For Whom the Tolls Swell

And as local policy-makers resist new taxes even as growth continues, the toll trend has become relentless. "We're constantly playing catch-up on the (existing) infrastructure," says Bush's transportation secretary, Denver Stutler. "There's simply no money to start getting ahead of development and population growth."

Consider the smorgasbord of toll roads around the state: The Miami-Dade Expressway Authority, Florida's third-largest toll entity, has its own growing network. The Tampa-Hillsborough Authority is opening reversible express lanes over the Crosstown Expressway, and Florida's Turnpike Enterprise is already talking about expanding the new Veterans Expressway in western Hillsborough, where traffic is up by half in five years. The Legislature last year authorized a new Southwest Florida Expressway Authority, for Lee and Collier counties and possibly Charlotte County, and a new North Florida Transportation Corridor Authority. Jacksonville, resisting the trend, got rid of bridge tolls in 1988, raised local gas taxes and merged its toll entity into a transportation authority, but there is early talk of an outer bypass west of the city that could be a toll road.

Many future toll projects will likely resemble the Suncoast Parkway, which runs roughly parallel to U.S. 19 for 42 miles from northwest Hillsborough to northern Hernando with a planned extension to Crystal River. That $530-million toll road was built by the Turnpike Enterprise, relying partly on borrowed mone and partly on cash built up from tolls on Florida's Turnpike itself, which will mark its 50th anniversary in January.

The Turnpike Enterprise, the quasiindependent arm of Florida DOT that runs the turnpike system, also developed the Polk Parkway and has joined with the Orange County Expressway Authority on sections of other toll roads in central Florida. The OOCEA itself has been approached by adjoining counties about building toll roads in those counties, says Chairman Allan E. Keen.

One measure of the growing reliance on toll roads is a comparison of the road building budgets of OOCEA and the Orange County local government. While the county's five-year road building budget is $180 million, says Keen, OOCEA's is $1.1 billion, nearly seven times as much, with $400 million of that coming from toll revenue in excess of operating costs.

Some of the toll money, of course, is used to maintain and expand the existing toll roads, which boast higher maintenance and safety standards than DOT's free interstates. The rest supports new projects, like the Western Beltway in Orange County. "People say, 'When will the tolls be paid off?' " says Keen. "The answer is, 'Never.' "

Changing attitudes

Toll roads used to be thought of as favoritism toward people who can afford to pay. But thinking has changed. Every car on a toll road eases congestion on the free roads. Tolls also put more burden on people who choose long commutes, often from new developments in the suburbs.

Tolls also seem to generate less political resistance than higher gas taxes, which run afoul of the Republican no-new-tax mantra. People just keep tossing quarters in the basket or zipping through the electronic SunPass lanes. More roads get built, politicians are off the hook and people pay if they choose the convenience.

What makes toll roads even more compelling to policy-makers now is a double whammy of flattening gas-tax revenue and huge increases in road-building costs. Florida's gas tax has some indexing for inflation, but not for what Stutler says is a 25% increase in the cost of materials, labor and rights of way.

All around the state, traditional road projects are being pushed off into a more distant future as DOT copes with the cost increases. Stutler offers a sort of Yogi Berra truism: "By the time we're able to afford them, they won't be affordable."

DOT can't even buy rights of way until a route is justified, mapped and approved through environmental processes. By that time, of course, land costs have risen. The state spends roughly $700 million a year on rights of way. What if, muses Stutler, the state could do deals with landowners now, finance the purchases and then pay off the financing when the road makes it onto the work list? Stutler now hopes to do just that by working with private landowners and bankers like J.P. Morgan or Goldman Sachs, which recently created divisions to invest in infrastructure projects, to create short-term financing for rights of way even for projects that won't begin for several years. With land costs rising 11% a year, as Stutler says they have recently, borrowing money at 5% makes a lot of sense.

Tags: Politics & Law, Around Florida, Government/Politics & Law