By Mark Barrett
At the inception of the national Interstate Highway System that bears his name, Republican President Dwight Eisenhower had to be talked out of tolling it by advisers who warned that wouldn’t raise enough money to fund it. Nearly 60 years later, the White House wants to greatly expand tolls by repealing a ban on states tolling existing interstate lanes. As in the past, the goal is to raise revenue for roads. And just as then, tolls won’t work. Tolls are a pass-the-buck road funding plan that can’t deliver on their promise and gives states little autonomy on how road revenue is spent. Yet astonishingly, tolls have been mislabeled as a conservative option by crony capitalists who stand to benefit from more tolls.
Advocates for enhanced tolling present it as the ultimate “user fee” wherein highway drivers directly pay for interstate access and upkeep of the road. Labeling tolls as “user fees” actually is the granddaddy of all misnomers. Drivers already pay user fees in the form of federal and state gasoline taxes for road maintenance and construction. The White House plan doesn’t look to swap tolls for existing road-related taxes – it wants to add another revenue ingredient to the recipe. That is double taxation, folks, no matter how it is characterized.
That alone is reason enough for principled conservatives to reject the massive tolling expansion President Obama desires. And there are plenty more. Toll revenues under the White House package would not exclusively fund interstate upkeep. Instead, that plan could divert toll revenues to completely unrelated project in proximity to a toll road. So driver-paid tolls might underwrite public transit or even environmental projects under that scheme. It is a classic case of robbing Peter to pay Paul at the expense of American taxpayers who overwhelmingly oppose tolls.
When tolls are implemented, management of new toll facilities often is vested with for-profit tolling authority boards that set and increase rates in the best interest of toll operators, not motorists. The structure and herd-the-cattle mentality of such toll operators can lead to erroneous billing horror stories where drivers get astronomical invoices for tolls they don’t owe. Those hapless drivers then have to wade through a bureaucratic labyrinth to set the record straight on a bill they never should have received. That is one example of toll authority inefficiency. Another is how much is spend on administrative overhead. As much as one-third of tolls collected is spent on operations costs, while just one percent of gasoline tax money is spent on overhead. Can someone remind me again which road funding method most closely resembles fiscal conservative beliefs?
So let’s review: toll authorities tax drivers twice to use roads they have already paid for, are prone to headache-inducing billing errors, are demonstrably inefficient at raising road revenue, and could be spent on things other than roads under the White House plan.
Maybe the message isn’t reaching Washington, but states and their citizens have already decisively said they don’t want new tolls on existing interstate lanes. The three states with exceptions to the current interstate tolling prohibition have not implemented new tolls with that permission. Instead, lawmakers in Virginia, North Carolina and Missouri have each acted to block tolls on their interstates. In the 16 years Washington has offered a pilot program granting select states special dispensation from the toll ban, no state has successfully tolled an existing interstate through that program.
The White House push to place unwanted new tolls on existing interstates shows Washington disregards as trifles states’ sovereignty and unique development patterns. States were built up over time by homesteaders and entrepreneurs making free market-based decisions about where best to live and do business. Dramatically revising longstanding policy to allow a proliferation of tolls would threaten the foundation of those financial ecosystems. Something as basic as the location of toll gantries, for instance, could alter driving patterns and consumer behavior to the point of destabilizing a functioning community.
Real danger is posed to families and businesses from government picking winners and losers that way. Toll costs will negatively impact the finances of working families and commuters by increasing their travel costs. A reduction in their disposable income hurts them and undermines local economies. Basic economics tells us that when tolls increase business travel costs it can also lead to higher prices at the register for shoppers. That puts the squeeze on families and local merchants who make vital economic contributions. More financial hardship from tolls falls on local governments left with unanticipated repair bills for local roads ripped up by heavy traffic from vehicles avoiding highway tolls. Those costs eventually get passed on to local taxpayers, whose safety is also jeopardized by congestion that delays rescue workers from responding to emergencies.
Our interstates must be properly funded. A modern network of roads facilitates movement throughout this great nation for commerce and recreation. I support fiscally responsible solutions that shield businesses and families from needless economic hardship. Tolls on existing interstate lanes don’t measure up to that standard – they restrict access to the open road and wantonly threaten fragile local economies. Use of the interstate system should not be hindered by bigger government or profiteering bureaucracies disdainful of how free markets operates. The White House plan to expand tolls is an assault on the core conservatives principles of freedom and liberty. Decades ago, President Eisenhower shrewdly realized tolls were a bad fit in the interstate funding puzzle and the system has been humming along ever since. The current administration would be wise to learn the same lesson.
Mark Barrett is a Virginia native and a member of the Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates, which invites the public to sign its online petition and take a stand against expanded interstate tolling. Follow ATFI on Facebook here or on Twitter here.
