Do you live in a state with toll roads (Please see details)

We have the Parkway and the Turnpike. there have been tolls on them for my entire life so I don’t think about it. If they were looking to expand to highways there would be a hue and cry. Funny, I never thought about the fact that you don’t have tolls going through Connecticut on 95 which our Turnpike is part of.

On the other hand, driving through Connecticut is so annoying when you want to get to New England proper that perhaps people would drive out to Ohio to avoid if if there were tolls. (Which would be a win for Connecticut I suspect.)

We have freeways in California. But there has been an effort to add Toll Lanes in highly congested areas. The Transportation Dept. like sthem but the effectiveness is still a bit early to evaluate.

In Georgia, we have a couple of different types of toll roads.

First, going out to the outer islands on the coast (Cumberland, etc.) there are toll causeways and bridges.

Second, on the major highways north of Atlanta (I-85 now, soon I-75), we have usage based tolls (express lanes only) where you can pay an adjusted amount based on the traffic, and drive faster. So at rush hour the express lanes might cost $12.00 to get downtown, but at an off hour, it might be 15 cents. But in any event there is always the ability to use free (non-tolled) lanes if you can stand the traffic.

We used to have a toll road north of downtown Atlanta (Georgia rte 400) but when the construction bonds were paid off, they tore down the toll plaza, and it’s all free now.

There are no long distance toll roads here like in Ohio, Pennsylvania, NY, Delaware, etc.

I live in Florida and through our state is the Florida Turnpike, now renamed, or also named, the Ronald Reagan Turnpike. It begins down in the Miami area and ends about an hour north of Orlando. The area around Palm Beach up to just south of Orlando is a true Turnpike system where you would take a ticket, and then turn in your ticket to calculate how much you owe. This is nice on long trips so you aren’t constantly going through toll booths. The rest of the Turnpike is a typical toll road.

There are a few other toll roads in the Orlando area and a couple other parts of the state. We like to “tax” the tourists. The newer toll roads have wide open lanes for the tolls so people who have a sunpass or Epass for the tolls just drive through at highway speed, there is no slowing down. If you don’t have a sunpass you have to go to a lane where you can pay the toll with cash. Our old toll roads tend to have the narrow toll lanes, and you have to slow to 25 mph to go through, it winds up even slower if the lane is cash or sunpass.

Our sunpass gives a discounted rate for the toll, so if you live here you save a little. You do not have to be a resident to get the pass, anyone can buy one. It’s $5 for a car sticker and I think $20 for the portable one. You load money onto your account via the website or an app. I think FL will do it over the phone also for those who have trouble using the computer.

Some exits are sunpass only, no cash. These tend to be exits to very residential areas, and can be frustrating for a visitor who does not have a sunpass. You feel like you’re breaking the law if you exit (I guess you are) and an additional thing to worry about. However, typically there are exits within a few miles of these type of exits where you can pay a person. Although, one of our toll roads is sunpass or coins only. No people at the tolls. This is in a non-tourist area and fairly residential. At the beginning and end of it there are people manning tolls, so if people use it to connect to other main arteries they don’t have a problem.

The toll roads and turnpike are in very good condition, but they are also probably used less than the interstate, although they still are highly trafficked. Here in Florida major thoroughfares tend to be in good condition anyway.

It’s not inconvenient to have a toll road, if anything it’s an addition road here that helps thin out the traffic, but it does add up monetarily, especially if you commute daily on it.

When I was a child the Turnpike through New Jersey slowed down our drive from MD to NY for Thanksgiving. The line for the toll was outrageous. More than once bad weather made it even worse. We stopped going to NY for Thanksgiving eventually. In FL the governors close the tolls during Hurricane evacuations. They forgo the revenue to keep the traffic moving. I give them a lot of credit for that.

Hopefully, your state spends the money and has the space to do high speed lanes for passholders.

The toll roads have taken over here.

Every major highway project in the past 15 years has included a toll road of some sort. One of the two major north/south highways was under construction for close to 7 years, was delayed twice, and at the end all we had was one new toll “express” lane with a sliding scale dependent on traffic. It’s $0.25 per section if no one is using it and I’ve seen it at $16.00 to go downtown during SXSW. That’s about a 15 minute drive.

Every highway anywhere outside the city is connected to a toll road, it’s like the state stopped trying to provide public roads anymore and offloaded it all to toll road companies. The suburbs simply don’t have other options.

The companies are evil. Really evil. Like they just had to drop $1.3 billion dollars in late fees because they were so indefensible even politicians were unable to come up any justification. But they got away with it for 10+ years first.

Is it burdensome?

It was when I had to drive to work on a toll road every day, about $4.00 per day. The alternative was about 15 minutes longer a day, each way. So it was technically worth it, but $100/mo was more than gas and insurance.

