Toll road user's bill of rights

[cpzilliacus]

Should there be a national toll road user's bill of rights imposed by Congress - at least on toll road agencies that issue bonds with interest exempt from federal taxation?

IMO, yes.

Suggestions for such a list:

• a ban on "transponder discrimination;" (MTantillo's great phrase, which I have adopted);
• no Breezewoods and similar non-connections between limited-access "free" roads and toll roads (because Congress is to blame for Breezewoods, Congress should fund a mandated Breezewood remediation effort);
• nationwide toll transponder interoperability;
• a uniform way of resolving disputes;
• a uniform way of telling motorists what the cost of using a toll road will be (within reason) before they enter a toll road;
• public disclosure of the amount of toll revenue diverted to non-toll road uses (e.g. Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission, N.Y. MTA Bridge and Tunnel and MWAA, among other offenders); and
• a uniform and nationwide toll classification schedule.

What Congress should not do is to tell toll roads and toll crossings what they should charge.

Your thoughts?

[NE2]

You're putting together a bunch of different issues:
*fairness: transponder interoperability, knowledge of what a toll is before you enter (but how would this work? minimum to first exit? maximum to the end?)
*desire to see the country without stopping: no "Breezewoods"
*your own personal dislike of rail transit and helping those less fortunate or who choose to pollute less

[1995hoo]

....

*your own personal dislike of rail transit and helping those less fortunate or who choose to pollute less

WTF? 

[bzakharin]

Re: nationwide toll transponder interoperability, etc: This is kind of draconian if you think about it. Toll roads, and especially bridges are (or can be) owned by private companies, and if not, states or multi-state partnerships. Why should Congress get to control how tolls are collected, especially if they receive no federal funding? Regional interoperability is coming about organically, without government control. I wish some of the smaller bridges in New Jersey (hear by Atlantic City) accepted EZ-Pass instead of something they cooked up, but tehy're private companies, so we can't really force them too.

[jakeroot]

nationwide toll transponder interoperability

Makes more sense out east, but west of Texas, there isn't a lot of toll facilities. California has a quite a few, and Washington has some as well. I don't think either of us would benefit from a national standard. If Oregon started to build toll facilities, then I could see the case.

I understand the point of a national standard, but it's going to be a hard sell to Olympia. We can't even pass a transport budget, let alone fund the implementation of a national tolling tag that would stand to benefit virtually no one except rental car agencies. That's not say that it can't happen (I don't think it would cost that much), but right now, it's unlikely that Olympia would set aside any money for it.

Honestly, more people from the Seattle area drive to the Lower Mainland of British Columbia than they do to SoCal. I would rather see a Canada/USA toll authority given the growing number of toll bridges in Vancouver.

I like everything else you've mentioned, though. Seems like a pretty good idea to have some sort of national law.

[cl94]

Here's the thing: in a few areas (New York, mainly), rail systems and crossings have the same operator. It all goes into a big pot and distributed as needed. Also, bridge tolls in the area function as a congestion charge. Encourage people to carpool, use mass transit, and keep their cars out of dense urban areas.

One thing we don't need is to put Congress in charge of more stuff. Classifications are pretty standardized as it is. Interoperability will happen as agencies see the benefits of doing so (more users, fewer toll takers required, etc). Also, as NYSTA, TBTA, Port Authority, PTC, and quite a few other operators are state agencies, such regulations would effectively constitute a violation of the 10th Amendment.

[SP Cook]

Your thoughts?

1 - No toll  $$ should be spent on the police.  When a new freeway opens, nobody frets about how to pay the random taxers for their "services".  Same should be for toll roads.  Whatever amount of "service" the random taxers wish to provide on the toll road should be funded out of their regular appropriations. 

2 - Obviously there should be one, continent-wide, toll transponder with one clearing house.  IMHO, the trucking industry should would gladly pay the tiny overhead costs.

3 - Tolls should be set at a financially sound basis to repay the bonds and then tolls ended.  No toll money should ever be spent on anything else.  People that like communal transit should pay for communal transit.  People who want to use tolls (or any other form of tax) to get people to drive less or whatever should be dismissed as the loons they are.

4 - When bonds are paid off, tolls end.

5 - Other than the toll takers themselves, toll roads should have ZERO employees who are not found in a normal freeway highway district.  PR people, etc.

6 - Toll roads should not charge any additional $$ to exit and re-enter, (a much easier thing to do with transponders than previously) thus fostering PRIVATE FREE ENTERPRISE service providers at exits. 

7 - No toll $$ should be spent on foolish boondoggles like Scamarack.

8 - No toll money should be "invested" in anything.  100% of the profit should be spent to retire bonds.

