DALLAS - Allowing states to impost tolls on existing interstate highways will be one of the options as Congress debates how to fund a long-term transportation bill, even as industry advocates debate their effectiveness as a revenue source.
President Obama's proposed four-year, $302 billion Grow America Act removes the current restrictions on tolls to provide states with additional resources for highway maintenance and construction. Tolling is currently prohibited on existing interstate highways unless additional lanes are added.
With collections from the 18.4 cent per gallon gasoline tax unable to keep up with federal transportation spending, tolls would be another revenue source for cash-strapped states, said Patrick Jones, president of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association.
"No one solution will serve as the silver bullet to fix our nation's sagging roads, highways and bridges," Jones said.
In deciding how to fund the next multi-year highway bill, Jones said, Congress should consider interstate tolling along with a 12-cent increase in the federal gasoline tax, phased in over two years, as proposed by Sen. Patrick Murphy, D-Conn., and Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn.
"From the gutsy proposal to increase the federal gasoline and diesel taxes to keep the federal Highway Trust Fund from going broke, to the Obama administration's historic proposal to lift the ban on interstate tolling to help states reconstruct their interstate highways, all viable options should receive full consideration," he said.
The president's tolling proposal is a bad idea, said Julian Walker of the Association for Toll-Free Interstates, and Congress will likely reject the president's tolling proposal.
"It's a cowardly pass-the-buck idea presented by the president that has found no traction in Congress and has been rejected time and again by states," he said.
A federal pilot program for interstate tolls has been on the books for more than two decades, Walker said, but no states have opted to participate.
"If history is any indication, not one dollar will be raised to improve our infrastructure through that flawed approach," he said. Tolls are an inefficient and burdensome way to fund highways, said Miles Morin, a spokesman for ATFI.
"Transportation infrastructure needs improvements, but of all the ways to fund them, tolling existing interstates is the worst," he said. "Those paying the toll may not even see that road improved because the president's plan would allow toll revenue to go to other projects in the state."
The libertarian Reason Foundation last week called Obama's tolling proposal "the most sensible long-term solution" for interstate highways. In most cases, it said, revenue would exceed construction and maintenance costs.
But tolls should be levied only after a highway has been upgraded, it said.
"Tolls should replace gas taxes on interstates, be limited to what's needed for the capital and operating costs of the rebuilt interstates, and be implemented only after an interstate has been rebuilt and modernized," it said.
In an interview last week on National Public Radio, Robert Puentes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said tolling is not going to be an overall answer for transportation funding.
"Overall, it's certainly going to help, and again, if it's used for maintenance of an existing roadway, that's certainly going to help certain states and cities and metropolitan areas," he said. "But if we're looking for systemic changes and systemic fixes to the larger system, it's going to take something like a gasoline tax."
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Obama's proposal gives states more options for infrastructure funding.
"We would never tell a state or a local project sponsor to toll but that optionality is increasingly becoming something that states are interested in, and we'll consider finding ways to help when that's an option that states want to consider," Foxx said in April.
