Bill would prohibit tolls on existing highways
NITL (The National Industrial Transportation League) -- Logistics Management, 6/3/2009
Last month, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX), ranking Republican on the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, introduced a bill to prohibit charging tolls on existing federal highways.
In a statement accompanying the bill, Sen. Hutchinson said “I believe taxing Americans twice for the same asset is fundamentally unfair, and I oppose any effort to place tolls on existing interstate highways.”
She characterized tolling as a “band-aid” solution to meeting the nation’s strategic transportation needs. The Hutchison legislation would prevent states, private entities, or public-private partnerships from putting tolls on existing federal highways, bridges, or tunnels built with federal funding.
The bill also would prohibit states from attempting to purchase highways from the federal government and place them under state ownership or lease them to foreign investors for the purpose of tolling them. However, the legislation does not prohibit tolls to help finance new highway construction.
The Senator's bill closely tracks the widely-held views of League members as expressed in our recent comprehensive survey on an array of current issues in transportation, including preferred options for financing new highway construction. Hutchison noted that she has been working to prohibit what she called this form of double taxation since 2005, when she introduced a similar tolling prohibition amendment to the Senate version of the current surface transportation authorization, the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: a Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU).
That authorization for highway and other federal transportation programs expires this year. Hutchison’s Freedom from Tolls Act drew strong support from the American Trucking Associations.
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