Study Says Gas Tax Hike Preferable to New Tolls

January 16th, 2008, posted by Greg Palmer

Privatization of toll roads would push truck traffic onto nearby roads, endangering motorists there and hurting the economy by slowing interstate freight movement, according to a new academic study.

The authors of the analysis suggested that higher fuel taxes are better tools to raise money for states’ transportation needs.

The study, presented Monday at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, comes as Pennsylvania, New Jersey and other states are considering higher road tolls or leasing toll roads to private operators.

It was released a day before the National Surface Transportation Police and Revenue Study Commission recommended raising federal gasoline taxes up to 40 cents per gallon over five years to fix aging bridges and roads and reduce traffic deaths.

“It is important that the effect of shifting from fuel taxes to tolls as well as highway privatization be understood better before the United States implements changes that will be very costly to reverse,” concluded the paper’s authors, Peter Swan, assistant professor of logistics and operations management at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, and Michael Belzer, associate professor of economics at Wayne State University.

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Toll roads cost MORE

On January 16th, 2008 Anonymous said:

Toll roads cost MORE to build and maintain than free roads (not to mention the secret deals), the gas tax makes the most sense. It costs 25 cents to collect a cash toll!

LEARN ABOUT TEXAS TOLL ROAD CORRUPTION:
http://salcostello.blogspot.com/

Infrastructure already in place

On January 16th, 2008 Anonymous said:

Increasing the gas tax involves little or no increased administrative costs. The agencies and tax collecting infrastructure is already in place.

Adding tolls to a road involves a huge start up expense which will take a long time to pay out.

Hard "Study"...

On January 17th, 2008 thegentlemanfro... said:

Let me see if I can summarize the findings of this “study”, which apparently based it’s conclusions entirely on the behavior of Ohio motorists over a period of fifteen years. I suppose my basic conclusion would be this: PEOPLE DON’T LIKE TOLLS! Government raises tolls, ergo drivers seek out alternative, less costly routes. The market behaves correctly. Somebody needed to impanel a commission to discover this? Strangely, the authors of the study tie the “evil” of privatization into their findings, although that option was in no way relevant to their study sample in Ohio. Presumably, the authors put forward the proposition that private operators would jack up the tolls on their highways, when our very own sainted Turnpike Commission has literally guaranteed those exact intentions in the near future. The study authors attempted to use guilt by association when no association actually existed. Pennsylvanians simply will not (and, frankly, should not) stand for a 40 cent hike in their gas taxes to finance broken, archaic infrastructure and mass transit systems that are too stubborn to even begin reforming themselves. Wake up, friends. We’ve been trying it this way (higher taxes, spending, etc.) for decades, and look where it’s gotten us. Personally, I’d roll the dice with a private operator before I’d pony up another nickel to bankroll the Turnpike Commission, the Allegheny Port Authority, or SEPTA. To put it bluntly, with the former, there is a chance you may get screwed. With the latter, well, sorry kids, but grab your ankles.