We’re very opinionated about proposals this issue, but unlike the library fee proposal, we’re not at all happy about this one, and you shouldn’t be either.
The Missouri Department of Transportation wants to build tolls along Interstate 70 to fund highway maintenance and build new lanes, but they want to charge expensive fees and do all this without letting the public vote on whether or not they want it. If this happens, Missouri residents and people traveling through Missouri, including us out-of-state college students, will have to pay. It will cost $25 for a one-way drive from St. Louis to Kansas City for automobile drivers, and $50 to $75 for truck drivers, according to the St. Louis Post Dispatch.
Highways are a primary unit of public infrastructure for any nation-state, and the key word in this sentence is “public.” Yet, MoDOT thinks it can propose legislation to move ahead with a $2 to $4 billion project and essentially increase taxation of all Missouri travelers without said travelers having a direct vote in that process. What happened to no taxation without representation?
Fortunately, it’s still a proposal, but in the [St. Louis Post-Dispatch](http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/modot-chief-says-voters-could-be-bypassed-on-i-/article_7a8b2de5-f06a-50de-a703-c195404ae9f7.html), public officials like MoDOT Director Kevin Keith and State Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, said a public vote does not seem to be required, Kehoe adding that it is because of the narrow circumstances of a public-private partnership to rebuild the highway. Tom Crawford, president and CEO of the Missouri Trucking Association, said MoDOT is saying no public referendum is necessary because the tolls would be collected by private partners, not MoDOT. Kehoe said a previously passed bill enabled the state to build Mississippi River bridge-tolls through a private-public partnership and that bill could be used as precedent. According to The St. Louis Post Dispatch, the act would have gone through had the state of Illinois not rejected the idea of using tolls.
Likewise, Missouri citizens would most likely reject the idea of using tolls, as they’ve done in the past. A toll system would only increase traffic on Interstate 70, and the extra charge on truck drivers would be a very strong incentive for businesses to move elsewhere to lower their transportation costs. And $25? It only costs $10.75 to travel the entire Kansas Turnpike, a 236-mile distance, which is just 20 miles shorter than the distance from St. Louis to Kansas City, according to the Kansas Turnpike Authority.
Interstate 70 does carry an average 70,000 automobiles per day when it was built for only 20,000, and we can understand the need for renovation, but perhaps this is a time for Missouri to seriously think about investing in public transportation. In the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Keith said 6,000 jobs a year would be generated by the $2 billion proposal, but since the tolls would be temporary, those jobs would be temporary as well. Public transportation would result in permanent jobs, create revenue, decrease traffic on I-70 and avoid driving away businesses with high shipping costs.
If you use I-70, which virtually anyone driving through Missouri does, don’t pay without having some sort of say. If you can’t directly vote on it, call your local representatives and make sure they do not approve the legislation. Given the Missouri General Assembly’s history of going against the will of the public, your call is especially important.