Highway Safety, Finance and Public Support: ‘Explain, Explain, Explain’

A media panel at IBTTA’s 2016 Transportation Policy and Finance Summit last month delivered two basic messages for any toll road operator looking for public support:

Never stop trying to understand the reasons behind customers’ objections to paying for the roads they use.

Then explain, explain, explain with facts and data that educate them.

Another lesson learned from the group of transportation reporters from all types of media, across the U.S. was that there’s no single audience for the bedrock message that our highways are never paid for and the job of highway maintenance is never permanently done. Drivers will have a variety of reasons to resist the notion of paying for toll roads, even if they appreciate the benefits of a well-run, well-financed road.

Telling the Story Means Translating the Message

The first challenge is to tell the highway finance story in language that makes sense to members of the public. A couple of panelists, including reporter and news anchor Max Smith of WTOP in Northern Virginia, said tolling agencies don’t always get it right.

“When you talk to us in whatever jargon, we get it, we’re on top of it, but it’s a little different as soon as we put anything out there,” he told participants. “Even if we wrote it exactly the way [you said it], it’s got to be explained, explained, explained.”

A big part of the problem, particularly for electronic media, is to compress a complex, nuanced message to fit a 35-second slot. “I push the limits as much as I can, but I can’t push that much” when it’s time to shed light on variable toll rates in different locations at different times of day. “If you can’t explain it on a sign, you can’t explain it in a radio story,” he said.

And “you have to explain it in a way that maybe uses the words the driver says,” he said. “’Mile Marker 135’ doesn’t do it for a lot of them,” but they may understand if a spokesperson just points to that exit over to the left.

A Fundamental Disconnect

Anchor and Reporter Danielle Leigh of Seattle’s KING 5 TV said her stories on gas taxes and road usage fees often go viral, and the comments are rarely positive. “Asking people how they feel about paying for transportation is kind of like asking if they’re excited to go to the dentist to get a tooth pulled,” she said. “No one is excited about it, but they appreciate the benefits that come from it.”

When KING 5 asks viewers how they feel about tolls, the answers are never positive, she added. “But then, when you talk to them and ask, ‘do you use the toll roads?’ they say, ‘yeah, I use them every day. I love that it saves me time and I don’t have to get up as early to get to work.’”

Which points to a fundamental disconnect, and a continuing communications challenge for the tolling industry creating greater mobility.

“It’s not that they dislike the effect of it,” Leigh said. “They just don’t like the reality that they have to pay for it.” In the same breath, when Seattleites incurred 300 to 500% premiums to use Uber on New Year’s Eve, “people were joking about it on Twitter, but no one was angry. It was almost comical.”

The difference, she said, is “this idea of paying for transportation on my own terms, versus in the way the government tells me I have to pay.” And yet, “as much as people will complain [about tolling], they’ll still use it.”

Understanding the Problem

As we said earlier, different users have different reasons for objecting to tolls, or to electronic toll collection, said Martine Powers, a former Boston Globe reporter who now writes for POLITICO Pro.

“I was always surprised by the diversity and nuance in people’s perspectives,” she told participants, from drivers with concerns about privacy or being overcharged, to “these conscientious objectors who wanted to stand up for the toll, for the people who worked at toll plazas, and protect their good, American jobs. And then there were a few people who said they just really liked interacting with the people at the toll booths every day.”

A younger user, by contrast, might willingly pay more for Uber if the alternative is to sign up for a transponder, wait for it to arrive in the mail, then install it in their vehicle.

“That’s much too onerous for them,” Powers said. “These are people who pay more than their rent in Uber charges every month, but the idea of having a transponder and paying for tolls in that way is upsetting to them.”

The upshot: “People are okay to pay for transportation, but they’re resistant to doing it in a way where they don’t feel they have control over what they’re paying for.”

That was just a snapshot of a dynamic, 90-minute session! To read more about IBTTA’s Transportation Policy and Finance Summit check IBTTA’s website for the thematic report being posted shortly