Summer is road trip time, but as we pack our cars for those long-awaited vacations, a sobering fact confronts us: the cost of travel will never be as low as it used to be. That’s not only because the era of cheap oil is over, but because American roads are increasingly seen not just as amenities for motorists, but as—or so state officials hope—income-producing assets.
States confronted with decaying infrastructure that neither they nor the federal government can pay to fix are thinking of ways to squeeze dollars out of the roads themselves, and however they cut it, it comes down to user fees to be paid by you and me. Rhode Island officials are looking into charging tolls on I-95 through their tiny state, though 95 is an interstate highway built with federal (read taxpayer) money.
A bridge over the Pawtucket River unusable by heavy trucks; a viaduct in Providence in need of replacing; what with one thing and another, an analysis has found that Rhode Island needs to spend twice the $300 million per year it spends now to keep its roads and bridges repaired. State officials say they can’t keep up the heavily traveled interstate thoroughfare without charging tolls. But federal transportation agency heads say they’re reluctant to allow tolls on roads the public paid for in the first place, except in cases where those roads had tolls before they became part of the interstate system.
North Carolina, too, is looking at charging tolls on its stretch of I-95 to help keep that part of the highway in good condition. And in Baltimore another proposal is on the table that would make a trip down the East Coast more of a strain on the wallet: a plan to hike the toll on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge from the $2.50 charged now to $8.
Toll money on some American roads is going out of the country to foreign companies. In 2004, the Chicago Skyway was leased to a joint venture including a Spanish firm, Cintra SA, and an Australian company, Macquarie, for $1.83 billion. The original Skyway toll was 50 cents; by 2017 it’s expected to be $5. Two years later, the same pair of companies leased the Indiana Toll Road for $3.8 billion. That same year, 2006, the Australian company Transurban LLC paid $611 million for a 99-year lease on the Pocahontas Parkway south of Richmond, Va.
Though such leasing actions often bring improvements to roads, the fact remains that money from these American public assets is leaving the U.S. for foreign profit centers. That’s a matter of concern in the present state of the economy. So is the fact that the shift from tax-funded maintenance of our roads to user fees makes driving less affordable for those who must use their cars to work at low-paying jobs.
