Aug 20 2009
Should We Toll Exisiting Interstates?
The question this week on the National Journal’s Transporation Experts Blog asks if states should be allowed to toll exisitng interstates. ASCE’s Executive Director Pat Natale says yes, but cautions that tolls won’t fix all our transportation woes.
While it won’t be the ‘silver bullet’, we absolutely should consider tolling, even on existing interstate highways, as one of the tools in the solutions toolbox. Over the next five years, funding needs will outpace spending on roads and bridges by nearly $550 billion. With a problem of that magnitude, we can’t afford to take any revenue options off the table when we talk about solutions. And, if we are to have any long-term success, users are going to have to learn to associate an appropriate cost with the benefits they reap.
What we need is a bundle of options targeted at specific goals, such as system preservation, congestion relief and environmental quality. Included in that bundle will have to be things like increasing the use of PPPs, raising the federal gas tax and utilizing infrastructure banks.
Go to the Blog to read the rest of Natale’s and the other Experts’ responses.