Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina,
Texas, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia, have tolls.
Florida was one of the first to have Open Tolling (License Plate based)
We do work for Florida Tolls. With regard to Open Tolling, it started when someone at the FT realized that they were taking photos of every license plate as it passed through the lanes or under the gantries. They decided to treat the people who passed without an EZ Pass as a customer instead of a criminal. They started sending invoices instead of citations.
25 years ago I did a 2 year gig at PA Turnpike and learned more than I thought possible about toll roads. The general idea is a state vs federal issue. Eisenhower started the big push for federal funding of highways when he funded the Interstate system.
The issue then becomes whether you pay tolls in the form of gas taxes or do you pay direct tolls to the specific road you are on.
The bigger issue is determining the most equitable way to pay for all roads and bridges and who controls the money.
Relative to tolls, the book "The Power Broker" is about the life of Robert Moses. Moses has been associated with forming the first "Authority" to collect tolls. Authorities and Commissions are interesting entities. They are neither private or government yet they wield tremendous power through the revenue they collect.
Some of you may know Moses by the projects he funded in New York. Among them are the many parks in NYC, the Parkways on Long Island, Jones Beach, and Robert Moses State Park. He was said to be a racist. Hard to separate fact from fiction on that one. The racist argument stems from building the Parkways to access Jones Beach. There was no mass transportation provided. The thought is he did it by design because the poor (read: Blacks) did not own cars and were therefore were hindered from accessing Jones Beach.
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