“It’s illegal to use tolls collected on a federal interstate for anything other than the operation and maintenance of that interstate.”
If that’s the law, New York and Delaware must be flagrantly violating it. Delaware charges $8 for 15 miles; at that rate the Pennsylvania Turnpike would cost about $150. And because it’s between Baltimore/Washington and New York/New Jersey, you probably have four times more drivers per mile paying in. So that’d be like $600.
Meanwhile, in New York, one g— damned bridge is $17.
I think the rule against using tolls for anything other than operating the highway only applies to conversion of existing Interstate freeways to toll roads.
For example Pennsylvania BADLY wants to convert I-80 to a toll road. They see HUGE REVENUE potential from people that that cannot complain (i.e., out of state drivers transiting the state...very few cities on that route). So they applied to convert it. The feds said fine, as long as all of your revenue goes back into operating the tolling scheme and maintaining the road...which likely would have been no more than 5 cents per mile (dirty little secret: highways are cheap to build once you have the right of way, and very, very cheap to operate). Pennsylvania then dropped the idea - they had planned to charge way, way, more, and use the revenue on the inner cities, just like the PA Turnpike does.
States will always try to set up little toll booths at their entrances to make throughput people pay up big-time - it is one of the MAIN LEGITIMATE FUNCTIONS of our federal government - which is to allow the free flow of Interstate commerce. The feds (i.e., Obama Administration) actually got it right here.