at is not sustainable," he said. "As the roads get worse and full of potholes, the public will demand action. The gasoline tax is not going to pay for it."
If future federal transportation funding is going to focus on maintaining the existing interstate highway system, Regan said, all interstate highways should be tolled.
Revenue from interstate highway tolls must be dedicated to highway upgrades and maintenance without diverting it to other uses, said Ed Poole, director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation.
Shifting toll revenues to other transportation projects can be tempting to lawmakers, Poole said, but it results to what he called "the cash cow-ification of toll roads".
"A toll should be a user fee and not a tax," he said. "The charge should cover the highway's capital and operating costs and not go anywhere else."
The trucking industry is the main opponent to interstate tolling but freight companies can be persuaded that interstate tolls are a better financial option than an increase in federal fuel taxes, Poole said.
"There's a 99% chance that there will not be a gasoline tax hike in the next transportation bill passed by Congress," he said.
But others weren't so sure of the predictions. Don't be so sure that interstate tolling is inevitable, warned Jim Tymon, director of management and program financing at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials.
"There was such a negative reaction to interstate tolling in Congress when President Obama proposed it this spring that I don't see it happening soon," he said. "There is more support for tolls on lanes that add new capacity, but interstate tolling is not gaining any traction on Capitol Hill."
The Highway Trust Fund has a $17 billion a year gap between the revenues being used from it and gasoline taxes going into it because the current 18.4 cent per gallon federal tax has lost 48% of its purchasing power to inflation over the more than two decades since its last increase, Tymon said.
"If it had been indexed to inflation at that point we'd be in pretty good shape now," he said. "But to get it back to where it was, it would require an increase of 12 to 15 cents per gallon. That's a pretty heavy lift."
