Governments have three common choices when looking to get transportation funding; cut spending elsewhere, raise fuel taxes or look at toll roads. When faced with those three prospects, toll roads frequently become the least painful of the three choices. They have the advantage of being able to tax interstate transport activity, hitting truckers and drivers who may just be going through the state.
Pennsylvania has talked about making I-80 a toll road; it runs through a more rural part of the state and is mostly used by traffic going from the east coast to Ohio and the rest of the country. While the locals along the route of I-80 may not like it, it is one option to increase funding.
West Virginia is the most recent state to look at adding to their toll road coverage beyond the West Virginia Turnpike covering the southern part of I-77. I-64, I-79 and the northern part of I-77 might be candidates for tollage, which would not please freight carriers going through the area. In a tough economic environment, trucking transport firms are working to stay afloat, and extra tolls will hit their bottom line, especially if the freight rate on a trip had been set previously without factoring in the added tolls.
If Pennsylvania does go ahead and make I-80 a toll road with Washington’s blessing (the DOT has to OK making an interstate a toll road), penny-pinching traffic heading west might shift to I-64 as a east-west route if the main interstates heading out of the northeast (I-90, I-80 and I-76) are all toll roads. That might have more trucks heading down WV way and make tolling the road more likely.
http://www.thetrucker.com/News/Stories/201…roadagency.aspx
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