President Trump’s infrastructure plan still lacks detail, but one thing seems certain. It will not be just one more nationalized road-building bill. Nor will it continue the harmful tradition of the federal government calling all the shots and providing all the funds.
Trump wants to “build gleaming new roads, bridges, highways, railways and waterways all across our land.” But in his own words from his State of the Union address, “every federal dollar should be leveraged by partnering with state and local governments and, where appropriate, tapping into private-sector investment.”
His administration has made clear an intention to shift this obligation away from Washington and toward the states. This is the right approach to upgrading the nation’s infrastructure. What’s more, the proper moment for it has arrived. That is to say, even if this hadn’t been Trump’s preferred approach, he would probably have been forced to adopt it anyway.
This begins with the lifting of the ban on states tolling interstate highways, something former President Barack Obama also supported. EZ-Pass technology has improved and spread from New York in all directions in the past 20 years, making expanded tolling easy and removing congestion, hassle, and expense associated with it in former years. Only about 6 percent of interstate highways miles are tolled today, and many more could stand to be.
Tolling is a fairer method of paying for roads than broad-based gas taxes or government borrowing, because the most rational policy, and the most conservative, is that users be made to pay directly wherever possible. In this case, the heaviest users and damagers of roads, truckers, should pay for the wear they inflict. That's why their tolls are higher. This is much better than burdening individual taxpayers or even disproportionately burdening private drivers who cross state lines far less frequently.
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01.23.2025