Toll road

"Toll house" redirects here. For the brand of chocolate-chip cookie, see Toll House; for the restaurant that originated the cookie, see Toll House Inn.

'Turnpike' redirects here. For the Turnpike internet client see Turnpike (software)

'' A toll road, tollway, turnpike, pike or tollpike is a road on which a toll authority collects a fee for use. Similarly there are toll bridges and toll tunnels. Other non-toll roads are financed using other sources of revenue, most typically gasoline tax or general tax funds. Tolls have been placed on roads at various times in history, often to generate funds for repayment of toll revenue bonds used to finance constructions and/or operation.

Two variations of toll roads exist: barrier (mainline) toll plazas and entry/exit tolls. On a mainline toll system, all vehicles stop at various locations on the highway to pay a toll. While this may save money from the lack of need to construct tolls at every exit, it can cause lots of traffic congestion, and drivers could evade tolls by going around them (as the exits do not have them). With entry/exit tolls, vehicles collect a ticket when entering the highway, which displays the fares it will pay when it exits, increasing in cost for distance travelled. Upon exit, the driver will pay the amount listed for the given exit. Should the ticket indicate a travelling violation or be lost, the driver would typically pay the maximum amount possible for travel on that highway.

Early toll roads

Early references include the (mythical) Greek ferryman Charon charging a toll to ferry (dead) people across the river Acheron. Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia. In India, before the 4th century BC the Arthasastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes. Tolls were used in the Holy Roman Empire in the 14th century and 15th century.

A good example in the 14th century would be Castle Loevestein in the Netherlands, which was built at a strategic point where 2 rivers met, and charged tolls to boats sailing the river.

National toll-road differences

Asia

People's Republic of China

Nearly all Chinese expressways and express routes charge tolls, although they are not often networked from one toll expressway to another. However, beginning with the Jingshen Expressway, tolls are gradually being networked. Given the size of the nation, however, the task is rather difficult.

China National Highways, which are not expressways, but "grade-A" routes, also charge tolls. Some provincial, autonomous-regional and municipal routes, as well as some major bridges, will also charge passage fees. In November 2004, legislation in China provided for a minimum length of a stretch of road or expressway in order for tolls to be charged.

= Hong Kong

= In Hong Kong, most tunnels and some bridges that form part of the motorway networks are tolled to cover construction and maintenance costs. Some built recently are managed in the BOT (build, operate, transfer) basis. The companies built the tunnels or bridges are given franchise of a certain length of time (usually 30 years) to operate. Ownership will be transferred to the government when the franchise expires. See also Tunnels and bridges in Hong Kong.

India

The Mumbai-Pune Expressway, spanning a 95 km (49 miles) distance between the outskirts of the twin cities of Mumbai and Pune, is India's first access controlled turnpike. The project was completed under the stewardship of the Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) ^* in 2002. The new route cuts the time taken to travel between the two cities to approximately 2 hours

Another expressway project which was completed in year 2004, was Ahmedabad-Vadodara expressway (NE 1 - 100 KM) which takes nearly one hour(start to end of expressway) compared to 2-3 hours travel by conventional highway NH-8. Later is the busiest highway in India stretching from Mumbai to New Delhi.

Indonesia

Indonesia opened its first toll road in 1978 when the Jagorawi Toll Road linking the capital city of Jakarta to Bogor and Ciawi, about 60 km south, completed. Still limited in existence, it has just completed a 50 km mountainuous toll from Cikampek to the highland city of Bandung in West Java and is named Cipularang Toll Road. This latest toll also connects to the existing Cikampek Toll Road that runs from Jakarta.

Malaysia

Malaysia has extensive toll roads that forms the majority of country's expressways which in length spans more than 1000 km ranging North to the Thai border, South to the Causeway and Second Link to Singapore, West to Klang and Pulau Indah and East towards Kuantan. Most of the toll roads are in major cities and conurbations such as Klang Valley, Johor Bahru and Penang. All of Malaysian toll roads are managed in the BOT (build, operate, transfer) basis as in Hong Kong (see below). Please see Malaysian expressway system for more information.

