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 PROGRESS AND FEASIBILITY OF TOLL ROADS

STEPS TOWARD DEVELOPMENT OF MAIN HIGHWAYS SINCE 1989

With few exceptions, the toll highways now in use and under construction follow closely the general lines of the National System of Interstate Highways. The exceptions are principally roads of local rather than national significance and include roads leading to resort areas and a number of parkways, some of which were built as free roads but on which tolls are now levied, not with the expectation of liquidating the cost of the particular roads, but rather to provide revenue to help finance other routes.

The study of the feasibility of additional toll roads made for the purposes of this report shows that nearly all the additional mileage estimated to be feasible of toll financing also lies along the general lines of the Interstate System.

It is of interest, therefore, to trace the origin and development of this system, on which lie the greatest part of the toll-road mileage either existing or under construction, and additional mileage found to be most feasible of toll financing.

Toll roads and free roads report

The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1938 directed the Chief of the Bureau of Public Roads to investigate—


 * * * the feasibility of building, and cost of, superhighways not exceeding three in number, running in a general direction from the eastern to the western portion of the United States, and not exceeding three in number, running in a general direction from the northern to the southern portion of the United States, including the feasibility of a toll system of such roads.

The report on the Bureau’s investigation, transmitted by the President to the Congress on April 27, 1939, after defining the most suitable locations of the six routes, found that their construction would be feasible. The Bureau concluded, however, as stated in the report (p. 3), that—


 * * * a sound Federal policy for the construction of a system of transcontinental superhighways, traversing the entire extent of the United States from east to west and from north to south, cannot rest upon the expectation that the costs of construction and operating such a system as a whole would be recoverable, in their entirety or in any large part from direct tolls collected from the users.

The report stated that at that time the construction and operation of limited sections might be financed through the collection of tolls, and listed the various sections of the routes studied in the order in which their costs might be recoverable through tolls.

Information assembled in the preparation of the 1939 report, the first ever made on a national basis to show usage and importance of our highways, strongly emphasized the essentiality of a national system of interregional highways, The findings of the study led the