John Hennessy III,
P.E.
According to the latest HNTB Corporation America THINKS public opinion survey, Americans report congestion is noticeably worse today than just one year ago. They know improvements to our transportation infrastructure will help reduce congestion. They know funding is needed to pay for those improvements. And, they are willing to pay higher taxes and tolls to build and maintain a high quality, reliable and sustainable transportation system.
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Originally posted on the blog of the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association (IBTTA) Written by Bill Cramer, Communications Director, IBTTA The tolling industry’s top innovators and some of its most promising future leaders were in the spotlight in Atlanta last month during IBTTA’s 85th Annual Conference and Exhibition in Atlanta. On the Monday morning […]
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Tell the Congress of the United States to lift the prohibition on tolling interstate highways for the purposes of reconstruction. Give the states the ability to toll their Interstate highways specifically for rebuilding those Interstate highways. Let them have access to one more tool in the toolbox. This is not a mandate; no state would be required to toll their interstates. This simply gives states the flexibility to choose the option to use tolls if it makes sense to the individual state.
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Written by Mary Scott Nabers
President and CEO, Strategic Partnerships Inc.
Public pension funds represent about 18 percent of American-based institutional investment in infrastructure. And, at the end of the first quarter of this year, the number of public pension funds investing in unlisted infrastructure funds rose 12 percent from last year and 76 percent from five years ago.
INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE, TUNNEL AND TURNPIKE ASSOCIATION (IBTTA)
Q: Why do we need tolls to pay for roads and crossings?
A: No matter how you slice it, federal and state fuel taxes are insufficient to support America’s highway infrastructure. Tolls provide a valuable source of revenue both to build new roads and maintain existing roads.
SMART GROWTH AMERICA
Appropriate pricing strategies can raise revenues and manage demand, keeping costs down. On the other hand, when transportation system users do not see appropriate price signals, demand is artificially high, increasing congestion and pressure for new capacity. State departments of transportation generally cannot impose price signals on their own, but they can work with a variety of stakeholders and decision-makers, from legislators to insurance companies, to accomplish these goals.
REASON FOUNDATION
Toll roads in America date back to colonial times. Entrepreneurs in the late 1700s and early 1800s requested and received charters from state governments, enabling them to raise money from investors to improve dirt tracks between towns into regularly maintained roads—in exchange for charging users a toll. Transportation historians have estimated that between 2,500 and 3,200 toll companies built and operated such roads in the 19th century, encompassing between 30,000 and 52,000 miles at various times. The first wave of toll roads occurred in the northeastern states in the late 1700s and early 1800s. And the same pattern was repeated in the western states, especially California, after the Civil War, as those states were settled.
GEORGE MASON UNIVERSITY
How has the 2008 Economic Crisis impacted the design, financing, and construction of highway public–private partnership (PPP or P3) projects in the United States? In December 2007, on the eve of the economic crisis, the Virginia legislature approved a P3 to construct a 14-mile (22.5 km) high occupancy toll (HOT) road (the 495 Express Lanes) to alleviate heavy traffic on the Capital Beltway around Washington, DC. This case study looks at the impact the 2008 Economic Crisis and associated economic challenges between 2008 and 2012 had on this project and considers what governments and other stakeholders should be aware of when implementing P3s during adverse economic times.
Innovation Newsbriefs
Vol. 24, No. 14
Robert Poole, co-founder of the libertarian Reason Foundation and its Director of Transportation Policy has produced a study that is bound to create more than a ripple inside the transportation community…The study makes only one major policy recommendation: that Congress allow tolling of Interstate highways “for the specific purpose of reconstruction and widening with toll revenue used only for those purposes.” The author concludes that permission from Congress is “the one needed enabler… to begin this transition.”
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