Philippines

The Philippines have five toll roads, all on the main Island of Luzon. The longest and most modern is the 84-kilometer-long North Luzon Expressway, connecting Manila with Santa Ines in the North.

The South Luzon Expressway and the Skyway connect Manila with the southern part of Luzon.

The Coastal Road is a short (under 10 kilometers long) urban expressway in the south of the Manila metropolitan area.

The Tipo Expressway is a 6-kilometer-long non-divided toll road runing east from the Subic Bay Freeport Zone. It is operated by the same operator as the North Luzon Expressway and will be extended west to connect to the North Luzon Expressway south of Angeles.

The STAR Tollway runs south from Manila to the City of Lipa.

Only the North Luzon Expressway and the South Luzon Expressway / Skyway have an electronic toll collection system, which is based on the 5.7 GHz standard.

Singapore

Further information : Singapore Area Licensing Scheme, Electronic Road Pricing

In Singapore, toll stations are automated, thus reducing manpower. The automated toll stations, also known to the locals as ERP or Electronic Road Pricing, was introduced to reduce city traffic jams. Although it is advanced, it is still unpopular among Singaporean drivers.

Taiwan

=Freeways

Freeways in Taiwan are not exactly toll roads in the sense that toll gates/stations are not located at the entrance and exits of the freeway. Toll stations/checkpoints are located every thirty to forty kilometers on the No. 1 and No. 3 National Freeways of the Republic of China. There are usually no freeway exits once a toll station notification sign appears, making it necessary for the driver to be familiar with the locations of the toll stations in advance.

See Highway_System_in_Taiwan#Toll_station for more detailed information.

=Other toll roads

Other toll roads in Taiwan are usually newly built bridges and tunnels. Tolls are frequently collected to pay off the construction cost and once paid off, the tolls may be repealed.

Japan

The vast majority of Japan's extensive expressway consists of toll roads. When entering the expressway, one collects a ticket, which can be paid to a machine on the way out. There is also an ETC card system installed in many cars which automatically pays at the toll gate. Japan has the most expensive toll system in the world, with toll rates averaging approximately US$1.00 per mile (US$0.63 per kilometer).

Europe

Specialized system provisions

= Stickers

= Austria (for vehicles to 3.5 tons), the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Switzerland and Hungary have toll motorways (some, though, are toll-free). Payment in those countries is done in the form of "vignettes", or stickers being affixed to the car's front window, which are valid for a certain amount of time. The time is always one calendar year in Switzerland; in Austria and Hungary cheaper vignettes with shorter validity are also available.

= Toll collection for trucks

Switzerland introduced a toll-system for trucks over 3.5 tons in January 2001, and
Austria introduced a electronic toll collection system for trucks over 3.5 tons in January 2004, based on DSRC micro wave technology.
Germany followed suit with some delay through technical problems on January 1, 2005. The German Toll Collect system is based on a technology using satellites; truck operators may choose to either install on-board units for automated tracking of movements, or to book their route in advance using the internet or computerized booking terminals. The toll is valid for trucks >12 tons.

Particular Countries

= Croatia

= All Croatian motorways are toll-roads with the exception of the one surrounding Zagreb. They are networked so the driver only pays when leaving the motorway. Tolls are paid in proportion to the length of the used section and according to the corresponding vehicle group. The first motorway (between Zagreb and Karlovac) was opened 1972. In 2005 the length of the multi-lane motorways was close to 800 kilometers with over 300 additional kilometers to be built by 2008. Most toll-roads are operated by the state company Hrvatske autoceste d.o.o..

= France

= In Europe, the most substantial use of toll roads is in France, where most of the autoroutes carry quite heavy tolls: at least some traffic seems to be displaced onto local roads as a result. In a number of countries the companies have often fallen in and out of the public sector, and many have had financial problems.

