By Michele Fuetsch, Staff Reporter
This story appears in the June 1 print edition of Transport Topics.
A bill to keep states from tolling existing roads in the National Highway System has been introduced in Congress by Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas).
“I believe taxing Americans twice for the same asset is fundamentally unfair, and I oppose any effort to place tolls on existing interstate highways,” Hutchison said in a press release.
Hutchison’s proposed legislation would prevent states, private entities or private-public partnerships from adding tolls on existing free federal highways, bridges or tunnels built with federal funding.
Introduced May 21, the legislation does not prohibit tolls on new construction, nor does it prohibit tolling for conversions to high-occupancy vehicle lanes.
American Trucking Associations announced May 26 that it supports the Hutchison bill, which the senator titled “The Freedom From Tolls Act.”
“Highway users have paid for these highways through fuel taxes,” said ATA President Bill Graves. “Additional tolling on our National Highway System is nothing more than an ill-conceived quick fix for transportation-funding shortfalls.”
In 2007, Hutchison succeeded in adding a provision to a highway appropriations bill to prohibit tolling in Texas of existing federal highways built with taxpayer dollars. That funding bill will expire in September.
Hutchison’s bill is the second one on the tolling issue introduced in Congress this year. In February, U.S. Rep. Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.) introduced a bill he calls the “Keeping America’s Freeways Free Act,” which would prohibit tolling interstate highways.
Thompson’s proposal applies only to interstate highways, but Hutchison’s bill applies to all roadways in the National Highway System, said Darrin Roth, director of highway operations in ATA’s law and regulatory affairs department.
In Pennsylvania last year, Gov. Edward Rendell (D) tried and failed to persuade the federal government to allow him to put tolls on Interstate 80, saying the state needed revenues with which to support its transportation system.
Since then, Rendell, who is chairman of the National Governors Association, said that he would work with other governors to persuade the Obama administration to allow states to toll interstate highways.
