With the prospect of toll-road legislation coming in the next session of the Missouri General Assembly, an advocate for pay-as-you-drive highways was making a strong pitch for building more of them to an Oklahoma House subcommittee.
That might sound like preaching to the choir since our good neighbors to the southwest already account for 13 percent of the toll roads in the nation, but the truth is that highways on which motorists must pay a toll to travel aren’t popular.
Consider that in 2001, 56 percent of Oklahomans responding to a statewide Consumer Logic/Tulsa World poll wanted to scrap the state’s 600-mile turnpike system.
While we haven’t changed our mind that forcing drivers to pay tolls is making them pay again and again for something for which they’ve already paid, Assistant U.S. Secretary of Transportation Tyler Duvall did make an excellent point: Attempts to reduce fuel consumption in the future will cut into the revenues required for maintaining and building highways.
Missourians shouldn’t be too surprised if legislators ask them for a constitutional change that would permit toll roads on specific highways, such as Interstate 44 and Interstate 70, and bridges.
Toll roads won’t be an easy sell. Missourians have rejected them twice before — in 1970 and 1992. Eventually, whether next year or the year after, voters will be asked the toll road question again. Supporters are hoping a third time will prove the charm. We doubt it. Missourians, like their 2001 counterparts in Oklahoma, don’t like paying for something over and over.