= Italy

= In Italy most autostrade (the Italian for Motorway, or Highways) are toll roads. They form one network: if you enter in Naples and exit in Venice you will pay only at the exit, even though you will have changed road. They are named AXX, where XX is a number from 1 to 30, e.g. the A1 connects Milan to Naples. In additon they might have nicknames ("Autostrada del Sole" = "Sun Highway" for the A1). The numbers have not been allocated methodologically.

61% of the Autostrade are handled by the "Autostrade S.p.A." company, and its subsidiaries. The network of highways covers most of Italy: northern and central Italy are well covered, the south and Sicily are scarcely covered, Sardinia is not covered at all.

There are additional toll roads in Italy in the urban areas of Venice and Florence where tourist buses must pay a fee to enter the city.

Autostrade tolls can be expensive. For example the typical Milan-Naples route of around 700 km costs approximately €40.

= Norway

= Norway has a 60 year long experience in road tolling for financing bridges, tunnels and roads. Until the beginning of the 1980's contributions of tolls to the road building budget stagnated at about 5%, since then it has soared to more than 25% in 2000. Those twenty years were marked by the advance of road tolling in urban areas.

Norwegian authorities closely monitored Singapore's use of tolls as a means to discourage urban traffic and Bergen got its first toll zone outside the ring road in 01.02.1986. Any driver wishing to enter central Bergen by car had to pay the fee. In difference to the project in Singapore, the tolls in Norway are by law not meant as a means for regulating traffic but rather only as one for generating income to be invested in infrastructure. The lack of general protest and high income from such toll zones made them very popular initially and today toll rings circumscribe Oslo, Stavanger, Tønsberg, Namsos and Kristiansand. The toll ring in Trondheim was closed December 30 2005 after 14 years in operation. The success is only partial: the toll rings have become unpopular and regarded as an extra random tax, new infrastructure has not been developed as expected, and confidence in the road authorities has been dented.

There are also several toll roads to finance road infrastructure and highways in other parts of Norway. An example of successful use is the bridge over lake Mjøsa which is now free of charge.

= Portugal

= In Portugal a certain number of roads are designated Toll-Roads. They charge a fixed value per kilometre distance, with several classes depending on vehicle type and regulated by the government. Several authorised franchises run them, the largest at present being BRISA. For cash-free payments there exists the Via Verde system (Portuguese for Green Way) which is an electronic tag that is fitted to vehicles and automatically debits an associated bank-account with the cost of the journey made.

Well-known roads are the A1, which goes from Lisbon to Porto and the A2, from Almada to the Algarve, or the A6, from the A2 at Marateca to the Spanish border, close to Badajoz.

= Spain

= Spanish toll roads (or autopistas) are signaled AP-XX (where XX is the number of the road) as opposed to State-mantained freeways (or autovías), called A-XX. Most of them are networked, so you must get a ticket on entering and pay when leaving the road. Technically, all the roads belong to the Government, although autopistas are built and mantained by private companies under a State concession; when the concession expires, the road is reverted to State ownership, although most of then are renewed.

There are some autovías which are actually built and mantained by private companies, notably the Pamplona-Logroño autovía A-12; the company assumes the building costs and the Autonomous Community where they are located (in the given example, Navarre) pays a yearly per-vehicle fee to the company based upon usage statistics, called "toll in the shadow" (in Spanish, peaje en la sombra). The system can be regarded as a way for the Government to finance the build of new roads at the expense of the building company. Also, since the payment starts only after the road is finished, construction delays are usually shorter than those of regular state-owned freeways.

= United Kingdom

= Until the seventeenth century most roads in England, other than surviving Roman roads, were simple tracks through the earth, the term road indicating no more than a right of passage. Responsibility for the upkeep of the roads seems to have rested with landowners, but was probably not easily enforced against them.

