The future of roads: taxes or tolls?
By: Les Dobson
Date: 2000-06-26
One of the most useful on-line services provided by Britain's Automobile Association is a route finder where the driver simply feeds in the starting point and destination and up pops the most direct way of getting there.
The AA is promoting the service as a good way of planning trips between cities hosting the European soccer championships but-and here's the interesting thing-there's apparently no way when using major highways of avoiding toll roads.
Armed with a set of large-scale maps, of course, penny-pinchers may be able to figure out a route along the back roads. However, the example serves to illustrate the extent to which toll roads have become part of the transportation landscape. Neither is it a phenomenon confined to Western Europe or North America. Toll roads are big business in Japan and are penetrating into Africa, in Mozambique, for example.
Around the world there are increasing numbers of toll roads because tax financing isn't producing good enough highways, according to tollroads.com , a web site devoted entirely to the toll road issue.
"Voters reject tax hikes because they don't get highway value for the tax dollar. And they are frustrated by congestion on inadequate, overloaded roads, and tie-ups which cost tens of billions in wasted fuel, missed meetings, downtime from work, and unnecessary pollution and accidents," say the pro-toll authors.
"Tolling is a way to build and rebuild roads without having to resort to taxes," they say." Toll roads dip into the capital markets for their funds, not into taxpayers' pockets. It's the fairest system and the most efficient, and variable toll rates will allow flexible and responsive pricing of a commodity that is especially scarce in certain times and places.
"Because of the logic in favor of tolling, major new road projects around the world will mostly be built as toll facilities. And increasingly, as old highways need rebuilding, private sector funds and management will be needed. Tolls will be the way people pay."
Writing for the Cato Institute, a Washington-based research foundation, freelance journalist Peter Samuel says that traffic congestion is a major annoyance to tens of millions of Americans and a $100 billion annual economic loss.
"The traditional answer to highway backups, mass transit, and carpooling, have not worked," he says. "The convenience of the private car for the vast majority of commuters makes even the most lavishly subsidized mass transit uncompetitive.
Since 1956, Samuel says, most highways in the USA have been financed by gas taxes. Now those taxes are being siphoned off to transit and general revenue, and what is left for roads goes largely for maintenance and rebuilding, not new roads. The revolt against rising taxes means that the only source of revenue for significant new highway capacity is the private sector.
"The economics, politics, and technology are right for progressively privatizing highways and creating markets in highway service. Washington State, Virginia, and California have begun to do so."
Of course, the concept of toll roads and bridges is nothing new and has-been around in the United States since before the revolution and in Europe for much longer. But the recent surge in toll road construction owes its genesis to three major factors.
Firstly, the political climate is right. Throughout most of the world there's a move toward privatization of everything from national airlines to jails. Voters are distrustful of huge state monopolies that soak up their tax dollars. There's widespread belief-whether it's true or not-that private enterprise is more efficient.
Secondly, the economic climate is right. The costs of congestion are a drain on an economy that depends heavily on free-flowing transportation of goods and services.
And lastly, although by no means least, the technology is right. Cumbersome toll booths that add to traffic chaos are becoming a thing of past. Tolls can now be collected through small, cheap transponder tags, attached to a sun visor or windshield, that either hold a stored value or directly bills motorists as they drive by at highway speed. The system is usually backed up by video cameras that photograph the license plate and send a monthly statement to the vehicle owner's home address.
In Japan, a system of toll roads will be an integral part of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) planned to take shape there over the next decade. This advanced information network for road traffic will become an indispensable part of the national lifestyle and is being phased in starting with the display of traffic congestion information and optimum routes on the in-vehicle navigation system. By the year 2010, it's foreseen the system will permit the introduction of automated driving.
With full-scale ITS deployment, it is expected that the number of deaths caused by traffic accidents will greatly decrease from that of the present in spite of increased traffic volumes and density. All roads, including those within cities, will have less traffic congestion, benefiting both driver's wallets and the environment.
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