Rhode Island lawmakers have proposed a ten-year plan to fund the state’s deteriorating infrastructure repair by adding a truck-only “user fee” on several state bridges.
Electronic tolling would be implemented for trucks with three axles or more on several bridges. This new fee would be used to pay off a $700 million proposed revenue bond that would be obtained to reconstruct bridges and prevent additional bridges from further deterioration.
American Trucking Associations urged rejection of the truck-only toll scheme proposed.
American Trucking Associations President Bill Graves said the state’s infrastructure crisis resulted from mismanagement and diversion of highway user fee revenue into general government expenses. “This plan to toll only trucks is quite literally highway robbery – stealing from our industry to paper over Rhode Island’s budget issues,” Graves said.
ATA has long opposed tolling of existing interstates as inefficient and unsafe.
The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association’s Mike Matousek responded critically to the plan as well. Truckers in northeast states already face stronger regulation, severe congestion and the “heaviest concentration of toll roads,” the state legislature director wrote.
