Overcoming The 'Tolls Equal Taxes' Problem

In his column for Public Works Financing, Reason's Robert Poole writes, "America is suffering from a massive highway funding problem. The gap between what's available from fuel-tax revenues and what it takes to keep highway capacity in step with truck and car traffic growth is in the tens of billions per year. So Americans continue to waste over $60 billion a year stuck in urban traffic congestion. Yet the very people who would benefit the most from unleashing market pricing and toll funding -- the owners of cars and trucks -- are equivocal if not outright opposed to expanded use of tolling. Their overwhelming concern is that tolls will end up, de-facto, as new taxes." Poole outlines how to use tolls as "market prices that both manage the use of highways and pay for their construction, maintenance, operation, expansion, and rebuilding."

Thanks to Chris Steins