Thomas Harris MacDonald

“ Right here we come upon ground fertile for the raising of toll-road propositions. The general public, which wants and truly needs modernized highway and bridge facilities, is made to appear at times to be unwilling to pay for what it wants and needs. In California, recently, after a most careful study of the highway needs of the entire State by a joint legislative committee, aided by competent advisors, plans were projected for a program of general highway improvement extending over a future period of a number of years. ”

“ It generally appears that opposition to gas taxes and their increase arises from the petroleum industry rather than from the consumers of gasoline who actually pay the tax. Why this should be so is something of a mystery. We have looked long and hard to find evidence, if there be any, that a gasoline tax at any level thus far reached has had the least depressive effect upon the consumption of gasoline. We have found none. The tax is the ideal substitute for, and preventive of, toll financing. It is actually a form of general toll that has none of the defects of direct tolls. ”

“ If the capacity and facility to be offered by any toll road are actually required, they can be provided in a so-called free highway more cheaply than in the toll road. Apart from the clear advantage of not having to maintain expensive toll collecting facilities, this is true. Toll roads are built with borrowed money, nearly always with money borrowed by way of what are called revenue bonds, that is, bonds predicated solely upon the problematical earnings of the roads themselves. Such bonds necessarily carry a relatively high rate of interest. ”

“ That is, that the toll road, in order to attract a barely sustaining traffic must be designed to standards adequate for the accommodation of a traffic far greater than that which it can actually attract. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, for example, could serve with complete convenience a traffic of 12,000 vehicles a day. Its actual average traffic is between three and four thousand vehicles a day, the bare minimum commonly considered essential to justify the construction of a 4-lane, divided highway. ”

“ Even in the particular instances in which traffic can be attracted to toll highways sufficient in volume to repay the costs of financing, construction and operation, we regard the toll device as an inadvisable and expensive expedient. ”

“ But, it is asserted that resort to the toll expedient is the only way to get needed high-type facilities quickly; it is the only feasible way, it is said, to raise the necessarily large cost. Now, of course, the places where the most expensive new facilities are needed most quickly, namely, within and in the near vicinity of cities, are the very places where it becomes utterly impracticable to employ the toll method. ”

“ For reasons inherent in a practicable application of the toll method of financing, no toll highway can be used by all of the traffic that would be served by a highway of identical design and location operated free of toll. ”

“ However great may be the remainder of traffic left to the parallel free road, however insistent may be the need for substantial improvement of the facility it affords to that traffic, the design standards of the free road must be held materially lower than those of the toll road, else the latter will be robbed of nearly all of its essential support. ”

“ It must bear the large cost of toll collection. It is commonly, and almost necessarily financed with revenue bonds at interest rates inevitably higher than the rates the public would have to pay for money borrowed to create an identical free facility. It has been stated above that the standard of alternate free roads must be kept depressed for protection of the investment in a toll road. ”

“ These figures are averages representing the character of usage of rural roads generally. On particular highways the percentages may differ materially from these averages; but trips of short length are on all highways a large fraction of the total usage. ”