With all of the trucks, construction delays and rutted concrete, a drive down Interstate 70 is perhaps the worst transportation experience Missouri has to offer. But would you be willing to pay $10 or so for a smoother, faster and less congested trip to Kansas City?
That's a question that Missouri legislators will be asking as the state tries to figure out how to fix its most important highway. The Missouri Department of Transportation says Interstate 70 needs at least $2 billion of work, or maybe $4 billion to create dedicated truck lanes across the state, and it doesn't have the money.
One way to find the money, MoDOT says, would be to raise the gasoline tax by 15 cents a gallon. Another would be to add a half-cent sales tax statewide.
We live in an era, however, when most elected officials view a tax increase as a good way to lose a re-election bid. And if taxpayers won't pay for a new road, motorists may have to.
MoDOT's director, Kevin Keith, said last month that he would like the Legislature to authorize tolls on I-70. As part of the proposal, MoDOT would partner with private companies, which would rebuild the highway and then collect tolls to pay for it.
State officials haven't said how high the toll would have to be, but motorists pay roughly $10 to travel a similar distance on the Kansas Turnpike. Truckers pay significantly more, which is one reason why the trucking lobby doesn't like toll roads.
Opponents of tolling say it amounts to double taxation, because fuel taxes are also supposed to pay for highways, and they say that roads are a classic public good. That means the road network has positive externalities, benefitting business owners, property owners and others who don't drive them every day. Their business is more profitable, and their property more valuable, when folks in Columbia or Kingdom City have a way to reach their front door.
A specific highway like I-70, though, also has a private-good aspect. If you travel to Kansas City every week, that rebuilding project benefits you a lot more than your neighbor, who perhaps pays the same amount of gasoline tax but does all his driving within the St. Louis area.
"The real public value is this connection to the entire network," explains Joseph Haslag, a University of Missouri economist who also works for the St. Louis-based Show Me Institute. "I-70 by itself has no network externalities, but it's an extremely valuable road."
Economics textbooks often use road tolls as an example of how charging for something can make it more efficient, especially if the operator charges more during congested periods. A private operator of I-70 could maximize profits, and smooth out the traffic flow, by reducing the toll at night and raising it during rush hour. Electronic collection systems would make it easy to set a fare that varies by the hour, and MoDOT should encourage such a pricing structure.
First, it needs to persuade legislators to charge Missourians for something that's always been free, and that may be a tough sell. The best argument is that we're already paying a price in time and aggravation, and as I-70 deteriorates, the price may include a rise in accidents. When you think about it that way, a $10 toll might be a bargain.
