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Not Your Father’s Toll Road |
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Written On: February 2006 |
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Written By: by Paul Schleinz |
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Ready or not, tolls are returning to Washington’s highways — and sooner than you may think.
Long-time residents of Washington remember when several bridges, including the Tacoma Narrows, the Evergreen Point, the Hood Canal, and Spokane's Maple Street Bridge, had tolls. Unlike many states, where tolling became a permanent fixture on numerous turnpikes, bridges and tunnels, Washington's tolls were typically limited to the period where bonds were being paid off on a specific project. With the exception of the Columbia Gorge's Bridge of the Gods, which is still tolled, Washington’s highways are now entirely funded by the state's gas tax.
Tolls, however, are poised to make a comeback as gas tax revenues decline due to more fuel-efficient vehicles.
"The Legislature is only interested in tolling on specific, new, limited-access projects, like bridges," said Sen. Brad Benson, R-Spokane, ranking minority member of the Senate Transportation Committee. "We’re not going back and retrofitting any existing bridge or other project with tolls."
Washington's first toll booths in 22 years will begin operating in April 2007, when the new, eastbound span of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge opens to traffic. The old, westbound bridge to its side, however, will remain free of tolls.
Other projects that are likely to be tolled are the replacements for the aging Hood Canal and Evergreen Point bridges.
"Tolling is traditionally used on infrastructure like bridges and tunnels where you have high costs and a captive audience of motorists with few alternatives to using these facilities," Michael Kitchen of the Puget Sound Regional Council observed.
Should Seattle insist on building a tunnel to replace its decaying Alaskan Way Viaduct, tolling is mentioned as a possible way to generate the funds to pay for this project.
"I would be tempted to give Seattle the option of using tolls if it's able to sell the idea to its voters, although people who want to avoid tolls would just go on I-5," Benson said.
Transponders, Not Toll Booths
When most people think of highway tolling, they picture traditional toll booths where motorists, often in long queues, inch their way toward a booth where they stop and hand over a fee to use a bridge, tunnel or turnpike. This familiar model does not, however, reflect 21st century tolling technology, which is just starting to emerge on America’s highways. Indeed, the seeds of this technology have already been planted in Washington.
Next to the toll booths on the western approach to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge will be what may be a harbinger of the future of tolling. A special lane will allow vehicles with prepaid accounts to zip past the toll booths and onto the bridge without stopping. These vehicles will be equipped with radio frequency identification transponders that will receive a pulse from overhead readers. Once the pulse is received, the transponder will send a signal to the reader with the driver's identification number. The reader will then take the number and put it into the collection system, which will assess the appropriate fee to the prepaid account.
Similar technology is already in use along Washington's highways as a substitute for traditional weigh stations. Indeed, truckers currently have the option of using transponders that can be remotely read as they cruise down the highway as an alternative to time consuming weigh station stops.
Transponder technology, similar to that which is envisioned for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge, will also be deployed on State Route 167's high-occupancy vehicle lanes between Auburn and Renton. Once these lanes are equipped with overhead remote readers in late 2008, the lanes will be re-designated as high-occupancy toll lanes.
Currently, State Route 167's HOV lanes are restricted to vehicles with two or more passengers. When the conversion of these HOV lanes to HOT lanes is complete, vehicles with double occupancy will still be able to use the lanes without charge. Other vehicles with prepaid accounts and transponders will also have access to the HOT lanes regardless of the number of passengers.
A Different Paradigm
The State Route 167 HOT lanes are a pilot project to test new tolling technology, which may ultimately be deployed on a much greater scale. In 2005, the Legislature authorized a commission to conduct a comprehensive study on tolling. Although the commission’s final report will not be released until July, initial indications are that the report will take a positive view of tolls.
"The commission thinks tolling will have a role in Washington state transportation," said David Forte of the Washington State Department of Transportation. "Tolling has a role for traffic management of the system and it has a role to supplement revenue generation."
Forte believes that while some projects will start out using manual tolling, within anywhere from five to 30 years, all tolling will be electronic. In addition, he believes that the entire highway system could ultimately be tolled in the future.
Transponder technology is not the only possible means of electronic tolling. In Toronto, cameras digitally photograph the license plates of all vehicles that enter a high-tech toll road. Drivers are identified by their license numbers. If they do not have prepaid accounts, they are sent a bill for their use of the highway.
Another method that is being considered in Oregon is the use global positioning satellite technology to determine where a vehicle is at any given time. Were such a system to be deployed, value pricing, based on the time and place a vehicle is on the road, would be possible. According to a recent study by the PSRC, this could result in charges of $7.50 for a peak-hour drive from Mercer Island to Tacoma. The same trip at off-peak hours would cost 75 cents.
Advocates see value pricing as a means to make the system work better since fewer vehicles would clog the highways at peak hours due to the higher cost.
"If you look at a practical capacity of a lane of roadway, it’s about 1,800 vehicles per hour," Rep. Fred Jarrett, R-Mercer Island, a member of the House Transportation Committee, observed. "Currently, we’re about 400 cars through the system out of the 1,800 we should be getting. Value pricing is a way to allow you to do this."
Tolling through GPS is likely to see fruition in Britain before it is deployed in the United States. Indeed, it has been announced that in the near future all vehicle movements within the United Kingdom will be tracked via GPS. Because of its profound implications for privacy, this prospect has been greeted with controversy and unease.
"I think privacy is a legitimate concern," Benson said. "My way of avoiding a situation where every car is tracked is to make electronic tolling voluntary instead of mandatory."
While Jarrett supports the expansion of tolling on a larger scale than has been seen in Washington, he feels the Legislature is likely to be cautious in applying tolls.
"We’re going to start going through a period of 10 to 15 years where you'll see incremental implementation of different types of tolling to start educating people about how they work," Jarrett concluded. "Over time, I'm expecting we will be able to show that places that are tolled actually perform better. Then I think you'll start to see people understanding why a different paradigm would be useful."
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