Paid express lanes grow more popular
Trucker Tim Chelette has been making the same twice- daily drive for 16 years hauling empty whiskey barrels from Louisville, Ky., to the Jack Daniel’s distillery in Tennessee, yet his workday keeps getting longer because of time lost in Nashville traffic.
Although trucks wouldn’t be eligible for the pay- touse 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, pricemanaged 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 pricemanaged 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 that 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 pricemanaged 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 — even, and perhaps especially, in Republicanled states where “toll” has been considered a fourletter word in more ways than one.
“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 Toll- free Highways.
Supporters counter that the lanes are a way to pay for roads without raising taxes, although 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.”
California’s experience with tolling — traditional plazas and price- managed lanes — has provided fodder for advocates on both sides of the debate.
A grand jury in Orange County examined a state agency that was created to build three traditional toll roads. Its report, issued in 2021, found that on one hand, California produced “excellent roads with minimal tax dollars.” But on the other, the jurors found ballooning debt and the need to change the initial plans amid financial downturns meant that drivers are on pace to shell out $ 28 billion by 2053 for roads that cost a tenth of that to build.
The nation’s first pricemanaged lane opened in 1995 in Orange County, using a public- private partnership to fund it. Poole, who advised on the project and still calls it a model for others, said officials agreed not to add free lanes on the corridor for 35 years. Surging growth ultimately made that impossible, so the county terminated the contract and paid the company for its lost revenue.
New bonds were issued, and the tolls had to stay in place to pay for them.
Lee is seeking legislative support to authorize a publicprivate partnership for the project in Tennessee — one of 14 states that don’t have tolls on any roads.
Republican state Sen. Frank Niceley said he expects Lee will get enough votes to pass the plan, but he strongly opposes it.
“We’re not really giving these things to the private sector,” Niceley said. “We’re kind of cosigning the note. And most people who cosign, the note ends up paying the note.”
The governor’s administration brushes off such criticism. Will Reid, chief engineer and deputy commissioner at the Tennessee Department of Transportation, said: “We’re one of six no- debt states. We have a strong belief in paying as we go and paying for the things we decide to build.”