Parliament placed the upkeep of bridges to local settlements or the containing county under the 1531 Statute of Bridges and in 1555 the care of roads was similarly devolved to the parishes as statute labour. Every adult inhabitant of the parish was obliged to work four consecutive days a year on the roads, providing their own tools, carts and horses. The work was overseen by an unpaid local appointee, the Surveyor of Highways. It was not until 1654 that road rates were introduced. However, the improvements offered by paid labour were offset by the rise in the use of wheeled vehicles greatly increasing wear to the road surfaces. The government reaction to this was to use legislation to limit the use of wheeled vehicles and also to regulate their construction. A vain hope that wider rims would be less damaging briefly led to carts with sixteen inch wheels. They did not cause ruts but neither did they roll and flatten the road as was hoped.

The first turnpike road, whereby travellers paid tolls to be used for road upkeep, was authorised in 1663 for a section of the Great North Road in Hertfordshire. The term turnpike refers to a gate on which sharp pikes would be fixed as a defence against cavalry. Most English gates were not built to this standard; of the first three gates, two were found to be easily avoided.

The first turnpike trust was established by Parliament through a Turnpike Act in 1706, placing a section of the London-Coventry-Chester road in the hands of a group of trustees. The trustees could erect gates as they saw fit, demand statute labour or a cash equivalent, and appoint surveyors and collectors, in return they repaired the road and put up mileposts. Initially trusts were established for limited periods of around twenty years. The expectation was that the trust would borrow the money to repair the road and repay that debt over time with the road then reverting to the local authorities. In reality the initial debt was rarely paid off and the trusts were renewed as needed. The turnpike trusts were initially set up along the thirteen main roads from London, a process that lasted until 1750. From 1751 until 1772 there was a flurry of interest in turnpike trusts and a further 390 were established. By 1825 over 1,000 trusts controlled 25,000 miles of road in England and Wales.

The quality of early trust roads was very variable - standards for road construction were unknown and while they were better the roads still tended to become easily waterlogged. Road construction improved slowly, initially through the efforts of individual surveyors, such as John Metcalf in Yorkshire in the 1760s. But nineteenth century engineers made great advances, notably Thomas Telford and John Loudon McAdam. The work of Telford on the Holyhead Road (now the A5) in the 1820s reduced the journey time of the London mail coach from 45 hours to just 27 hours, and the best mail coach speeds rose from 5-6 mph to 9-10 mph. In 1843 the London to Exeter mail coach could complete the 170 miles in 17 hours.

The rise of railway transport largely halted the improving schemes of the turnpike trusts. The London-Birmingham railway almost instantly halved the tolls income of the Holyhead Road. Unable to earn sufficient revenue from tolls alone the trusts took to requiring taxes from the local parishes. The system was never properly reformed but from the 1870s Parliament stopped renewing the acts and roads began to revert to local authorities, the last trust vanishing in 1895.

The Local Government Act, 1888 created county councils and gave them responsibility for maintaining the major roads. The abiding relic of the English toll roads is the number of houses with names like "Turnpike Cottage", the inclusion of "Bar" in place names and occasional roadname: Turnpike Lane in northern London has given its name to an Underground station.

Today, the only tolls on roads in the United Kingdom are mainly tolled bridges and tunnels (e.g. Dartford Crossing, Severn crossing, Mersey Tunnels, Tyne Tunnel), congestion charging schemes, some small, privately-owned toll roads, (e.g. in Dulwich College), and the recently-built and privately-financed M6 Toll, potentially the first of a new generation of toll roads. In principle, UK roads today are maintained from the proceeds of the car tax, an annual tax paid for motor vehicle ownership.

North America

Canada

Most tolled roadways in Canada are bridges to the United States, although a few domestic bridges in some provinces have tolls. Toll highways disappeared, for the most part, in the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, political pressure dropped the new tolls on an upgraded section of the Trans Canada Highway in New Brunswick. Highway 407 in the Greater Toronto Area is a modern toll route. Nova Scotia has a toll highway on the Trans Canada Highway between Debert and Oxford. Another toll highway in Canada is the Highway 5/Coquihalla Highway in British Columbia.

