White House opens door to tolls on interstate highways, removing long-standing prohibition - The Washington Post

White House opens door to tolls on interstate highways, removing long-standing prohibition - The Washington Post:



"With pressure mounting to avert a transportation funding crisis this summer, the Obama administration Tuesday opened the door for states to collect tolls on interstate highways to raise revenue for roadway repairs.

The proposal, contained in a four-year, $302 billion White House transportation bill, would reverse a long-standing federal prohibition on most interstate tolling.

Though some older segments of the network — notably the Pennsylvania and New Jersey turnpikes and Interstate 95 in Maryland and Interstate 495 in Virginia — are toll roads, most of the 46,876-mile system has been toll-free."

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The Republican strategy of refusing to let Obama fix any problem, under any circumstances, pays off again. Now they are turning the interstate highways into toll roads, which should make Rand Paul happy. Now if only they can figure out how to charge us for the air we breathe...



This decision will be a huge boon to the privatization industry, which will step forward and propose a big cash payment (that will turn out to be not so big) for the right to lease the interstate highways and run them as private toll roads.