By Robert W. Poole Jr.

I’ve received a lot of feedback on last month’s column suggesting that by far the largest opportunity for toll concession P3 projects is a several-decade effort to rebuild and modernize the Interstate highway system. The most common reaction is enthusiasm for the idea but great concern about its political feasibility.

“Interstate tolling” has been proposed numerous times, sometimes by state officials who envisioned the toll revenue as a large new funding source for their overall transportation program. These efforts have all failed, generally after all-out opposition from the trucking industry, which portrays such an effort as “putting up toll booths on the Interstate” and as “double taxation.”

The sad thing is that those charges ring true of most such proposals.