When will we wise up about toll roads?
The proposed I-75 project in Henry County would be far more beneficial to the public if tolls were excluded. More drivers would use the new reversible lanes, and there could be more access points.
Under the proposed design, access would be limited to buses, registered van pools, and motorists with Peach Passes or certain similar passes. Others entering the lane would be billed by mail and could find themselves missing their exit because the toll lane does not go there. No trucks would be allowed, and few out-of state travelers will have passes. Thus, most users would be local and either wealthy, extravagant, late for work, or needing to get to a restroom.
Could tolls from such a limited base ever retire the bonds needed to build these lanes? It is far from a sure bet.
While this stretch of I-75 has been severely overloaded for decades, toll lanes are not the answer. The toll design was mandated because the other funding choice, tax money, is as risky politically as the tolling option is risky financially. But compared with what we could build with old-fashioned fuel taxes and federal aid, the toll plan really stinks.
Consider, for instance, the alternative of streamlining the parallel stretch of U.S. 19/41 by means of flyovers at major intersections, roundabouts and improved traffic signals. Reducing trip time between Hampton and I-75 (Exit 235) would give thousands of drivers a faster, more direct route to the city and remove them from the congestion on I-75.
The law that created the interstates in 1956 prohibited tolls, except for some existing turnpikes that were included in the system. That was a different, more fair-minded America not many years removed from the Depression.
It seemed un-American then to base access to a public road on one’s ability to pay extra. We said it was not right to tax some motorists twice, once at the pump and again with a toll. And it was plain foolish to build more costly, less accessible roads and waste part of the revenue on the cost of collection.
Principles and realities did not change; attitudes and perceptions did. It is time to question those changes.
The hard facts are these: If we want more road capacity, we must pay for it somehow. If we want the most and best for our money, we must build free lanes, not access-restricted toll lanes. With adequate revenue, we can also streamline many other arteries, which would substantially reduce interstate traffic.
I am ready to pay my share through a motor fuel tax or any other tax that everybody who uses the roads would pay.
James Eason is a highway engineer who lives in Forest Park.
