Paid express lanes are now more popular in once-reluctant South
Trucker Tim Chelette has been making the same twice-daily drive for 16 years hauling empty whiskey barrels from Louisville, Ky., to the Jack Daniels distillery in Tennessee, yet his workday keeps getting longer due to time lost in Nashville traffic.
Although trucks wouldn’t be eligible for the pay-to-use express lanes Republican Gov. Bill Lee is advocating for some of Tennessee’s most-congested highways, Chelette supports them because he thinks enough drivers in the fast-growing state capital would take advantage to benefit everyone.
“They’re going to have to do something,” said Chelette, of Murfreesboro, Tenn., who gets paid by distance, not time — even when his 245-mile return trip to the Lynchburg distillery spikes by an hour or more during afternoon rush. “When I get stuck in traffic, I lose money.”
Unlike traditional toll plazas where every vehicle that passes through pays a standard fee, price-managed lanes allow some drivers to pay up to circumvent congestion — and the fee usually increases as the traffic does.
According to the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, which lobbies on behalf of the projects, 54 of the 89 tolling facilities that opened in the U.S. in the past decade were for price-managed lanes. They can be found across the South in Texas, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia, as well as such other places as California, Colorado, Washington and Minnesota.
Opponents call them “Lexus lanes,” implying only drivers of expensive cars can afford to use them, but Lee prefers another name: “choice lanes.”
“I think [the name] is brilliant. I wish I had invented it,” said Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the libertarian Reason Foundation and a vocal advocate for price-managed lanes.
The marketing pitch is important, particularly in the conservative South where voters have long resisted anything resembling a tax hike. But with fuel tax revenues and federal infrastructure payments failing to keep up with the need to repair aging roads or add capacity to reduce congestion, the projects are winning favor.
“All you’re doing is allowing those wealthy enough to use those lanes a quicker ride to work,” said Terri Hall, founder and director of Texans for Tollfree Highways. “It’s like a scapegoat for state legislatures to say, ‘We solved the problem.’ No, you kicked the can down the road.”
Supporters counter the lanes are a way to pay for roads without raising taxes, though they acknowledge they’re sometimes a tricky sell.
“If you have somebody who is anti-tax and pro-free market, they might say it’s a great idea,” said Pat Jones, IBTTA’s executive director and CEO. “Then, if you tell them the company is from Spain or Australia, they’ll say, ‘I don’t want there to be foreigners owning highways.’ You often see opposition to toll facilities before people use them, but once they’re open and people realize they’re getting value ... the resistance tends to go down.”
It typically takes 15 years in the U.S. for a road project to open after winning approval, though Tennessee officials are determined to cut that in half. Considering a recent study showing a $34 billion need, Will Reid, chief engineer and deputy commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Transportation, acknowledges the clock is ticking.
“As far as whether it works 10, 20, 30 years from now, the proof will be in the pudding,” Reid said. “But one thing is certain — in order to keep pace with the demands on our infrastructure in Tennessee, we’re going to have to find a different way to generate revenue.”