Geezers and others with long memories recall with no pleasure the tolls that used to back up traffic on Interstate 95. The prospect of tolling I-95 again does not delight. Yet that is what the McDonnell administration is pitching, and what the federal government has agreed to allow as a test case.
The tolls would bring much-needed revenue that would help address some of the grievous deficiencies in Virginia's transportation system. Tolls have other virtues as well: They make the costs of driving more transparent. They also make the burden of those costs more fair by placing it on the shoulders of the people who actually use the service. And they can help alleviate congestion by encouraging people who would rather spend time than money to find less-traveled routes. Whether the congestion relieved in that manner is greater than the congestion created by toll-booth backups is an open question, however.
Yet tolls have their downsides. They create bottlenecks, albeit less so now with the increasing use of smart tags. And they are blunt instruments that do not distinguish between a minicar using the roadway for five or 10 miles and a land yacht staying on it for hours.
Gasoline taxes avoid both of those downsides and carry all the upsides except whatever modest congestion relief tolls might bring. Unfortunately, Virginia's gasoline tax has been eroded more than 40 percent by inflation and rising fuel efficiency.
State Republicans' irrational resistance to raising the gasoline tax has led them to embrace increasingly desperate measures. Those include steep bad-driver fees that public outrage forced them to overturn and Gov. Bob McDonnell's failed plan to privatize ABC sales — a sound idea ruined by his cockamamie decision to present it as a means of funding road projects.
Tolls make more sense than those earlier efforts, though of course just about anything would. In the absence of a better plan, they merit grudging approval. But it tells you something about the state of transportation funding in Virginia that resurrecting a payment method so widely reviled is now considered a step forward.
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