Get Ready, Drivers: New Higher Tolls For 2018

By Elaine S. Povich, Stateline, Pew Trusts Florida Highway Sign

Get ready, drivers. With gas tax revenue stagnant and transportation funds scarce, states are turning to toll roads in 2018 to fill treasuries and manage traffic — despite outrage from motorists and questions about the efficiency of tolls.

The full list of new tolls is hard to track, but at least a half-dozen states from Florida to Colorado are slapping tolls on roads that used to be free or building toll-only lanes this year, and many more are expected to do so next year. It all shows how, despite the nation’s relatively robust economy, even the most basic state services — providing roadways, bridges and tunnels — are still being squeezed.

With infrastructure crumbling, budgets teetering on the edge of being in the red in many states, and the growing popularity of fuel-efficient cars, which means gas taxes generate less revenue than they used to, officials are looking to tolls. Giving a boost to the efforts, President Donald Trump’s initial infrastructure proposal also called for widespread use of tolling on interstate highways, which now are limited by federal regulations to certain stretches of road.

Bill Cramer of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association said the lack of funding from gas taxes is “100 percent” of the reason tolls are being imposed or going up. “Local governments are seeing this as a viable and useful option,” Cramer said. “It pays for the road, provides a steady stream of revenue to maintain that road at high quality and safety. And they have been very reluctant to raise the gas tax that would fund those roads.”

Nineteen states have waited a decade or more since last increasing their gas tax rates. Another 13 states have gone at least two decades, and three states — Alaska, Oklahoma and Mississippi — have not increased their gas tax rates since the 1980s, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank that keeps track of fuel taxes. The 18.4-cents-a-gallon federal gas tax, which also helps pay for roads, has not been raised since 1993.

“The money for the roads has to come from somewhere,” said Carl Davis, the research director for the institute. “In some cases, tolls are the path of least resistance.”

And for states that have chosen to raise fuel taxes in the past few years, it’s arguably harder for lawmakers to go back to that well again so soon, again making tolls attractive. Even the higher gas taxes in many states are insufficient to address infrastructure needs.

Florida, for example, indexes its gas tax to inflation, so it goes up a minuscule amount every year. Last year it went up one-tenth of one percent, to 36.59 cents a gallon, including local taxes. The last general gas tax increase there was enacted in 1990.

This year, the state will open two new toll roads in the Jacksonville area: express lanes along I-295, and State Road 23, known as the First Coast Expressway, which will extend south from Jacksonville into suburban Clay County.

The hit may be especially painful to some Jacksonville commuters — 70 percent of workers in Clay County — who are used to taking State Road 23 toll-free. Come spring, motorists will be charged anywhere from 20 cents for the cheapest leg of the trip to $2.20 if they drive all five exits (about 17 miles).

Hampton Ray, public information officer for the Florida Department of Transportation, said using the toll road will cut commutes by 10 to 15 minutes.

Florida state Sen. Dennis Baxley, a Republican member of the transportation committee, said that in his state “we need to look at all the tools in the toolbox” for highway funds, including tolls. Baxley, who has been in the Legislature since 2000, said there has been no impetus for a general gas tax hike in that time, and that tolling is one way to gain revenue.

He said that particularly in Florida, a state with a lot of tourists, tolls “allow our visitors to help us pay for the roads they need while they are here.” Baxley represents a district just north of Orlando, a tourist mecca, where toll roads are also used.

Baxley said, however, that non-toll roads should be available for “working people for whom this will be a sizable cost.”

Rhode Island increased gas taxes by a penny, up to 34 cents a gallon, three years ago, and will impose new truck tolls in the spring. In Texas, a state that hasn’t raised gas taxes for a quarter-century, the North Texas Tollway Authority in the Dallas region will begin operation of the 360 Tollway, a 9.7-mile toll road. It will have four lanes, two in each direction.

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Get Ready, Drivers: New Higher Tolls For 2018

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