Tolls offer a number of advantages over gas taxes, including:
- Fairness: only users of a toll road pay for it, and directly in proportion to their use;
- Large Scale: a toll revenue stream permits large sums to be raised in the capital markets, making it
possible to build large-scale projects in a short period of time;
- Less Pork: having to prove to the bond market that a toll road is viable tends to weed out pork-barrel
projects;
- Greater Safety: the accident rate on toll roads is one-third less than on comparable free roads;
- Better Maintenance: bondholders insist on legally enforceable requirements for proper ongoing
maintenance, for which there is no counterpart on free roads;
- Traffic Management: time-variable tolls (high at rush hour, low at off-hours) smooth out traffic flows,
greatly reducing rush-hour congestion.
- Much of the traditional opposition to tolling can be addressed with new methods and technology. Toll plaza congestion can be reduced (and later eliminated) via nonstop electronic toll collection. Fully automated toll roads, designed completely without toll booths, are in operation today in Toronto, Canada, and Melbourne, Australia and others are on the way. We need never build another toll booth or toll plaza, ever again. And we can begin now to phase out all existing toll booths and plazas.
Excerpt culled from
Putting Customers in the Driver’s Seat:
The Case for Tolls by Peter Samuel
