Toll Roads: See What Happens When You Ignore the Laws of Mathematics

It sounded like a great idea six months ago... end a law that automatically increased Wisconsin's gas tax by about a penny each year. Well, perhaps not a great idea but at least a quick way for politicians to win votes in times of $3/gallon gas. Lower gas prices... hooray! Lower taxes... hooray! And everyone jumped on board...

Now the Wisconsin Department of Transportation announces massive budget shortfalls. Imagine that! (In reality it's partly due to the gas tax freeze and partly due to Gov. Doyle raiding the highway budget to pay for other programs so he could brag about not raising taxes... but for today we'll focus on the gas tax portion of it.) But raising the gas tax isn't an option. No, that extra penny would just be too much... and more importantly, it might cost votes. But we have to come up with that money somehow. So let's have...

Toll roads!

Yes, toll roads are now being discussed as a serious possibility in Wisconsin. Because the highway department has massive budget shortfalls. Because we wanted to end the automatic gas tax increase. Because we hated paying more for gas. Because that made it more expensive to drive. So yes, by all means, let's get toll roads instead.

See how it comes full circle? Everyone thought ending the gas tax increase was a free lunch. And it was - for six months - until the bill came. Now it's going to cost even more.

But ending the gas tax increase was the feel-good option. No one wants to pay an extra penny on a gallon of gas when the price is already over $3. Apparently it' s much better to implement a toll system that will surely cost much more. It has to cost more, because not only does it have to make up all the money lost by the gas tax freeze, but it also has to raise enough money to fund its own bureaucracy of toll booths and their attendants, high-tech electronic passes, state-of-the-art multi-thousand-dollar security cameras to find out who's sneaking through the toll area without paying their 40 cents, and of course the highly paid governement workers to manage the whole thing.

Yes, the gas tax is a tax, and the conservative in me hates the idea of raising any tax... but reality says roads have to get built and maintained somehow, and unfortunately it isn't free. Inflation causes those road construction costs to rise every year, and since the gas tax is a flat rate (not a percentage of the price), the rate must increase to keep up with inflation. Simple mathematics predicted that ending the gas tax increase was a crisis waiting to happen. But as we learned from the social security debate, politicians and simple mathematics don't mix very well.

What makes the toll option so much better than the gas tax increase? Is it because you have a choice about driving on the toll roads? Perhaps, but that only works until they put a toll booth up on the only major highway between your house and your place of employment... then your "choice" is to pay the toll or sit in gridlock at countless red lights on city streets (or spend three times as long taking public tranportation). On the other hand, the gas tax is efficient. It's automatically assessed at the pump with no traffic-clogging booths or any of the bureaucracy that goes with managing a toll system. It's also fair - everyone who uses the roads, and therefore contributes to the need for road construction, pays it. Hmm, efficient and fair... no wonder the government couldn't stand for it.