States Seek Toll Roads To Bolster Transportation Budgets

With Congress unwilling to contemplate an increase in the federal gas tax, motorists are likely to be paying ever more tolls as the government searches for ways to repair and expand the nation's congested highways.

Tolling is less efficient and sometimes can seem less fair than the main alternative, gasoline taxes. It can increase traffic on side roads as motorists seek to evade paying. Some tolling authorities — often quasi-governmental agencies operating outside the public eye — have been plagued by mismanagement. And some public-private partnerships to build toll roads have drowned in debt because of too-rosy revenue predictions.

 

LexSucks - 5/30/2012 2:57:15 PM

0 Boost

As if we aren't taxed enough already.

CarCrazedinCali - 5/30/2012 10:01:18 PM

+1 Boost

OH hell no... I think there must be other ways to balance the budget. Try taking away any incentives from OIL COMPANIES that make billions... There are plenty of corporations and industries sitting pretty with government assistance that DON'T DESERVE OR NEED IT.

vdiv - 6/1/2012 2:55:26 PM

+1 Boost

In principle tolls are the most direct way to tax for road use. You use the road, you pay, if you don't use the road you don't pay. The problem is the mismanagement and corruption, the states using the toll fund for expenditures other than building and maintaining the roads.