Report ‘verifies’what group has been saying, OOIDA executive says

TODD SPENCER

By LYNDON FINNEY
The Trucker Staff

2/22/2008

GRAIN VALLEY, Mo. — The conclusions in the study on toll road traffic diversion and implications for highway infrastructure privatization came as no surprise to officials of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association.

The study by Peter F. Swan of Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg, and Michael H. Belzer of Wayne State University, concludes that if governments allow private toll road operators to maximize profits, higher tolls will divert trucks to local roads depending on the suitability of substitute roads.

The study is based on what happened when the Ohio Turnpike Authority raised tolls 82 percent and subsequently lowered those rates considerably in an effort to bring large trucks back to the Ohio Turnpike.

“The study verifies what we’ve been saying all along, what we know to be true and what some of us have actually done, and we know where the industry will go,” Todd Spencer, executive director of OOIDA, said. “And clearly, it’s not a direction that we want to go. Certainly, it’s not positive for anyone.”

Asked at what point independent contractors say tolls have gone so high they must seek an alternate free route, Spencer said, “I’m sure if tolls were modest enough, you wouldn’t get much objection; but folks have figured out when you’re talking about something like an interstate highway system where [tolls] start out to be modest, they don’t stay that way very long.”

Regardless of how much they pay for tolls, users — whether they are truckers or drivers of private passenger vehicles — deserve “to know their dollars are being used to reinvest in the infrastructure, not to pad somebody’s wallet,” Mike Joyce, OOIDA’s senior government affairs representative, added.

Currently, the New York Thruway system not only pays for roads, but it also pays for the canal system in New York, Spencer said.

“And undoubtedly, many, many other things,” he said. “And, if you look at the Pennsylvania Turnpike, that money goes all kinds of different places and has historically.”

In Pennsylvania, OOIDA has protested efforts to impose tolls on Interstate 80 (the Ohio Turnpike is also I-80), as well as the signing of a half-century-long lease of that highway that assumes tolling authority will be granted to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Authority.

Points of contention include the lack of public scrutiny, safety issues and the dramatic costs that would beset the citizens of Pennsylvania.

“We’ve been very active and vocal in Pennsylvania,” Joyce said. “And, we’ve been very vocal and active in Washington where the Secretary of Transportation [Mary Peters] and the people who work with her have the philosophy of turning things over to the private sector, [believing that] toll roads and public-private partnerships are the solution to the infrastructure woes. I think that’s false, and we’ve made that point.”

Joyce called attention to the recent report by the National Surface Transportation Policy and Revenue Study Commission.

“Nine of the 12 commissioners voted to stay with a federal role in transportation funding,” Joyce said “They’ve advocated for a pretty substantial increase in fuel tax, but if you look at some of their other recommendations, there are things that we’ve been talking about such as reforming the system and looking at things that are redundant and the use of higher user fees. Truckers make up about 36 percent of what goes into the highway trust fund. Do we get our adequate return on that investment or does a lot of that investment get poured into mismanaged bureaucracy or into public transit systems?”

Peters chaired the commission, but she and two other members disagreed with the other nine over key points one of those being higher fuel taxes as opposed to more privatization.

OOIDA has also been active in Indiana.

“No one has been more aggressive and tried more things than we have,” Spencer said. “You might remember 2005 when Chicago peddled off their toll road and Indiana followed suit [in 2006] over some really strenuous objections from OOIDA and some citizen groups. No one else in trucking objected. In fact, on the other side of the issue in Indiana was the ATA state trucking association and even then we nearly got that deal nixed. Since then, that effort in Indiana and the outreach beyond has really pretty much slowed down to efforts to sell off our roads. Had we not raised the issue to the level that we did, you would have already seen it in other states. “Obviously, you still see them trying now and they will be because their motivation isn’t sound transportation or highway policy, it is where can we find more bucks.”

Various officials and entities in Indiana continue to be embroiled in debate over privatization, this time about whether to privatize the proposed extension of Interstate 69 from Indianapolis to Evansville.

Independent contractors pay all their own tolls, and Spencer predicted that if tolls were to increase sharply because of privatization, carriers might react by telling drivers to stay off toll those roads unless they want to personally pay the tolls.

Fighting privatization efforts also means OOIDA must walk a very fine line, Spencer said.

“This is a public policy issue and we’re sort of faced with a dilemma,” he said. “You can take the position ‘I’m not going to agree to anything, I’m going to fight everything,’ but ultimately, if you take that position you actually remove yourself from the discussion and the decisions are made by other people. Believe me, we fully believe if the decisions are made by other people, they are not going to be in the interest of people who own or drive trucks. We’ve said before that we’re open to talk about increases in fuel taxes provided that same discussion includes getting rid of the diversion [of taxes to something other than the infrastructure]. The recommendation from the commission was to address those issues. And again, that’s a big public policy issue. And we have to be involved in that discussion. Nobody wants to pay higher taxes ever for anything, but what do you get for what you pay for?”

There is another downside to tolling, Joyce noted.

“To collect tolls is a very expensive endeavor compared with collecting fuel taxes,” he said. “The cost of collecting tolls means that less of that money gets back into the system that needs to be improved and keeps us competitive in the global marketplace.”