'Everybody's Drive Would Be Different Without The Toll Roads'
IBTTA members can’t seem to stop setting performance records.
Toward the end of February, it was the Transportation Corridor Agencies (TCA) in Orange County, California, recording the highest number of trips in its 30-year history, the Orange County Register reported.
The record wasn’t just an isolated achievement. Numbers were up significantly on all four of TCA’s toll roads—State Routes 73, 133, 241, and 261.
“More than 300,000 daily commuters and visitors used the tollways last year, resulting in more than 100 million tolls taken and more than $312 million in revenue,” the Register noted, citing TCA’s annual report.
Overall, ridership is up 20% over the last three years.
A History of Success
“More than 30 years ago, in an era of exploding population, worsening traffic congestion, and shrinking government transportation funds, Orange County produced a new, different solution for planning, financing, constructing, and operating transportation improvements,” the annual report states. “A partnership with county and city officials took little-used, innovative governmental techniques and fashioned them into a unique transportation model.”
Three decades later, after it became the first agency to build highways without state and federal funds, “TCA is one of modern tolling’s leading agencies, bringing much-needed traffic relief to Orange County. The simple, unvarnished reality is that “everybody’s drive would be different without The Toll Roads.”
A Toll is Not a Tax
The report stresses a key facet of toll-funded transportation. “Since the bonds are not backed by the government, taxpayers are not responsible for repaying the debt, nor do taxpayers carry the risk if future toll revenues fall short.”
“Some people think tolls are a tax, but that is not the case. Tolls are voluntary user fees. Drivers can choose to pay tolls or take alternative routes—whereas taxes are mandatory and charged to everyone.”
And meanwhile, if it weren’t for toll financing, many of the best roads, bridges and tunnels in the U.S. might never have been built.