What New Tolling Ideas Would You Propose to Secretary LaHood?

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood spoke to our Legislative Conference yesterday (March 8) in Washington, DC. He got a big laugh from delegates when he said he had come to IBTTA for the second year in a row to get a lecture about tolling the interstates.
On a more serious note, LaHood said the states want to build big projects, but many states are simply too cash-strapped to attempt them. He said the Department of Transportation wants to help them find ways to pay for the transportation solutions they need. In his blog, he said “repairing our existing roads, bridges, and tunnels and building new projects is essential to pushing the economy forward.”

The Secretary said he supports tolling and sees it as one component of America’s overall transportation funding mix. He said he supports the use of tolls on new road capacity but not on roads that have already been built. He cited examples of linkages with other modes on projects that the U.S. Department of Transportation has supported, such as combined highway and transit solutions. “We would be interested in hearing some new ideas about tolling,” LaHood said. “Propose some new ideas and we’ll take a look at them.”

Later in the day, I spoke with a senior U.S. DOT official who said the Secretary is sensitive to the views of Congress on transportation funding and tolling. According to this official, the Secretary isn’t hearing much support for tolling from members of Congress.

This observation reinforces what former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell told our delegates on March 7. “You will never convince the Congress directly that they should increase gas taxes or allow tolling on the interstates. Therefore, you have to convince the hometown. When the folks from home reassure their members of Congress that they won’t be thrown out of office because they support commonsense things like expanded use of tolling to improve infrastructure and create jobs, that’s when things will change,” Rendell said.

So here’s our question: What new ideas about tolling would you propose to Secretary LaHood? Beyond the call to ease restrictions on tolling interstate highways, what new ideas would you propose?

What is the Most Important Investment We Can Make Now?

In his State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama devoted a considerable amount of attention to investment. He said we need to invest in basic research and new technologies, in education, in biomedical research, information technology, and clean energy technology. He said countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do and that China is building faster trains and newer airports. He said that when our own engineers graded America’s infrastructure, they gave us a "D." He vowed to put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. He said we’ll make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based on what's best for the economy, not politicians. And to help companies compete, he vowed to knock down barriers that stand in the way of their success, barriers such as unnecessary and burdensome government regulations.

It is a truism that we cannot invest everywhere at once – at least, not without spreading our resources so thinly that they don’t make a difference. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the US budget deficit in fiscal year 2011 will be nearly $1.5 trillion. With deficits like that, we must choose wisely where to invest our scarce resources. The vision of investment that President Obama articulated last week is only one vision. What is your vision about where we need to invest? What is the most important investment we can make now to have the greatest impact in the long run?