New Law May Take a Toll on Interstates

In a country committed to the inalienable right to go for a spin, the idea seems downright unconstitutional: Toll the interstates? Charge a fee for the freeway? Put the pinch on a public that has already paid for the costliest public works project in history?

It looks like it’s going to happen. Buried deep in the entrails of the new $200-billion federal transportation law, which Congress recently passed to cover transit spending until 2004, is an unprecedented plan to let three states convert interstates into toll roads.

For the first time, a state would have the power to charge highway maintenance fees on at least a part of the vast network of four-lane freeways that President Dwight D. Eisenhower had built to allow Americans to travel anywhere in the country, unimpeded by tolls or traffic lights.

Though the pricing project is billed as an experiment in infrastructure financing, trucking interests and other heavyweight highway users oppose it as a toll-road toehold in the backbone of the nation’s transportation system.

The interstates, which constitute only 1% of the nation’s roads, nevertheless carry 20% of the traffic. Congress didn’t designate where the experiment would take place, but already, officials in Arkansas and Pennsylvania are expressing interest in tolling sections of interstate. And, much further down the road, Southern California transit planners hope to tap federal funds to institute toll lanes on area interstates.

Many states, including California--particularly Orange County--have been bullish about expanding tolls on state or private roads, but tolling interstates has until now been prohibited by federal law. The congressional plan is probably the tolling movement’s biggest victory in years.

Jim Overton, a Federal Highway Administration aid official, said the agency probably would begin soliciting proposals before the end of the year. Opponents are prepared to pounce.

“The American Trucking Assn. will be vigorously fighting any efforts by states to establish a foothold, a toehold or any other sort of a hold on the Interstate Highway System,” said David Barnes, spokesman for the truckers’ lobby.

The interstates already are financed by the gasoline tax, and Barnes contended that charging tolls constitutes a double tax. Shippers and manufacturers promise to pass the extra costs on to consumers.

Yet, toll proponents point out that the gas tax isn’t covering the costs of maintaining the 45,000 miles of aging interstate, which has been burdened and beaten up by ever-increasing traffic. Toll roads are more efficient, they say, because they charge the heaviest users for highway upkeep.

“We built an awful lot of roads in a very short time,” said Neil Schuster, executive director of the International Bridge, Tunnel, and Turnpike Assn., which represents tolling agencies. “And those roads are coming to the end of their life cycle and need a lot of work.”

Since the dawn of the automobile, road building and ways of paying for it have varied considerably from state to state. The Pennsylvania Turnpike became the first modern toll road in the 1930s, and toll roads became tremendously popular during the boom years after World War II.

But Eisenhower’s interstate system, which was begun in 1956 and now reaches all 50 states, except Alaska, and every major city, is financed almost exclusively by the gasoline tax. A number of existing toll roads, mainly in the Northeast, were incorporated into the interstate system at the time of its creation with the assumption that they eventually would be converted to free highways. It never happened. The government became too dependent on that revenue even after the bonds that financed those roads were retired.

In recent years, in fact, the concept that the federal freeways should remain free has eroded somewhat. Congress already has made exceptions for bridges and tunnels. And in 1991, Washington allowed states to begin charging experimental “congestion” tolls on highways in San Diego County, Houston and Norfolk, Va., which allow single drivers to drive in carpool lanes if they pay a fee.

The new transportation bill allows for the creation of an additional 15 so-called congestion tolls on interstates and federally funded state routes--a provision that some highway users also contend is an attempt to toll the open road.

The Southern California Assn. of Governments’ tentative long-range plans include adding truck tolls to Interstates 5, 710 and 15 and congestion tolls to I-15 and state routes 14, 91 and 57 in the next decade or two.

Planning Director Jim Gosnell said there isn’t much discussion about converting an entire stretch of freeway to a toll road because it would likely increase traffic on the free roads that run parallel to it. And public sentiment likely wouldn’t allow anything but optional tolling, said SCAG planner Deborah Redman.

“In [the transportation bill] there is the hope that some brave soul will experiment with that great and grand notion, but not here. What we’re doing is brave enough,” she said. “I don’t think the average citizen wants any road priced, interstate or state route.”

Last year, the Clinton administration stunned toll opponents and supporters alike when it unveiled its version of the transportation bill, which would have let all the states decide whether to turn the interstates within their boundaries into toll roads.

“It was horribly and ineptly handled. It caught almost everybody by surprise,” said Peter Samuel, who publishes a tolling industry newsletter called Toll Roads in Maryland. “It was almost like they wanted to sneak it in.”

The proposal was quickly shelved, and in its place is the more modest proposal to allow three states to experiment with interstate tolls.

So, which interstates are most likely to become toll roads? According to House Transportation Committee spokesman Scott Brenner, the leading candidate is a section of Interstate 80 that runs through Pennsylvania, the personal preference of Republican U.S. Rep. Bud Shuster, the committee chairman whose district happens to be in the state.

“It’s only I-80 that we expressed would be the best place to put one,” Brenner said, adding that Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater will have the final say, sort of. “Other than that [I-80], the secretary is free to put them wherever they get the best application.”

The transportation bill is loaded with what critics call pork-barrel projects, and Shuster in particular has been accused of trading transit dollars for transit votes, though he denies this. Told that I-80 could become the first interstate converted to toll road, trucking association spokesman Barnes said: “This is absolutely no criticism of Chairman Shuster, [but] Pennsylvania does very well under [the highway bill].”

Toll road supporters say I-80 is as good a candidate as any. The highway is in bad shape and costly to maintain mainly because it is so heavily trafficked by trucks passing between the East and the Midwest, said editor Samuel. It also draws traffic--and revenue--away from the New York State Thruway toll road to the north and the Pennsylvania Turnpike on the south. “You’ve got a huge amount of truck traffic avoiding the tolls,” Samuel said.

Other possible candidates for toll status, Samuel said, include I-4 outside Orlando, Fla., which also draws motorists away from nearby toll roads and is heavily trafficked by out-of-staters. It is much more politically acceptable for a state to soak motorists who are only visiting.

Yet the legislation is so new and little-known that it isn’t on many radar screens yet. “Nobody has even broached the subject,” said Jim Drago, a California Department of Transportation spokesman.

One of the things that will continue to make tolling more palatable is the use of electronic scanning to bill motorists, experts say. Many toll booths already can be cleared with electronic passes and no fumbling for change. The next step will be high-speed tolling, in which individual billing information will be scanned without the motorist having to ease off the gas.