At least that was a choice though. When I got my windshield swapped out, my tag wasn’t scanned for a few days when it was at the base of the windshield. I didn’t even know. They don’t even offer another way to pay at the gates anymore, it’s either by prepaid tag, or mailed invoice. There are no booths to pay a person, or throw change in a bin here. There’s no real indication when a toll isn’t properly scanned.

They said they sent bills but I never received them. They have a million reasons you might not have received them (is the address right on your license (yes), how about your registration (yes), have you moved recently (no), that’s not our fault that you tag was improperly installed) but for some reason they don’t just search and see if they have a tag for that license plate. They tried to collect about $300 by the time I actually received a bill. I ended up paying about $120 if I remember right, but it was for $10 worth of tolls they hadn’t collected after a couple of months. It’s a scam.

Private infrastructure does not make sense for the people. It only makes sense for the companies that provide it and those that get paid for giving it the green light. It disproportionately affects those who commute long distances and those who are more likely to move often. Anyone without a credit card is screwed.

Imagine toll booths on sidewalks as a way to pay for them, or billboards in schools, or negotiating with your friendly DMV on the bill they just sent to collections.

In my experience, toll roads are a delightful combination of all three. And as far as locals go, I think I’m somewhere in the middle of the spectrum of pro vs. con because I like the quality of the roads and the high speed limits.

But there’s no way you’d convince they’re good for the public.

I live in NJ. I’ve lived with toll roads all my life so I haven’t really thought much of them. I have an EZ Pass which helps speeds things up. But the worst toll road I’ve been on is going north on the GS Parkway to Exit 142B. It’s always somewhat of a slowdown, full of people not knowing where to go. The lanes don’t really help since they’re not really aligned perfectly.

I never relied on toll roads to go to work or anything. So it didn’t burden me. However I frequently use them to visit friends – but even so they’re only like $1.50 for me.

Honestly, NJ highways are always under some kind of construction or repair. It’s perpetual madness you just sort of live with.

I want to add if there is not a reasonable way through on a non toll road then I’m against converting a road to tollls. It’s basically a regressive tax against the poor. As long as there are other reasonable ways through then I think it’s a good option to raise revenue for roads.

I did, but I left that state. In one case, they were charging not for the road being used, but for a road that had been free for decades but they wanted to build a new road, giving unconvincing (to me) arguments why they needed to do that. I avoided ever driving on either road as much as possible without extreme inconvenience. I found it very annoying on several levels. Oh, they also installed annoying computerized car scanners and electronic passes for it (which avoids slowing traffic but I find is an unwarranted privacy imposition as well), which they called “Good to Go!” (which I thought added insult to injury), and charged people more for not using them. Of course, they were all set to penalize you for not paying those in a timely fashion, also adding a layer of “you must have a valid mailing address on file to be able to use this public road without being penalized” aspect to it.

I think toll roads are obnoxious, but at least they do directly charge motorists for use of the thing. However I think most/all public roads should be free of charge and free of tracking who’s going where when, as a matter of liberty and freedom and privacy and general goodwill and happiness.

@funkdaddy, where are you?

@canidmajor – Austin area.

Here’s a map of our current toll situation.

Connecticut use to have tolls for sections of what is now I 95 and several bridges (to cross the Connecticut River) until the middle 1980’s.
I live in North Carolina now and the government is considering putting tolls on I 95 to collect monies from truckers and out of state travelers. The problem becomes really sticky because there are parallel roads that the truckers would use and soon the out of state travelers would figure out the was a non-toll road. The two lane roads through rural town would be a mess both by vehicle and broken road beds. Town and cities maintain their own roads no money from state.

Yup great plan ! NOT

@Tropical Willie I thought it was illegal to allow tolls on any interstate highway. Though here in California several of our bridges on those highways have tolls. I don’t know of any toll roads (yet) in California.

Here’s the Federal Highway Administration page on toll-roads and interstate highways. They are not mutually exclusive.
The money collect is used to maintain the road and not Federal money.

Not in Missouri, but in Oklahoma they have a ton and the roads were awful. No thanks. I think Kanas has them, too.

Yes. I’ve never been on one of them except after Irma when the fees were waived.

It always seems odd to me when an interstate is a toll road. Especially, when it is a double digit and not a spur.

Edit: I guess in CA they have single digits. I don’t know the lowest number in the interstate system.

@JLeslie

Lowest are H-1 H-2 and H-3 (all in Hawaii). Makes you wonder how there can be inter-states in Hawaii.

Lowest numbered in the continental US :

I-2 – a tiny piece (about 45 miles) in way south Texas.

I-4 across Florida.

^^Duh, I’m on I4 about ten times a year. I just took I4 last weekend to Universal. Lol. For some reason I was just thinking about the north south interstates.

Yeah, technically HI shouldn’t be an interstate, but it’s part of the system. Just like DC isn’t a state, but you use that code in the state boxes on forms.

I-4 is in Florida. I-5 is on the West Coast. I-8 is in Arizona.