United States Department of Transportation
i
Making Tolling Transparent: Analyzing Processes Used to Allocate & Distribute Toll Highway Revenue in Multiple States
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2019-08-31
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[PDF-2.08 MB]
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Edition:Final report
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Abstract:Transportation finance has become increasingly unreliable in recent years, due to the declining revenue available from the motor fuel tax, increasing auto efficiency, and political reluctance to raise taxes. Some states have relied on toll revenue and other user fees to overcome these revenue challenges. However toll roads are often unpopular, due to poor transparency stemming from uncertainty over whether tolls will be used to support the facility and the drivers who use it, or support other uses generally deemed to be socially equitable. Despite growing interest in toll finance, there is little understanding in the transportation literature of how independent local tolling agencies decide to raise and spend money. This study hypothesizes that different toll road governance models provide varying incentives to raise tolls and spend them on various purposes. This study catalogues toll roads from across the US, using state enabling legislation to classify toll roads by governance type (e.g. private, public-private-partnership, public corporation, independent regional/local special agency, independent state agency, state-managed, though there may be others). This study selects a representative sample of 60 toll roads across 20 US states, chosen based on their governance type, centerline miles, and rate of toll increase since 2007. This study examines meeting minutes, comprehensive annual financial reports and other primary sources to identify whether/how much tolls were increased/decreased, and for what purpose, identifying incentives for toll roads to spend money differently based on motivations like public or private status, geographic scope and level of government, among other motivating factors. This study also interviews staff members and elected officials from five toll road agencies, providing further details on why they made decisions to raise or lower tolls, how they intended to use the money, and their relationship to other state and local governments.
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