[CtrlAltDel]

I don't like toll surcharges. There should be no charge to have a transponder, no monthly fees, nothing of that sort. I might be okay with some sort of deposit.

Also, if toll-by-plate is done, where they send you a bill at the end of the month or you pay online or whatever, there should be no surcharge for that, either. Paying 5 dollars or so for the privilege of being tolled is just not right.

[mtantillo]

First off, there is a congressional mandate in MAP-21 for national transponder interoperability. Prior to that point, you had E-ZPass, which was a national model in interstate interoperability, and then you had a bunch of other toll agencies doing their own thing. A whole lot of talk about interoperability, and no meaningful action. Finally Congress said enough is enough and slipped the language into the transportation reauthorization bill that national interoperability needs to happen by October 2016. A lot of why it is painfully slow to get these agreements in place is because each agency wants to bureaucratically negotiate an agreement with every other agency on a peer-to-peer basis rather than find a consistent national solution. No one could agree on anything. So now that there is a mandate out there, we are seeing slow but meaningful progress. I have no doubt that by October 2016, we will be most of the way there in terms of interoperability. There may be some holes, some holdout agencies, some tolling done by video instead of by transponder, and some "dual mode" transponders to bridge technology gaps, but ultimately a rudimentary system will be up and running.

"Transponder discrimination" sucks! It is dumb. It is nothing more than a money-making scheme for toll agencies to grab money from someone who lives far away and doesn't vote in that jurisdiction. It does not cost anything more to process an out-of-state E-ZPass transaction vs. an in-state one, so why are out-of-state people who do the right thing, the green thing, the thing that saves the toll agency money on toll collectors/back office invoicing, why are those people being penalized simply for living in a different state? That is against the spirit of interoperability. To the best of my knowledge, this is a uniquely northeast phenominon that occurs in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York (TBTA only), New Jersey (Turnpike off-peak discount only), Maryland, and West Virginia. Each and every other state within the E-ZPass network, and other interoperability schemes have two toll rates...electronic and cash/bill by mail. Electronic tolling is electronic tolling, no matter which state issued your device.

This article illustrates the absurdity of the practice: http://archive.lohud.com/article/20120602/NEWS02/306020062/E-ZPass-can-cost-cash-price-out-state-many-pay-more-unknowingly

I particularly enjoyed the comment about carrying around a "bucket of E-ZPasses", since I do just that to counteract the transponder discrimination. A search of some other forums indicates that I'm not the only one...apparently a lot of people in NYC area carry accounts from both NJ and NY for getting discounts on both MTA facilities and the NJ Turnpike. Why should that be necessary if we have interoperability? The whole purpose of interoperability is so you do not have to open up multiple accounts!

A ban on Breezewoods...not sure how I feel. That might be going a bit too far to force a state to construct something that the same Congress forced creation of. It would certainly be nice, and Congress could propose funding the connections, but not sure the states should be forced to accept it or else.

Not really sure the best way of telling someone what the toll price is in advance of a toll facility, especially on distance-based facilities. I think that either the information should be posted on signs (for any facility that takes cash, or any all electronic facility that has variable tolls), or should be published somewhere that a driver can look it up in advance of their trip. Right now there is a requirement that the fact that you are entering a toll road be posted on signs. I would prefer they take it a step further and let you know if they do not accept cash payment....right now if it is all-electronic but they do a bill-by-mail system, they only have to tell you it is a toll road. That I disagree with, since there are some people who won't mind paying a toll, but would mind paying by plate (rental car customers who could get slapped with huge surcharges).

Public disclosure of diversions....why not? Transparency is good, right? FHWA on their new interstate tolling schemes requires that money only be spent in that corridor, and prohibits diversion away from that corridor. Meanwhile, older toll authorities do what they want with the money. I guess there is no way to prohibit them from doing that, but at least tell people that 60% of your toll to cross the Verrazano from Brooklyn to Staten Island goes to support subways connecting Brooklyn to Manhattan. I don't have issue with tolls supporting transit in that particular corridor (which is why I am not adamently opposed to MWAA's subsidizing the Silver Line with DTR tolls), but I am opposed to MTA/TBTA's diversion of bridge toll revenue to transit that serves a vastly different population and corridors. If they want to have money from Manhattan toll facilities go to support trains that bring people to Manhattan, fine, but they are charging people that generally are traveling between the outer boros where there is not very good transit.

[mtantillo]

....

*your own personal dislike of rail transit and helping those less fortunate or who choose to pollute less

WTF? 

SPUI being SPUI...

[1995hoo]

....

