The misperception that tolls on existing roads are a form of "double taxation" is closely linked to the misperception that existing roads are "free." In fact, a huge amount of tax money is currently spent every year on the operation and maintenance of existing highways and bridges. According to USDOT's most recent Conditions and Performance report, American taxpayers spent $36.3 billion in 2004 on system maintenance and services alone, which includes routine and regular expenditures required to keep the highway surface, shoulders, roadsides, structures, and traffic control devices in usable condition.143 As the Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission recently argued in its recommendations for building a sustainable transportation financing system "[i]t has long been accepted that there is no such thing as a free lunch; it is time for people to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a freeway either."144
Tolling is a more equitable revenue raising mechanism than fuel taxes and is also more effective for managing congestion. As a direct fee paid by the users of a facility, tolls are a more efficient source of revenue than taxes and help ensure that the people who use the facility pay a fair share of the facility's costs. Tolls can also be varied by time of day to reduce congestion. Congestion pricing may mean that users of a facility pay more to use the facility during congested periods than they would have under the traditional fuel tax model, but they can also choose to use the facility during off-peak hours when the costs of the trip are less, or they can choose to use transit. The idea is not simply to raise more revenue, but to inform drivers about the true costs of their trip so they can make better decisions about when and how to travel.
All five of the agreements that USDOT signed with urban partners as part of the Urban Partnership Program included provisions for pricing existing roads or highways. At the state and local level, where important highway and transit decisions are made, the "double taxation" argument is not persuasive. Instead, pricing existing roads is being utilized to manage severe and worsening congestion.
As the traditional funding model struggles to respond to the demand for capital investment in transportation infrastructure, whether for new capacity or for improvements to existing facilities, tolling is providing for an increasingly significant portion of capital highway investments. A 2006 study prepared for FHWA indicates that, "[d]uring the last 10 years, an average of 50 to 75 miles a year of new access-controlled expressways has been constructed as toll roads out of an overall average of 150 to 175 miles of urban expressways opened annually. Toll roads, therefore, have been responsible for 30 to 40 percent of new 'high end' road mileage over the past decade."145
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143 2006 Status of the Nation's Highways, Bridges, and Transit: Conditions and Performance, USDOT, FHWA, FTA, 2006, pp. 6-11 and 6-12.
144 Transportation Finance in Massachusetts: Volume 2, Building a Sustainable Transportation Financing System, Recommendations of the Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission, Massachusetts Transportation Finance Commission, September 17, 2007.
145 "Current Toll Road Activity in the U.S.: A Survey and Analysis", August 2006, page 2, available at: http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ppp/toll_survey_0906.pdf.