Should Michigan have toll roads? Baruch Feigenbaum, senior managing director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation, says it should. Speaking on the most recent edition of the Michigan Department of Transportation podcast, “Talking Tansportation,” Feigenbaum said he believes tolls are a sensible way to pay for road maintenance when compared to the gas tax.
“We like tolling a little bit better because instead of paying a fee that goes to a bunch of different roadways regardless of which ones the individual traveler uses, with tolling, the traveler is paying for exactly the roadway they are using,” Feigenbaum said.
Feigenbaum says as the gas tax becomes less effective, something needs to be found to pay for road repairs. Under the model he’s discussing, the tolls would only be on the major interstates run by MDOT. There wouldn’t be booths, but instead there would be scanning machines that would record when a vehicle passes through a checkpoint. Then an account of the driver would be billed. Feigenbaum says the idea could prove to be popular as long as the tolls are reasonable. MDOT is currently studying the issue.