*your own personal dislike of rail transit and helping those less fortunate or who choose to pollute less

WTF? 

SPUI being SPUI...

Yeah, I know that, but usually when he feels the need to be an asshole he manages to say something that's still related to the topic. This had nothing to do with anything, hence my response.

[Pete from Boston]

Congress should get involved in how interchanges are built?  I thought the regular complaint here was that Congress should leave the roads to professionals.

The market will sort out interoperability and toll rates.  The rest of this strikes me as not something to trust politicians with rather than professionals, however bad it may seem now.  Trust me, I read the news–Congress is no good at this stuff.

[hbelkins]

5 - Other than the toll takers themselves, toll roads should have ZERO employees who are not found in a normal freeway highway district.  PR people, etc.

Except Kentucky highway district offices have PR people. You may have even met one of them in Charleston a few years ago.

But to take your point and expand on it, it bugs me that you have multiple state agencies within one state government, one in charge of the toll roads and others in charge of every other road. You have it in Pennsylvania and in New York, and doesn't New Jersey have different agencies for each of its three main toll roads? Seems like a waste of money to me. When Kentucky had toll roads, they were under the purview of the Bureau of Highways/Department of Highways/Transportation Cabinet, however the name of the agency evolved. There was a Division of Toll Facilities that was part and parcel of KYTC, not its own separate agency.

[Revive 755]

Should there be a national toll road user's bill of rights imposed by Congress - at least on toll road agencies that issue bonds with interest exempt from federal taxation?

I think there should be a requirement here for tolled facilities signed as interstates, including HOT lanes on interstates, to fall under this bill of rights. 

I also think there should be a requirement for a reasonable period to pay missed tolls.

[jeffandnicole]

I also think there should be a requirement for a reasonable period to pay missed tolls.

No.

In that case, there should be a consumer's bill of rights, which allows someone to take whatever they want from a store, with a reasonable amount of time to pay for what they took.

The only exception for tolls would be when there's absolutely no signage entering a highway, or nearing or at a toll booth, that the entire plaza or individual booths are cashless.   But when there are booths stating "Cash" and "EZ Pass Only", that's the driver's fault if they enter the wrong lane.

[Revive 755]

^ It's very easy to pick to pick the wrong lane on some of the ramp plazas in Chicagoland, and I've heard stories of people from downstate not being able to weave over in time to access the cash lanes for some of the mainline plazas (which seem to usually have only 3/4 mile advance notice.

[cl94]

^ It's very easy to pick to pick the wrong lane on some of the ramp plazas in Chicagoland, and I've heard stories of people from downstate not being able to weave over in time to access the cash lanes for some of the mainline plazas (which seem to usually have only 3/4 mile advance notice.

Please. New York doesn't tell you where the cash and E-ZPass lanes are until the plaza itself. Even if there's traffic, you can get over. Much of the rest of the northeast is the same way.

[mtantillo]

^ It's very easy to pick to pick the wrong lane on some of the ramp plazas in Chicagoland, and I've heard stories of people from downstate not being able to weave over in time to access the cash lanes for some of the mainline plazas (which seem to usually have only 3/4 mile advance notice.

Wimps not driving assertively in the big city.

[mtantillo]

5 - Other than the toll takers themselves, toll roads should have ZERO employees who are not found in a normal freeway highway district.  PR people, etc.

Except Kentucky highway district offices have PR people. You may have even met one of them in Charleston a few years ago.

But to take your point and expand on it, it bugs me that you have multiple state agencies within one state government, one in charge of the toll roads and others in charge of every other road. You have it in Pennsylvania and in New York, and doesn't New Jersey have different agencies for each of its three main toll roads? Seems like a waste of money to me. When Kentucky had toll roads, they were under the purview of the Bureau of Highways/Department of Highways/Transportation Cabinet, however the name of the agency evolved. There was a Division of Toll Facilities that was part and parcel of KYTC, not its own separate agency.

In New York, not only are there separate agencies, but they are insulated from accountability from voters, BY DESIGN. Mr. Moses didn't want we the people interfering with his projects.

In NJ, there used to be 3 agencies for toll roads: South Jersey Transportation Authority for AC Expressway, New Jersey Turnpike AUthority for the Turnpike, and New Jersey Highway Authority for the Parkway. The Turnpike Authority took over the Parkway, so now there are only 2.

NH has the DOT "Turnpike Bureau" manage their toll roads. MA has MassDOT operating the Turnpike (but that is a very recent thing, the MassPike used to be separate). DelDOT operates the toll roads in Delaware just as they do any other road....in fact they even spend the toll money on all the other roads in the state. VDOT manages some toll roads, but has generally been turning them over to private concession companies, one by one. Florida Turnpike Enterprise is another "District" of FDOT, although structured slightly differently to operate "more like a business and less like government" or something like that. I think the Cross Island Parkway in Hilton Head is managed by SCDOT, but not sure.

