Legislation lifts taboo on U.S. highway tolls
seattletimes.nwsource.com
WASHINGTON — Congress and the White House are still fighting over how much to spend on highways, but they have resolved a 182-year-old dispute of more practical significance to most drivers, especially commuters stuck in traffic. The great taboo against tolls has ended.
The legislators who approved the highway bill Friday faced the same basic problem as the Congress of 1822, when the federal highway system consisted of a gravel road from Cumberland, Md., to the Ohio River that was said to be in "a ruinous state."
To pay for repairing the National Road, Congress proposed charging tolls, but President James Monroe vetoed the bill and set an enduring precedent.
Although some states later built toll roads, such as the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes, the federal government kept tolls off its roads through the 20th century. It required new stretches of the interstate system to be free, a policy long popular with drivers but now blamed by many transportation experts for decrepit highways and worsening traffic jams.
The White House now wants to relax the taboo, and the House went along Friday by passing a highway bill that encourages new express toll lanes and roads. Details of the House bill must be reconciled with the bill already passed by the Senate, but that version also encourages tolls.
New tolls, which traffic engineers have been promoting as the cure to congestion, once were considered political suicide because of longstanding opposition from automobile associations, truckers, bus companies and other industries. Their coalition, the American Highway Users Alliance, still lobbies fiercely against tolls on existing roads, but it endorsed the legislation permitting tolls on new lanes and roads.
This change of heart was due partly to new technology, which allows tolls to be electronically collected via transponders in cars moving at expressway speeds, eliminating the need for tollbooths. The change also was an acknowledgment of fiscal reality: There seems to be no other way to pay for new roads.
House leaders have proposed increasing the federal gas tax, now 18 cents, by a nickel, or at least indexing it to inflation, but the Bush administration has opposed any tax increase. Attempts to increase the tax at the state level also have proved unpopular in referendums.
"The public would much rather pay for new roads with tolls than with higher taxes," said Rep. Mark Kennedy, a Minnesota Republican who championed the legislation allowing tolls on new lanes or roads. "If you put tolls on existing lanes, my guess is you're going to have a revolt. But if you give people stuck in traffic the option to pay to move into a fast-moving new lane, they're going to be happy."
Federal officials have allowed experiments with high-speed toll lanes in a few places, such as San Diego and Houston, and those results encouraged the White House to expand the option.
The new legislation would allow local officials elsewhere to create lanes guaranteeing drivers a speedy commute in return for a toll. Tolls also could be increased in peak times.
Washington state officials have considered tolls as a means of relieving traffic congestion and/or replacing state roads.
The state Department of Transportation recommended converting car-pool lanes on Highway 167 between Renton and Auburn into so-called HOT (high-occupancy toll) lanes. The House in February passed legislation authorizing the move, but it died in a Senate committee.
The three-county Regional Transportation Investment District, which is preparing a package of transportation projects and taxes to submit to voters this fall, can propose tolls on new and expanded roads. The district's board now is considering tolls only on a new six-lane Highway 520 bridge over Lake Washington.
Samuel Schwartz, who coined the term "gridlock" when he was New York traffic commissioner, said there was no way to solve the nation's highway problems without a change in federal policy.
"Until now, if you tried to put tolls on any road built with federal dollars, you had to give back the dollars," he said. "But we can't solve gridlock without pricing roads according to demand. We need that tool in our toolbox."
Some critics complain that tolls create "Lexus lanes" that are used disproportionately by the affluent. Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., who opposed the toll provisions passed Friday, has warned that imposing tolls "could effectively close these roads to low-income workers" and said new roads should be financed instead through increases in the gasoline tax.
Others favor both financing options. "I'd like to see higher gasoline taxes along with tolls," said Robert Atkinson, vice president of the Progressive Policy Institute, the research arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council.
"As a Democrat, I look at tolling as a progressive tax system, because we can get higher-income people to pay tolls to build new roads, and lower-income people benefit without paying a cent because the existing free roads become less congested."
The House's highway bill would cost $275 billion, less than the $318 billion version passed by the Senate but still more than the White House's limit. President Bush threatened to veto any bill costing more than $256 billion, although both chambers appear to have enough support to override the president.
Seattle Times staff reporter Eric Pryne contributed to this report.
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