Riding the Wave: 2017 Delivers a Whirlwind of Progress for Tolling, User Finance

Today is where it starts.

IBTTA is surging into the new year, driven by the outstanding momentum the global tolling industry built in 2017. At the international, national, state and local levels and across the spectrum from policy to finance to technology, the association and its members accomplished a sequence of milestones last year that point toward even greater achievements in 2018.

In the United States, the year began with the inauguration of a new president and the appointment of Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, who pointed to tolling as an essential financing tool in one of her first media interviews. “We have to take a look at all of these financing mechanisms, because once again, the needs of our infrastructure are so great that the federal government cannot and should not be the only source of funding to repair our bridges, our roads and our energy grids,” the Secretary told Fox News in late February.

U.S. voters made it clear that they were onside, with people from Silicon Valley to Ohio telling pollsters they’ll accept a modest increase in bridge tolls as a way to clear traffic gridlock. Ratings agencies expressed confidence that tolling is on the rise, and a committee of the Conference Board said user fees should play a bigger role in funding U.S. roads and bridges.

IBTTA Gets a Seat at the Table

Chao’s sense of urgency was reinforced less than two weeks after her Fox News interview, when the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)’s quadrennial Report Card on America’s Infrastructure warned of an $836-billion capital investment gap for highways and bridges. In September, the U.S. Federal Highway Administration reaffirmed “the importance of improving the nation’s infrastructure investments and streamlining the environmental and permitting processes.” A month later, the agency issued a long-awaited call for proposals for “candidate projects” to pilot test tolling of existing interstate highways to fund their reconstruction.

Earlier in the year, in an exclusive interview with Tolling Points, Cynthia Essenmacher, Tolling Program Manager at FHWA’s Center for Innovative Finance Support, cited revenues for highway maintenance and preservation as one of the most important items in her ongoing discussions with state departments of transportation.

Throughout, IBTTA stressed that a full range of funding and financing mechanisms must be available to federal, state, and local governments working to confront a massive infrastructure investment deficit. Second Vice President Chris Tomlinson, Executive Director of Georgia’s State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA), and Executive Director and CEO Pat Jones had the opportunity to make the case at a White House highway infrastructure briefing in October. The association also got a seat at the table in May, when a subcommittee of the Senate Energy and Public Works committee held an Infrastructure Week hearing on innovative solutions to leverage federal infrastructure funding.

With a major White House infrastructure announcement expected early in the new year, tolling was very much a part of the mix in mid-December, with one officials telling the Washington Post the U.S. administration “will be agnostic as to the type of revenue, as long as it is new and dedicated to infrastructure.”

Front-Line Stories Make All the Difference

During last year’s Infrastructure Week, IBTTA emphasized that all tolling solutions and stories are local. The association and its members proved the point throughout the year, with breakthrough news that demonstrated the power of tolling as a key tool in the transportation funding toolbox.

With Emanuela Stocchi, Director of International Affairs at the Associazione Italiana Società Concessionarie Autostrade e Trafori (AISCAT), serving as IBTTA’s 2017 President, the association made important contributions and inroads on the world stage. “IBTTA is a great community of men and women who have built human as well as professional relationships inspired by collaboration,” Stocchi wrote in a letter to members. She said her theme for the year—International Mobility Connections— “reflects that driving force, and draws on the continuity that I see as the strength of our association.”

Stocchi was an active and visible spokesperson for IBTTA and the industry. She discussed public-private partnerships at a conference session on capacity-building for highway construction in the Western Balkans and spotlighted the role of tolling in a TV interview in Italy during IBTTA’s International Summit of Rome. Jones and IBTTA member corporation MOSTOBUD held productive meetings with Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan and several other government officials in Ukraine. And earlier in the year, Turkey unveiled the all-electronic Eurasia Tunnel, a $1.25-billion, 14.5-kilometre facility that connects the Asian and European sides of Istanbul and will ease the city’s notorious traffic congestion.

Action Across the U.S.

Across the United States, IBTTA member agencies broke new ground in the day-in, day-out effort to deliver safe, reliable mobility.

The Illinois Tollway opened 2017 by announcing nearly $1 billion in new capital investment to embrace a technology-driven future. Later in the year, the state received a powerful illustration of the local economic impact of highway infrastructure spending, with the American and Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Associations calculating that $345 million in weekly economic activity and 43,000 jobs would be at risk if delayed budget approvals led to a shutdown of state-wide highway projects.

SRTA opened Georgia’s first reversible toll lane, while a Georgia-based private foundation chose a rural stretch of interstate 85 as a test bed for its vision of a “zero-carbon, zero-deaths, zero-waste, zero-impact” highway. Discussion in Connecticut positioned tolling as a solution to the state’s stubborn infrastructure funding gap. Washington State issued a primer on managed lanes. And Maryland tackled congestion with a project billed as “the largest proposed P3 highway project in North America”, while earning praise from the Mid-Atlantic Region of the American Automobile Association for the success of its all-electronic Intercounty Connector.

All Eyes on the Future

Even as they delivered on practical solutions to today’s challenges in highway safety, mobility, and finance, IBTTA members constantly had an eye on the future. In 2017, the association issued a provocative report from a late 2016 summit that explored the “futures of transportation”, and joined with the Transportation Research Board to host a joint symposium that highlighted the wave of innovation sweeping the industry. IBTTA’s annual Maintenance and Roadway Operations Workshop focused on new asset management techniques and technologies, a post in a popular trucking industry publication suggested a pathway for the freight industry to embrace tolling, and a UK research center predicted that 50% of new vehicles will be equipped with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications technology by 2022.

At the 85^th Annual Meeting and Exhibition in Atlanta, IBTTA’s Toll Excellence Awards and student scholarships celebrated innovation throughout the global tolling industry, while a special video presentation marked 10 years of achievement by the IBTTA Foundation. And now, as Tim Stewart, Executive Director and CEO of Denver’s E-470 Public Highway Authority, takes the helm as IBTTA’s 2018 President, the accent will be on Trust and Accountability.

“As an industry, we deliver an extremely good, valuable product,” Stewart explained in a recent Tolling Points interview. “But if we are to fulfill that promise, people have to trust what we do,” and “that leads into accountability. If you trust someone to do something, they have to deliver.”

Click here for an overview of IBTTA’s meetings and events calendar for 2018.