TORONTO, (April 19, 2004) — Toll roads, while viewed as a necessary evil in the U.S., are generally frowned upon by most Canadian road users. But toll highways can work if they’re done right — so says Nicholas Hann, managing director for McQuarry North America, a firm that spearheads major public/private construction projects around the world.

Hann says he favors the American ‘shadow toll’ model: a private operator accepts certain obligations and risks, such as construction, operating costs, and uncertain traffic volumes, and receives from government periodic toll payments for every vehicle that uses the tolled facility. The government is still effectively buying the service, but instead of investing in the asset, it’s making a performance-related payment for that service.

Now there’s a new U.S. study suggesting that truck-only toll lanes could be built on several long stretches of Interstate highway, allowing the use of long combination vehicles (LCVs) over wider areas of the country.

The truck-only toll lanes plan, taken from a study called ‘Corridors for Toll Truckways’, would move trucks into their own lanes, separated by concrete barriers. Because the trucks would be safely separated from car traffic, trucking companies would be allowed to use higher-capacity LCVs on the truck-only toll lanes. When reaching urban metro areas, the trucks would be broken down at staging areas — the LCVs would not travel on urban freeways.

In the report, the Reason Foundation, a Los Angeles-based think tank, identified the most promising interstate corridors for truck-only toll lane testing. Among the leading candidates:

I-90 between the Cleveland area and the New York state line on Lake Erie. This would link the two biggest LCV corridors in the country — the Indiana Toll Road and the Ohio Turnpike in the Midwest, and the New York State Thruway and the Massachusetts Turnpike in the Northeast. With appropriate connections, the trucking centers of the Midwest could be linked to Boston and New York-northern New Jersey.

The I-80 from Chicago west through Iowa could connect that major logistical hub with the western Great Plains and Rocky Mountain areas where LCVs already operate. This route (in conjunction with the previous one) would enable LCVs to operate all the way from Boston and New York to as far west as Denver.

And I-75 Toledo to Detroit could provide a through route from the Indiana and Ohio LCV routes to the city of Detroit and on into Canada.

Since trucking companies would be paying tolls to cover the costs of building and operating the lanes, trucks using the toll lanes would be exempt from federal fuel taxes and other federal user charges for miles traveled on the truck-only toll lanes — something that toll-paying truckers in Canada would welcome north of the border too.