States Expanded Use of Tolls, Reined in Liability Laws

State transportation departments desperate for money to pay for projects took steps toward imposing new tolls or increasing existing ones in 2011, often inviting disdain from the trucking industry.

Meanwhile, trucking’s push to ban contract clauses that shift shippers’ liability to carriers gained momentum as more states enacted anti-indemnification laws.

Interstate 95 saw three of the tolling proposals in Virginia, North Carolina and Rhode Island. Virginia received “conditional provisional approval” from the federal government in September to impose tolls on its section of the highway.

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) called the Sept. 14 approval “a major step toward funding critical capacity and infrastructure improvements needed in this corridor.”

Trucking and business interests, however, blasted the plan’s additional costs during an economic hardship.

North Carolina also sought a spot in the Federal Highway Administration’s pilot program that would allow three states to toll existing interstate highways, filing an application with the agency Sept. 22 to toll its stretch of I-95.

Rhode Island also expressed interest in tolls for its portion of I-95, expecting to raise between $10 million and $100 million a year for needed repairs. It pushed ahead even after U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood blasted the plan in May.

Arizona proposed tolls on Interstate 15 in October, applying to the FHWA program for existing interstates. And though Missouri hasn’t tolled Interstate 70 since it received federal consent in 2005, state officials said in November they would revive the idea and seek a public-private partnership.

Tolls increased on the Indiana Toll Road and on bridges between Pennsylvania and New Jersey in July, and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey increased its tolls drastically in September. Maryland, meanwhile, voted in September on a plan that would more than double truck tolls on seven roads, bridges and tunnels by 2013.

Anti-indemnification laws were passed in Utah, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, bringing the number of states with such laws to 30, American Trucking Associations said. The laws void any contract provisions that shift liability for incidents that are not a carrier’s fault to the carrier.

Severe weather strained some states’ transportation resources in 2011. The Missouri River valley saw some of the worst summer flooding in years, causing severe damage to roads, including interstates 680 and 29 in Iowa. Contractors rebuilt a damaged section of I-680 in 34 days, completing it on Nov. 2.

The northeast’s transportation infrastructure suffered greatly from August’s Hurricane Irene, which heavily damaged Vermont’s secondary road system.

“Vermont got clobbered,” Robert Sculley, executive director of the Vermont Truck and Bus Association told Transport Topics in September.

In addition, a piece of Interstate 287 in New Jersey fell when the earth below it was washed out by Irene, but the state quickly fixed it.

In Pennsylvania, flooding from Irene blocked numerous important trucking routes near the Susquehanna River. Some bridges remained closed for weeks while the state inspected them for damage.

An early February blizzard hit states from New Mexico to Maine, dumping as much as two feet of snow. Though it shut down major freight routes including Interstate 70, there was little permanent damage.

Tornadoes killed more than 300 people in the South at the end of April. Boyd Brothers Transportation Inc. had its Birmingham, Ala., office’s roof torn off.

“We didn’t skip a beat operationally,” Chris Cooper, the carrier’s chief operating officer, told TT after the tornadoes.