Addressing the House Subcommittee on Highways & Transit last week, YRC Worldwide Inc. CEO Darren Hawkins, speaking on behalf of the American Trucking Industry (ATA), noted that the spreading implementation of tolls is unsafe, inefficient, and damaging to their industry.
Hawkins criticized the mechanism as a waste, especially in the face of things he felt were far more efficient. He also cited fears that the user fees they collect go more into furthering toll road bureaucracies — not building and maintaining roads. He noted that tolls could only act as a solution for a few projects, rather than full system support.
“Tolling has very high collection costs relative to other highway user fees,” Hawkins said. “While the cost of collection has come down with the introduction of transponders, costs can still exceed 10 percent. On some major toll facilities, these costs are much higher. On the Ohio Turnpike, for example, 19 cents out of every dollar is spent collecting tolls, while the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s collection costs exceed 20 percent. Contrast this with the 0.2 percent cost of collecting federal fuel taxes.”
Hawkins instead wanted the subcommittee to focus on the Highway Trust Fund, which he called the most critical challenge. That fund, which is rapidly nearing its end, will open up a significant shortfall at the federal level. Hawkins said he fears this could drive states to worse alternatives, which include the damaging system of tolls.
Instead, the ATA proposes an increase to the federal fuel tax to maintain roads. Otherwise, Hawkins said, systems like tolls could be abused to make up for the shortfall.
“Federal law allows states to shift excess toll revenue to any Title 23 eligible purpose,” Hawkins said. “This results in toll payers bankrolling projects that they may not benefit from. In addition, because the vast majority of roads can’t support tolls, a small minority of motorists can be saddled with the subsidization of a state’s surface transportation system, regardless of whether the toll payers benefit.”