“I don’t mind tolls as long as it is only for the road you are on and can’t be used for financing other projects.”
They offered that to Pennsylvania on I-80 recently. No big cities on that highway, so lots of pass-throughs, particularly trucks between the Northeast and Midwest.
Pennsylvania had been bitching about the cost to maintain I-80 for decades. So they finally got their chance. The Transportation Bill passed back then allowed for 3 ‘tolling experiments’, one of them being I-80 in Pennsylvania. So Pennsylvania put in their proposal to the Obama Administration and it got REJECTED.
Why? Because Pennsylvania also wanted to use I-80 as a ‘revenue engine’ (a little toll road lingo) for other purposes, particularly mass transit in Phili and Pittsburgh. The law didn’t allow it...the money collected could ONLY be used to maintain that highway. The state was invited to re-submit, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.
Bottom line, and the DIRTY LITTLE SECRET about freeways - they are VERY CHEAP to operate once built. Their value is in their right-of-way. That’s why these crony ‘operators’ are salivating at the chance to monopolize these highways, because they cost next to nothing to operate, but when they connect NYC to Chicago/Cleveland/Detroit they can collect HUGE amounts of revenue.
That is simply incorrect. The number we used in the industry for Pennsylvania in particular was $10,000 per year per lane-mile. That number is 20 years old, too -- so I'm sure it's much higher today. If you assume I-80 has a cross-section of four lanes for its entire length of about 310 miles, that's $12.4 million per year just for I-80 alone. That doesn't include the tens of thousands of lane-miles of state roads all over Pennsylvania. According to the PennDOT website, the agency is responsible for 40,000 roadway miles and 25,000 bridges in Pennsylvania.
Keep in mind that the figure I presented above only accounts for regular maintenance such as vegetation control, snow removal, minor repairs for potholes and guardrail replacements, keeping rest areas in order, etc. That number doesn't include any of the big-ticket capital projects such as road reconstruction and bridge replacement, either.