With the great success of many of the early turnpikes, their excess capital was used to build and support less profitable roads, appearing to establish a never-ending requirement for tolls.
Tolls Forever
The feasibility of the original Pennsylvania Turnpike was assured by Federal grants of $29.5 million which greatly reduced the part of its cost that would have to be financed by revenue bonds and recovered in tolls from the road users. The success of the turnpike convinced many proponents of toll roads in and out of Congress that the much-needed improvement of the main interstate highways could be achieved by Federal subsidy of toll roads, especially those with marginal revenue potential, or even by a system of federally owned toll roads. A bill was introduced in the 80th Congress to permit the use of Federal funds on toll roads, along with the perennial bill to authorize transcontinental Federal toll expressways.[1]
These proposals were opposed by the PRA and a long list of organizations representing highway users. The PRA’s argument was that toll roads were wasteful and solved only a part of the problem. To reduce the cost of collecting tolls, the access points had to be spaced far apart, denying the use of the road to local and short haul traffic[N 1] The States or counties would have to build duplicating parallel free roads to handle this local traffic at greater total expense than it would take to build a free expressway originally.
By 1948 business was so good on the Pennsylvania Turnpike that toll collections were running far ahead of the requirements for retiring the bonds. When the Legislature authorized the 100-mile extension east to the Delaware River, the Turnpike Commission merged the financing of this extension with that of the original toll road by floating new bonds, part of which were used to pay off the original bond issue. Later other extensions were all financially tied together so that revenue from the profitable sections of the system supported the weaker sections.
This pattern of financing, long used by the Port of New York Authority,[N 2] was copied in other States. Connecticut placed the income from the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways and the Charter Oak Bridge in a revolving fund to support the bonds for a new toll expressway from Greenwich to Killingly. Maine applied the income from its first turnpike to finance a northern extension to Augusta.
This trend alarmed many State highway administrators who foresaw a situation of perpetual tolls on their main highways. In 1950 the Deputy Director of the New York Department of Public Works warned that the proliferation of toll roads would stifle free transportation and injure the national welfare.[2] The Engineering News-Record cautioned against the danger that toll authorities would perpetuate themselves long after the original excuse for their existance (shortage of funds) has passed. “As a result, the publicly owned toll highway of today can become just as pernicious an evil as the privately owned toll road of a century or more ago.”[3]
Congress Sets National Policy on Toll Roads
In 1954 the New York Thruway Authority and the New Jersey Highway Authority agreed to connect the thruway and the Garden State Parkway at the State line. However, trucks were prohibited on the parkway, which meant that southbound trucks on the thruway would have to exit at the State line and continue their journey on the public roads. Critics of toll roads pointed to this decision as one of many examples of uncoordinated regional planning by the toll authorities. The connection, they said, should have been made to the New Jersey Turnpike instead of the parkway, and the decision as to where to connect should have been made by the State highway authorities in Albany and Trenton rather than by the toll road authorities.[4]
There was also widespread criticism of allowing the toll roads to preempt the Interstate highway locations and thus condemn the free roads in those locations to a generation of inadequacy.
The Bureau of Public Roads had played a decisive role in coordinating the regional planning of the Federal-aid system by the States. However, the BPR had no influence with the toll authorities since they had not received any Federal funds. One of the
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