Mexico

Mexico has an extensive system of toll roads or Autopistas. Autopistas are built and funded by Federal taxes and are built to nearly identical standards as the US Interstate Highways System. Also, many states in Mexico have their own toll roads such as Puebla, Veracruz and Nuevo Leon.

United States

A toll road in the United States, especially near the east coast, is often called a turnpike. The term turnpike may have originated from the turnstile or gate which blocked passage until the fare was paid at a toll house (or toll booth in current terminology). Some states have a RF tag that automatically bills the commuters account electronically for tolls. Examples of this are the E-ZPass electronic toll collection system used on most toll bridges and toll roads in the eastern U.S. from Virginia to Maine, and recently extended into Illinois; Houston's EZ Tag, which also works in other parts of the state of Texas, and California's FasTrak. These special lanes can move nearly seamlessly with minimal slowing down.

=History, funding through tolls

In early US history, many individual citizens would gravel nearby stretches of road and collect a fee from people who used that specific stretch. Eventually, companies were formed to build, improve, and maintain a particular section of roadway, and tolls were collected from users to finance the enterprise. The enterprise was usually named to indicate the locale of its roadway, often including the name of one or both of the termini. The word turnpike came into common use in the names of these roadways and companies, and is essentially used interchangeably with toll road in current terminology.

The first major toll road in the United States was the Philadelphia and Lancaster Turnpike, built in the 1790s, within Pennsylvania, connecting Philadelphia and Lancaster. In New York State, the Great Western Turnpike was started in Albany in 1799 and eventually extended, by several alternate routes, to the Finger Lakes region.

Prior to the American Revolution, some smaller toll roads organized by local governments existed, such as the Little River Turnpike which connected Alexandria, Virginia with the farmland of Western Virginia.

In the mid to late nineteenth century, private toll road building was particularly active in the West including California and Nevada. In Nevada, over 100 private toll roads were laid out between the 1850s and 1880s, some of them nearly 200 miles long. The owners included stage companies, miners, and ranchers who built the roads, at least in part, to attract business for their primary investments.

By the turn of the twentieth century most toll roads were taken over by state highway departments. In some instances, a quasi-governmental authority was formed, and toll revenue bonds were issued to raise funds for construction and/or operation of the facility.

With the development, mass production, and popular embrace of the automobile, faster and higher capacity roads were needed. In the 1920s limited access highways appeared. Their main characteristics were dual roadways with access points limited to (but not always) grade-separated interchanges. Their dual roadways allowed high volumes of traffic, the need for no or few traffic lights along with relatively gentle grades and curves allowed higher speeds. Bicyclists also campaigned for good roads early on.

