Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Toll Roads

Jeff Wagner defends Scott Walker's suggestion of "toll lanes"--which suggestion was delivered to an audience of RoadBuilders, surprisingly.

Hmmmm.

They won't be on the Interstates, unless Federal law changes.

They'll cost LARGE money. I-39's 45-mile addition of two lanes will cost $715 million. That's $795,000./mile.

Forget, for the moment, that it's an Interstate--let's assume that he may legally charge a toll for driving on that road.

Is he proposing that the lane will pay for itself? In that case, he'll have to get $3800./month for each lane (30-year amort at 4%.) At $0.50 toll, that's ~7600 cars/day.

Really? 7600 cars/day?

Which roads will have that volume of traffic which WILL pay $1.00/day--remember, it's a 2-way trip--if not the Interstates? And does Walker seriously think he'll add 2 lanes to Bluemound Road? North Ave? KK? Capitol Drive? Washington Ave in Madistan?

Where?

Virginia, Los Angeles, NYC, maybe.

Not here.

2 comments:

  1. Express toll lanes and the more-numerous High Occupancy/Toll lanes are allowed on interstates as long as current non-High Occupancy capacity is not reduced. However, the traffic volume on, say, I-90 around Madison is not high enough to justify the expense of implementation.

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  2. That means that he'd have to add a lane to each interstate.

    Only place I can figure that he can do it without Fed BS is Hy. 41, and the only time that's interesting is when the Packers are playing a Milwaukee-ticket-holders' game.

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