A recent report on using tolls for highway funding understates public opposition to the concept, American Trucking Association said Sept. 13.
“Despite what toll advocates and financiers try and tell the public, tolling existing interstates is a wildly unpopular concept,” ATA President Bill Graves said in a statement.
“Voters and lawmakers in Virginia and North Carolina have demonstrated this vividly in recent months – the public continues to see tolls as an intrusive and inefficient tax,” he said.
ATA said the report by the Reason Foundation makes faulty assumptions including the claim that motorists prefer tolls to higher fuel taxes.
“Tolls are just another name for a tax, one that provides quite a lot of money for government bureaucrats and Wall Street financiers, and is an extremely expensive way to fund highway improvements,” ATA First Vice Chairman Phil Byrd said in a statement.
The Reason Foundation report says new toll revenue could generate $1 trillion in the next 20 years to fund improvements to the interstate system.
According to the study, in 37 states revenues from modest toll rates would cover 90% of the cost of reconstructing and widening the interstate highway system. The baseline toll rates would be 3.5 cents per mile for cars and 14 cents a mile for trucks, but tolls would be higher in some states.