The first limited access highways were Parkways, so called because of their often park-like landscaping and, in the metropolitan New York City area, they connected the region's system of parks. Most of the parkways in the New York metropolitan area were not fully access-controlled. While access to most portions of New York's parkway system was through interchanges, there were still numerous segments with at-grade intersections. The nation's first fully controlled-access expressway, the Merritt Parkway in Connecticut opened in stages between 1938 and 1940. The Merritt Parkway, along with the adjoining Hutchinson River Parkway to the west and Wilbur Cross Parkway to the east, provided an uninterrupted expressway link between New York City and Hartford. The Merritt Parkway used a barrier system: one toll plaza was located at the New York/Conecticut state line and the other was located at the Merritt's east end, just east of the Igor I. Sikorsky Memorial Bridge in Milford, Connecticut, where the Wilbur Cross Parkway continues northeast to Hartford. Tolls were removed from the parkway in 1989. When the German Autobahns built in the 1930s introduced higher design standards and speeds, road planners and road-builders in the United States started developing and building toll roads to similar high standards. The Pennsylvania Turnpike, which largely followed the path of a partially-built railroad, was the first of these, opening in 1940 and starting a resurgence of toll collection, this time to fund limited access highways.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, after an interruption by World War II, the US resumed building toll roads, but to even higher standards. One of these roads, the New York State Thruway, had standards that became the prototype for the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Several other major toll-roads and toll-road systems, based on the model of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, were established before the creation of the Interstate Highway System. These were the Illinois State Toll Highway Commission (now the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority), Indiana Toll Road, Massachusetts Turnpike, Ohio Turnpike, Connecticut Turnpike (whose tolls were stopped in 1985) and New Jersey Turnpike. In Illinois, three such roads, which had all been constructed simultaneously, were opened in 1958: the present-day Tri-State Tollway, Northwest Tollway and the Ronald Reagan Memorial Tollway (originally named the East-West Tollway). Kentucky has an extensive system of parkways, built in the 1960s and 1970s, which began as toll roads; state law requires toll collection to cease once the road's construction bonds are paid off. On July 7, 2006, Kentucky's last two toll roads -- William H. Natcher Parkway (near Bowling Green) and the Hal Rogers Parkway, formerly the Daniel Boone Parkway (in Southeast Kentucky), were decommissioned as toll collecting highways as of June 30, 2005. Oklahoma also has an extensive system of turnpikes, built about the same time as Kentucky's parkways.

Occasionally it is mooted that some of the Interstate highways, for example, those in the sparsely-populated states just east of the Rocky Mountains, should have been turnpikes. The reason is to have those cross-country trucking firms that use them pay for them. But there is no movement to do this, especially since trucking companies already pay a fuel tax in each state they drive through.

In 2005, Indiana's Governor Mitch Daniels sought to lease the Indiana Toll Road to a private company. His initiative, referred to as "Major Moves" was passed the Indiana Legislature in March 2006. Following a legal challenge that upheld the deal, the Indiana Finance Authority received the $3.8 billion payment in a series of wire transfers on June 29, 2006, from the Indiana Toll Road Concessions Corporation, the joint-venture between Cintra and Macquarie Infrastructure Group. At noon local time on June 29, the toll road lease deal was signed and went into effect.

=Interstate Highway System

= By 1956, most limited-access highways in the eastern United States were toll roads. In that year, the federal Interstate Highway program was established, funding non-toll roads with 90% federal dollars and 10% state match, giving little incentive for states to expand their turnpike systems. Funding rules initially restricted collections of tolls on newly funded roadways, bridges, and tunnels. In some situations, expansion or rebuilding of a toll facility using Interstate Highway Program funding resulted in the removal of existing tolls. This occurred in Virginia on Interstate 64 at the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel when a second parallel roadway to the regional 1958 bridge-tunnel was completed in 1976.

Since the completion of the initial portion of the interstate highway system, regulations were changed, and portions of toll facilities have been added to the system. Some states are again looking at toll financing for new roads and maintenance, to supplement limited federal funding. In some areas, new road projects have been completed with public-private partnerships funded by tolls, such as the Pocahontas Parkway near Richmond, Virginia, which features a costly high level bridge over the shipping channel of the James River and connects Interstate 95 with Interstate 295 (Virginia) to the south of the city.

= Toll avoidance: shunpiking

= A practice known as shunpiking evolved which entails finding another route for the specific purpose of avoiding payment of tolls.

In some situations where the tolls were increased or felt to be unreasonably high, informal shunpiking by individuals escalated into a form of boycott by regular users, with the goal of applying the financial stress of lost toll revenue to the authority determining the levy.

One such example of shunpiking as a form of boycott occurred at the James River Bridge in eastern Virginia. After years of lower than anticipated revenues on the narrow privately-funded structure built in 1928, the Commonwealth of Virginia finally purchased the facility in 1949. However, rather than announcing a long-expected decrease in tolls, the state officials increased the rates in 1955 without visibly improving the roadway, with the notable exception of building a new toll plaza.

