Saturday, October 02, 2004
Increase the gas tax to pay for Interstate 81
From the RoundTable blog
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Bryant lives in Troutville and is an executive
with a local insurance company.
Your Sept. 25 news article "Summit conference in Roanoke draws audience from I-81 corridor" contained some interesting statements attributed to Philip Shucet, Virginia's transportation commissioner:
"Virginia's approach to tolling I-81 may need a change because of trucks' ability to divert to other routes."
The state code now prohibits tolls on cars, but "that's unreasonable."
"That's an issue we will have to deal with legislatively."
"We will never improve Interstate 81 on the backs of the trucking industry. It's never going to happen" because Virginia's own study - and the history of truckers' practices - shows that even a small fee will encourage trucks to use nontoll roads.
With a truck-only toll, "we run the risk of a failed project" in which there wouldn't be enough fee revenue to pay off construction bonds. Virginia has no intention of asking its taxpayers to bail out such a project.
I personally believe that "toll" is the four-letter word for tax, and explicitly a very costly method of collecting the tax. So, to verify assumptions on how costly it would be to collect this tax, I perused Star Solutions' Sept. 5, 2003, proposal. The following are facts from that document.
From page S-1: "The I-81 tolling concept includes the deployment of an open-lane, fully automated, electronic system of toll collection on heavy commercial vehicles. The conceptual system will facilitate the flow of traffic by eliminating the bottlenecks traditionally associated with manual toll collection systems. An additional benefit of this tolling concept is the reduction in ongoing manpower and maintenance needs and costs associated with staffing manual toll collection lanes.
"The proposed toll system involves implementation of toll 'read-zones' on each entry and exit ramp along I-81 as well as in mainline truck lanes at the northern and southern ends of I-81 and selected truck-only rest area and ramp locations along the corridor. At full build-out, this assumes 88 interchanges with four open-lanes each, for a total of 352 ramp lanes, a six express lane mainline plaza at the northern and southern ends and approximately 16 truck-only rest area and/or slip ramp lanes along the corridor.
"The estimated project costs in the pro forma analysis includes these $104 million of expenditures in 2005 and 2006."
From page S-4: "The toll collection costs for ETC system operation and maintenance include the labor and overhead affiliated with facility and staff management/administration, transaction and revenue auditing and reporting, accounting/finance, violations processing, control room supervision, field maintenance and customer service.
"Costs also provide for a fleet of vehicles, including field technician/equipment trucks, bucket trucks and other pool vehicles necessary to support management and operations.
"Star Solutions has estimated that the annual costs of toll collection for a 100 percent ETC system of this nature, operating throughout the I-81 corridor, will be $10.52 million, stated in 2003 dollars."
From page S-3: "In addition, the financial analysis assumes that toll rates will increase annually with no reduction in traffic. Rate increases are assumed to be 3.0 percent per year from 2003 to 2018 and 2.5 percent per year thereafter."
Interesting information - $104 million to set up truck-only electronic collection facilities and $10.52 million in annual operating expense.
Imagine adding double those facilities in order to collect tolls from cars, and then paying staff 24 hours times 7 days a week times 365 days a year to staff more than 352 ramp lanes. So, that's 352 times three shifts, plus 25 percent overhead for vacation, sick, etc. - about 1,320 staff minimum.
At $8 an hour with 30 percent for benefits, that would be about $22,000 a year each for a total of $28,554,240 per year - just to collect tolls from cars. That doesn't include additional supervisory staff or management staff.
The folly of tolls on I-81 (or any major highway) is clearly apparent. While most folks don't like to pay taxes, an intelligent person would choose a method of paying for a required project in the least costly method.
Since there already exists a very low-cost method of obtaining funding for road projects through the gas tax, it would appear that an increase in that tax would be the best (lowest-cost) solution. At least all of the designated tax would go to road construction - the purpose of the I-81 upgrade.
This would also eliminate the bottlenecks/congestion at toll booths. Congestion and safety are the principle reasons given for the need to upgrade I-81.
