Back in the late 40s and early ’50s, when the Interstate Highway System was being developed, I vaguely remember being told that it would be a non-toll road system and that construction, improvements and maintenance would be a federal obligation paid for through taxes. Am I mistaken? Has there been legislation to allow tolls on interstate highways? Are there other sections of the national system that have been tolled? Tolls paid for the second bridge across the Columbia but that was when it was still Highway 99. Now that it is a part of the Interstate Highway System, can tolls be justified?
— Ray, Salmon Creek
Ray, your vague memory is pretty sharp — maybe a little too sharp. Perhaps you’re recalling that classic 1939 report to Congress by the U.S. Bureau of Public Roads called “Toll Roads and Free Roads”?
According to the Federal Highway Administration website and its fun and informative “Highway History” section, the 1939 report advised against financing interstate road construction through tolling because it just wouldn’t raise enough money — partly because of “the traffic-repelling tendency of the proposed toll-road system.” Motorists would simply find ways to circumvent the tolls and still get where they were going, the report concluded.
But the new, tolled Pennsylvania Turnpike quickly undermined that conclusion. “It was an instant financial success” from the moment it opened on Oct. 1, 1940, the FHA says, and other states were eager to follow suit. Each state established a legal toll authority, allowing it to issue bonds for road construction and operation, and to repay the bondholders from toll revenues.