[cl94]

In New York, not only are there separate agencies, but they are insulated from accountability from voters, BY DESIGN. Mr. Moses didn't want we the people interfering with his projects.

Please. New York has ~1,100 authorities. Not including NYSDOT, NYSDEC, or one of the state departments that maintain stuff, there are at least 10 authorities that are only transportation-related, including the interstate and international authorities. Furthermore, the authorities don't communicate. And I don't picture them going away or merging any time soon, because they're effectively independent of the state.

[bulldog1979]

In Michigan, the Mackinac Bridge Authority is a separate agency with its own board appointed by the governor, but there are some connections with MDOT. The MDOT director has a seat on the board, and MDOT appoints the MBA executive secretary with the approval of the MBA board.

The International Bridge Authority's employees are officially all employed by MDOT, and that authority is integrated into the MDOT structure, with the proviso that MTO and the Canadian government appoint a number of IBA board members.

I don't foresee either going to ETC at any point. There are pre-paid cards as an option for commuters, but given the relative distance from any other toll facilities, I just don't see them adding transponder options.

[Duke87]

The trouble I have with stepping in to stop transponder discrimination is that the cure may be worse than the disease. As things stand, everyone at least gets discounts on the toll facilities that they use most frequently, and only has to forego the discount when they travel to a different state. If you were to make a rule saying that you can't selectively apply discounts the result would not necessarily be that the existing discount now applies to everyone, since the agency would lose revenue by doing that. Most likely the discount for everyone would be cut, or even potentially eliminated. Indeed, if you are going to make noise about it being unfair to discriminate based on where your EZpass is from, there might then be pressure to say that it is also unfair to charge EZpass and cash different rates and you might see that regulated away as well. Which then means higher tolls for everyone.

I don't like the idea of congress mandating interchanges be built. This sort of meddling is needless micromanagement.

I fail to see the value of "a uniform way of posting toll rates", since it's not like the toll rates are secret. You can look them up on the agency's website, and so forth.

Uniform dispute resolution... eh. Driving through an electronic toll lane without a transponder requires being either stupid or oblivious to your surroundings. I therefore have no sympathy for people who find themselves in this position, and no desire to see my tax dollars being spent on making it easier for them to atone for their stupidity.

Tolls must disappear when bonds are paid off... yeah, no. The problem I have with this is that it distorts traffic patterns in a counterproductive manner when you have a toll facility and then a parallel facility of similar utility that is free. For example if you are going to toll one bridge across a river, any other nearby bridges across the same river need to also be tolled in order to avoid driving large numbers of people to shunpike. NYC is the worst offender for this - Battery tunnel is $5.33 each way and no one uses it. Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges are free and frequently jammed with traffic, causing tons of traffic on the BQE in the process. Either all of these crossings should be tolled or none of them should be tolled. Whether the construction bonds for a facility have been paid off is, from the perspective of a motorist on the road, completely arbitrary.

As for the matter of using toll revenue to fund transit operations, it is unideal since it places an artificially large burden on certain links in the road network. But in large cities, public transit is important and vital to their continued function and the money to run said transit has to come from somewhere. In a sane world the revenue not gained from fares would simply come from general tax funds, but we don't live in a sane world, we live in a world where politicians love to take money away from transportation (transit and roads) to fund some other pet project or to balance the budge without raising taxes. So, at least in the MTA's, case, there is a very significant political benefit to them taking revenue from tolls: it's money Albany cannot easily take away from them, and it is a tax that can be hiked without elected officials worrying about losing their jobs over it. I don't like high bridge tolls but I'll gladly take high bridge tolls over a subway system that falls apart from lack of maintenance.

[myosh_tino]

Just adding my two cents...

First off, there is a congressional mandate in MAP-21 for national transponder interoperability. Prior to that point, you had E-ZPass, which was a national model in interstate interoperability, and then you had a bunch of other toll agencies doing their own thing. A whole lot of talk about interoperability, and no meaningful action. Finally Congress said enough is enough and slipped the language into the transportation reauthorization bill that national interoperability needs to happen by October 2016. A lot of why it is painfully slow to get these agreements in place is because each agency wants to bureaucratically negotiate an agreement with every other agency on a peer-to-peer basis rather than find a consistent national solution. No one could agree on anything. So now that there is a mandate out there, we are seeing slow but meaningful progress. I have no doubt that by October 2016, we will be most of the way there in terms of interoperability. There may be some holes, some holdout agencies, some tolling done by video instead of by transponder, and some "dual mode" transponders to bridge technology gaps, but ultimately a rudimentary system will be up and running.

