Arizona Thinks Twice About Tolls

Trucking interests forced the Arizona Department of Transportation to think twice about building a proposed Hoover Dam bypass as a toll route.

he department had planned to seek authorization from the Legislature during its next regular session to fund the $200 million project to build a new bridge over the Colorado River by imposing tolls. Under current state laws, only private entities are allowed to build toll routes. Citing opposition from the trucking industry and the need for more study, the department announced it will not include the proposal in its 1999 legislative agenda.

nstead, state officials hope to latch onto more federal transportation dollars to pay for the project, said Jennifer Macdonald, a department lobbyist. "However, if we’re not able to find other ways of financing it, that certainly may come back as an issue," she said.

ruckers agreed that the two-lane highway atop Hoover Dam is a traffic tie-up that poses a barrier to developing a trade corridor between Canada and Mexico, but argued that toll booths wouldn’t solve any of the problems.

To have a series of toll booths is counterproductive. That flies in the face of what a trade corridor is," said Dave Berry, a board member of the Arizona Motor Transport Association and a vice president of Swift Transportation Co. in Phoenix.

nother industry representative asked why truckers should pay tolls when they already get charged fuel taxes that are supposed to go towards highway projects. "We think we're being doubled-taxed," said Jim Miller, AMTA’s legislative chairman.