The increased toll rates incensed the public and business users alike. In a well-publicized example of shunpiking, Joseph W. Luter Jr., head of Smithfield Packing Company, the producer of world-famous Smithfield Hams, ordered his truck drivers to take a different route and cross a smaller and cheaper bridge. Despite the boycott by Luter and others, tolls continued for 20 more years. They were finally removed from the old bridge in 1975 when construction began on a toll-free replacement structure.

Shunpiking has increased in Oklahoma since the construction of the center-of-turnpike rest areas. In theory, one could drive, for example, 40 miles on the Turner Turnpike, stop at the rest area, and turn around, avoiding several dollars in tolls. Although tolls are not that unreasonable, one driving Interstate 44 across the entire state can expect to pay $10-$13 in tolls, giving incentive to get around the fees.

Oceania

Australia

In Australia, a small majority of freeways have been tolled due to the expense of the freeway being built. Such roads can be found in the Australian cities of Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. Toll collection is by both electronic toll collections and traditional toll booth collection.

The Queensland Motorways network includes the Gateway Bridge, Gateway Extension, Logan Motorway and Port of Brisbane Motorway. The Port Of Brisbane Motorway is free.

In Melbourne, there are two such companies that operate tollways within the Melbourne Metropolitan Area. Transurban operates CityLink -- sections of Monash Freeway, Southern Link, Western Link and the upgraded sections of the Tullamarine Freeway -- and ConnectEast operates the sections of EastLink that are currently being constructed through the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne. All Melbourne tollways are electronically tolled and the E-tags used by these tollways are interoperable with the tags used on tollways elswhere in Australia.

In Sydney, many of the primary arterial roads (known as Metroads) contain at least one tolled section with a mixture of government and private ownership. The State Government owns the Sydney Harbour Bridge and Sydney Harbour Tunnel, while the M2 Motorway, M4 Motorway, M5 Motorway, Eastern Distributor and the Westlink M7 are privately operated by a number of companies. In addition to these, the Lane Cove Tunnel between the M2 and the Gore Hill Freeway is currently under construction.

As well as the Metroad tollways, the Cross City Tunnel - an east-west route underneath the Sydney CBD - was opened to traffic in 2005. This road has become somewhat controversial due to the relatively high toll charge and the closure of surrounding roads designed to funnel traffic through the tunnel.

All Sydney tollways accept E-tags; the Westlink M7, Cross City Tunnel and Lane Cove Tunnel (when completed) also support e-passes and are non-cash being solely electronically tolled, while the Eastern Distributor uses these in addition to toll booths. e-passes are based on cameras at tolling gantries recording the number plates of passing vehicles and matching these to the owner's e-pass account, however with the exception of the Cross City Tunnel and the Eastern Distributor the e-pass systems currently in use are not interoperable. The rest of Sydney's tollways use traditional toll booths in addition to E-tags.

New Zealand

Auckland Harbour Bridge was opened in 1959 and operated as a toll bridge until 1984. In the 1960's a group of university students attempted to disrupt the toll system by repeatedly crossing the bridge using motor-scooters (to which a very low toll applied), and paying their toll in £5 notes; the hope was that they would exhaust the supplies of change held at the toll booths. However, the toll authority got wind of their plans, and laid in a very large supply of small change (copper coinage), so that the students were soon weighed down with large amounts of small change.

The Lyttelton Road Tunnel, linking the city of Christchurch with the harbour at Lyttelton, was originally a Toll Tunnel built in 1962. The government of the day promised that as soon as the tunnel was paid for, the toll would be removed, and true to their word the toll was indeed removed in the mid-1970s once the tunnel had been paid off. The Tunnel Authority building and toll booths are still present and in place at the Heathcote end of the tunnel to this day.