Like jakeroot said, the benefit of national interoperability is minuscule out west in California and Washington so I would expect these agencies to be the holdouts with cost being the determining factor.  Pay-by-plate would be an option on the toll roads and bridges but many of California's HOT lanes do not have cameras at the tolling point.

Re: nationwide toll transponder interoperability, etc: This is kind of draconian if you think about it. Toll roads, and especially bridges are (or can be) owned by private companies, and if not, states or multi-state partnerships.

I might want to point out that California mandated interoperability at the state-level but this happened as the first tolled facilities (other than bridges) were set to open.  Each of the tolling authorities knew ahead of time, if they wanted to implement electronic tolling, they would have to use FasTrak.

1 - No toll  $$ should be spent on the police.  When a new freeway opens, nobody frets about how to pay the random taxers for their "services".  Same should be for toll roads.  Whatever amount of "service" the random taxers wish to provide on the toll road should be funded out of their regular appropriations. 

Then who is going to be doing toll enforcement?  In California, the tolling agencies contract out the toll enforcement to the California Highway Patrol and will use toll revenue to pay for it.  Why should taxpayers be forced to pay for the police to patrol a private company's toll road?

2 - Obviously there should be one, continent-wide, toll transponder with one clearing house.  IMHO, the trucking industry should would gladly pay the tiny overhead costs.

Pssshh, yeah right.  Do you think these tolling agencies would allow a middle man handle all of their toll revenue?  I didn't think so.

3 - Tolls should be set at a financially sound basis to repay the bonds and then tolls ended.  No toll money should ever be spent on anything else.  People that like communal transit should pay for communal transit.  People who want to use tolls (or any other form of tax) to get people to drive less or whatever should be dismissed as the loons they are.

Tell that to the Golden Gate Bridge and Transit District and you'll be heartily laughed at.  In addition to operating the Golden Gate Bridge, this agency also runs commuter bus and ferry service from the north bay to San Francisco.  Setting the bus and ferry fares so these services fund themselves would result in horrific congestion on the bridge because of people piling into their cars and making the drive to San Francisco instead of taking the bus or ferry.

4 - When bonds are paid off, tolls end.

... and the tolling agency has to dissolve because it no longer has a source of revenue.  If that's the case, who is responsible for maintenance or improvements?  The state DOT?

[1995hoo]

The Tenth Amendment argument somebody mentioned is unlikely to get very far because tolled highways can be deemed by Congress and the courts to affect interstate commerce regulation of interstate commerce (or, as the Supreme Court once called it, "intercourse between the states") is a power given to Congress in Article I, Section 8. It's been construed pretty broadly. Back in the 1950s or 1960s a motel in Georgia refused to obey federal civil rights laws requiring them to allow blacks to stay overnight; they claimed they were an in-state business nowhere near a state line. The Supreme Court disagreed, saying their business had an effect on interstate commerce and so could be subject to federal law. (The case was the Heart of Atlanta Motel case, if anyone wants to find it.)

Given that kind of precedent, it's easy to conclude they'd reason the same way as to ETC interoperability, which certainly has more of an effect on commerce–yes, even on toll roads far away from state lines, like Route 130 in Texas–than a discriminatory motel somewhere in Georgia.

Also, Congress could always tie interoperability to highway funding–if a state's agencies don't comply with interoperability, the state loses federal highway funding. Congress has already done that sort of thing several times, such as with the old National Speed Limit. Nevada sued over that one and lost: the courts found there is no right for a state to receive federal highway funding, so Congress can put conditions on receipt of funding as long as those conditions don't violate some other substantive part of the Constitution (such as, say, requiring the state to establish a particular state religion, which would violate the First Amendment).

[Brandon]

^ It's very easy to pick to pick the wrong lane on some of the ramp plazas in Chicagoland, and I've heard stories of people from downstate not being able to weave over in time to access the cash lanes for some of the mainline plazas (which seem to usually have only 3/4 mile advance notice.

ISTHA already gives 7 days to pay via their website, no penalty (unlike some other toll authorities).  You merely pay the cash rate.  How much more time do you need?

Just adding my two cents...

4 - When bonds are paid off, tolls end.

... and the tolling agency has to dissolve because it no longer has a source of revenue.  If that's the case, who is responsible for maintenance or improvements?  The state DOT?

God help us if IDOT had to ever take over the tollways.  They can barely maintain what they have and drag their feet whenever improvements are required.