Editorial: State should think anew about tolling

When a conservative guest of a conservative think tank comes to town to advocate for more transportation spending, the trouble with America's roads, bridges and transit must be serious. That's what happened last week, when Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation came to Bloomington as the guest of the Center of the American Experiment.

Poole was summoned in the wake of Minnesota's Interstate 35W bridge disaster to sing the praises of roadway privatization, something the market-oriented Reason Foundation advocates and others -- this newspaper included -- find problematic.

Getting private investors into the road-building and managing act would tap capital sources not now available for infrastructure improvement, as Poole suggests. But those investors often insist on government's agreement not to improve competing public roadways. Those agreements, which leave those who drive toll-free roads hopelessly stuck in traffic, should give Minnesotans considerable pause.

But Poole didn't carry his case so far as to oppose more government spending on transportation. "I'd be perfectly happy with indexing the fuel tax for inflation, for example, as a piece of solving the problem," he said. "We obviously need adequate funding for the basics of the roadway system." (To hear the full presentation, check www.americanexperiment.org.)

As Poole acknowledged, the nation is spending $9 billion per year less than needed to maintain the current system, and a whopping $62 billion per year less than needed to make the upgrades deemed to yield benefits greater than their cost. In Minnesota, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher said Monday, the maintenance and upgrade shortfall now approaches $2.4 billion per year.

Those are huge gaps. It's not realistic to expect any single funding strategy to close them. Tolling on public roads ought to be among the tools under consideration.

Tolls can easily be oversold as the solution to an underbuilt, aging transportation network. But as part of a strategy for reducing congestion and financing transit alternatives in particular corridors, tolls might be worth a try. The Citizens League said as much in 2005, when it endorsed tolls that vary with traffic conditions on new or rebuilt Twin Cities freeways. The Citizens League's report, "Driving Blind," deserves a fresh look. It's at www.startribune.com/a3326.