Raising taxes is not the only way to pay for a much-needed expansion of the Washington region’s clogged road system. Tolls aimed at reducing congestion would also save gas and create a new revenue stream to pay for additional road capacity. Most drivers would consider tolls a pretty good trade-off to sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic watching the gas gauge inch toward “Empty.”
Peter Samuel, editor of Toll Road News, told The Examiner that more cities in the U.S. and worldwide are using new electronic technology to collect tolls from vehicles traveling at normal highway speeds. He believes that the high incomes and good economic prospects in the D.C. area make it ideal for regionwide tolls, also called congestion pricing, which will be added to Maryland’s new Intercounty Connector and the Beltway’s new high-occupancy toll addition being built in Virginia.
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But the region’s 170 lane miles of underutilized high-occupancy vehicle lanes could easily be converted to HOT lanes as well. Because they’re already built, they would be ideal for raising revenue for an Outer Beltway that diverts heavy interstate traffic around D.C. and even for another bridge over the Potomac River.
But regional officials won’t even consider such needed road improvements, much less fund them. For instance, the Transportation Planning Board’s latest Constrained Long-Range Plan allocates $52 billion for transit and just $24 billion for new roads, despite estimates by TPB’s own staff that the ratio of drivers to transit riders will actually increase from the current 10-to-1 to 15-to-1 by 2030. This is clearly a recipe for future gridlock.
Although tolling technology has never been tried yet, Samuel sees no reason why local governments cannot use it to raise revenue and manage congestion on major arterials during rush hours as well, essentially converting them into mini-expressways by keeping red lights longer at major intersections to manage traffic flow. Avoiding the tolls would be a strong incentive for non-commuters to run errands at less busy times, freeing up space for people who have to be on the road.
Adding more toll lanes would save gas by keeping traffic flowing and raise money for roads without higher taxes on non-users or those who drive at off-peak times. But it would also diminish the power of politicians and bureaucrats, which is why so few of them are willing to give it a shot.
