Pennsylvania Goes Tollistic

Editor’s Note: After we posted this Tolling in America Blog, Car and Driver posted an article with a headline question: Can You Name the World’s Most Expensive Toll Road? and guess what? It is the great state of Pennsylvania!    Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation decided this month to place tolls on nine bridges located on […]

Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates Winter 2020/2021 Update

“We’ve gotten precious little help from the federal government,” Pennsylvania State Representative Tim Hennessey recently said as he touted his support for a new network of tolls on the commonwealth’s major bridges. States are pleading for more federal help as our nation continues to work on rebounding from the crippling economic effects of the COVID-19 […]

A State Should Never Lease Its Roads

Editor’s Note: This post originally appeared in October 2020 as an NMA E-Newsletter #614. If you would like to receive our one-topic weekly E-Newsletter, join the NMA today. Reason Foundation’s Transportation Guru Robert Poole released a study in August of how nine states could financially benefit if they were to lease their toll road systems to […]

Tolls in America—a New Reality?

Private toll companies and state toll agencies have run up against a funding crisis just like the rest of the country. As mentioned in the last Tolling in America blog, if private toll companies are a part of a PPP or Public-Private Partnership, they might bail (as has been done before) if the money they […]

Is it Really Tough Times for Toll Roads Ahead?

By Shelia Dunn, NMA Communications Director The website Chief Investment Officer posted in June a lament for how tough it is for toll roads right now. Here’s a quote, “The typically stable asset class has been hit as traffic levels have dropped 40 percent to 85 percent globally, S&P analysts say.” So the website tells […]

Microtransit Costs too Much Per Passenger

So much hype over transportation disruption right now that sometimes it is hard to see the road with all the bikes and scooters laying around or even to understand if a disruption is viable and efficient. Microtransit, similar to ridesharing but supposedly cheaper, is one such disruption that use to be known as Dial-a-Ride. In […]

Can the Proverbial Pothole Problem be Disrupted?: NMA E-Newsletter #493

Nothing worse than hitting a pothole you can’t avoid on the road. Not only is it jarring and disruptive to your driving but it can also damage your car. AAA reports that American drivers pay an estimated $3 billion per year to repair cars damaged by potholes. AAA Manager of Technical Services Michael Calkins said […]

Is an Infrastructure Apocalypse on the Horizon?

The US’s aging Infrastructure seems to be falling apart but what is worse is no one knows how to fund infrastructure. How much more can motorists pay before they can no longer pay any more? Motorists already pay a state and federal gas tax. Motorists already pay special wheel taxes or additional vehicle registration fees. […]

No More Toll Roads

The National Motorist Association does not support toll roads or user fees intended to limit or ration the use of public roads. Not only are tolls an inefficient and backwards approach to providing funding for transportation, they foster corruption and political patronage. When states rely on tolls to build and maintain one stretch of highway, […]