AASHTO, Environmental Defense Oppose Tolling Measure That Lacks Flexibility

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO), which represents state transportation departments, today joined with the group Environmental Defense, the construction industry, and other organizations to strongly oppose an amendment that would cripple state and local ability to use tolling to meet transportation needs and manage traffic problems.
 
 Rep. Mark Kennedy (R-MN) proposes the amendment to H.R. 3, the highway and transit reauthorization bill expected to come to the House floor tomorrow. The proposed amendment would further restrict states’ and localities’ current tolling authority, restrict tolling on Interstates limit tolling as a revenue option, and eliminate funding for promising non-highway transportation market-incentive pilot projects that help reduce traffic and pollution.
 
“We agree with the President that these decisions need to be made on a state and local level,” said AASHTO Executive Director John Horsley.

“While AASHTO and Environmental Defense have frequently differed on highway-related issues,” Horsley said, “the limitations inherent in Rep. Kennedy’s tolling bill would needlessly restrict an important revenue and traffic-management tool available to state departments of transportation, as they seek to close the gap between pressing transportation needs and available resources,” Horsley said.

Tolling is being explored in several states, including New York, California, and Texas,  in combination with debt financing as a way to advance sorely needed transportation infrastructure projects. Horsley explained that AASHTO’s members believe state transportation officials should have the ability to determine, on a case-by-case basis, where tolling would be most productive and what projects should be financed using toll revenues.

As submitted Tuesday afternoon to the Rules Committee, the Kennedy legislation would allow for new tolls to be levied only to fund additional lane construction or to convert high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes to high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes. If used for new construction, tolls newly imposed under the amendment would have to be lifted once debt-service was paid and a reserve fund for maintenance and operations had been established.

The Kennedy amendment continues to restrict toll revenues for highway use only, denying agencies the opportunity to fund new improved transit.

“The Kennedy amendment would reverse a growing trend in which states are experimenting with tolls to cut congestion and air pollution,” said Michael Replogle, Transportation Director for Environmental Defense.  “San Diego is using tolls on the I-15 corridor to pay for new express-bus services. New York uses tolls to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for bridges, tunnels and rapid rail transit. Congress should give states the freedom to use these tools to cut congestion and pollution and boost access — not take the tools away.”

“Properly placed transit projects remove a great deal of traffic from overcrowded roads,” Horsley noted. “We need to be able to address the nation’s transportation needs in a holistic, multi-modal way, not piecemeal.”

Replogle said his group supports “accountability and transparency for toll-road projects to mitigate their environmental impacts and traffic growth. We can minimize new pavement by doing more to price and manage the pavement we’ve already got,” Replogle said.

Although AASHTO and Environmental Defense have found common ground on the Kennedy language, Horsley noted that they remain of two minds about a variety of issues within the larger reauthorization bill, HR 3, being moved by House transportation leaders.

The Kennedy approach to date has drawn the opposition of the Tolling Coalition, which includes AASHTO, the American Road and Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA), the Associated General Contractors (AGC), the American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC), the National Asphalt Pavement Association (NAPA), the National Stone, Sand and Gravel Association, the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Authority (IBTTA) and the National Council for Public-Private Partnerships.

Other members of the Tolling Coalition include Koch Performance Roads Inc., Peter Kiewit and Sons, Nossaman Guthner Knox Elliott LLP, Parsons Brinckerhoff, the Bay Area Council, the Ybarra Group, Ashland Inc., Secretary of Transportation Whittington Clement of the Commonwealth of Virginia, the Colorado Department of Transportation, the Texas Department of Transportation, the Maryland Department of Transportation, Gabriel Roth, and Robert W. Poole of the Reason Public Policy Institute.

Environmental Defense, a nonprofit dedicated to breakthrough solutions to environmental problems, stated that several other groups have also joined the opposition to the Kennedy tolling amendment. They include the American Public Transportation Association, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, the Georgia State Road and Tollway Authority, the San Diego Association of Governments, Portland Metro in Oregon, the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency, Wilbur Smith Associates, and the Surface Transportation Policy Project.