South America

Brazil

In Brazil, toll roads are a recent institution, and were adopted mostly in non-federal highways. The state of São Paulo has the highest length of toll roads, which are exploited either by private companies which bought a concession from the state, or by a state owned company (see Highway system of São Paulo). In São Paulo there is also a statewide electronic collection system using a plastic transponder (e-tag) attached to the windscreen, named SemParar'. There is a growing trend towards tolling in all major highways of the country, but some resistance by the population is beginning to be felt, particularly due to some abuses which are being imposed, restricting the constitutional rights of coming and going (because the Brazilian highway system has very few non-tolled vicinal roads in parallel to highways) and making some trips an extremely expensive affair, as compared to average Brazilian earning power (in São Paulo, a 1,000 km round trip may cost upward of 30 dollars in some roads, higher than gas expenses).

Toll collection technology

The term turnpike refers to the pike or long stick that was held across the road, and only raised or turned aside when the traveler paid the toll.

Travelers have disliked toll roads not only for the cost of the toll, but also for the delays at toll booths.

An adaptation of military "identification friend or foe" or RFID technology, called electronic toll collection, is lessening the delay incurred in toll collection, and raises hope of eliminating it entirely in the future. The electronic system determines whether the cars passing are enrolled in the program, alerts enforcers for those that are not, and debits electronically the accounts of registered cars without their stopping, or even opening a window. Currently, DSRC is used as a wireless protocol. Other systems are based on GPRS/GSM and GPS technology. Such a system (for trucks only) in Germany launched successfully in January 2005 and by the end of its first year of operation will have charged tolls for around 22 billion driven kilometres. One of the advantages of GPS-based systems is their ability to adapt easily and quickly to changes in charge parameters (road classes, vehicle types, emission levels, times slots etc). Another advantage is the systems' ability to support other value-added services on the same technology platform. These services might include fleet and vehicle engine management systems, emergency response services, pay-as-you-drive insurance services and navigation capabilities.

The first major deployment of an RFID electronic toll collection system was on the Dallas North Tollway in 1989 by Amtech. The Amtech RFID technology used on the Dallas North Tollway was originally developed at Sandia Labs for use in tagging and tracking livestock.

Highway 407 in the province of Ontario, Canada has absolutely no toll booths and instead, the rear license plates of all vehicles are photographed when they enter and exit the highway. A bill is mailed monthly for usage of the 407. Lower charges are levied on frequent 407 users who carry electronic transponders in their vehicles. The approach has not been without controversy: In 2002 the 407 ETR settled a class action with a refund to users.

In Illinois, coins and I-Pass are used in every toll plaza instead of toll tickets. On the East Coast, similar systems include E-ZPass, Smart Tag, or SunPass. The systems use a small radio transponder mounted in or on a customer's vehicle to deduct toll fares from a pre-paid account as the vehicle passes through the toll barrier, reducing manpower at toll booths and increasing traffic flow and fuel efficiency by reducing the need for complete stops to pay tolls at these locations. Some jurisdictions will fine a user for speeding if they pass through two tollgates in such time that they must have been going over the legal limit to do so.

By designing a tollgate specifically for electronic collection, it is possible to carry out open-road tolling, where the customer does not need to slow at all when passing through the tollgate.

Another feature of many electronic toll collection systems is interagency interoperability, where the same transponder is accepted at many toll agencies. For instance, the E-ZPass tag is accepted at most toll facilities from Virginia to Maine, and the TxTAG system allows interoperability throughout the state of Texas.

Electronic toll collection (ETC) systems also have drawbacks. A computer glitch can result in delays several miles long. Some state turnpike commissions such as the Ohio Turnpike have debated implementing E-ZPass but have found that such a system would be ineffective because most of the people who use the turnpike are not commuters, are from states that have no ETS on turnpikes, or are from states that don't have a turnpike at all. Also, the toll plazas of some turnpikes are antiquated because they were originally meant for traffic that stops to pay the toll or get a ticket.

The technology does have its limits. For instance, the Highway 407 automatic number plate recognition technology has a reputation for the occasional misread plate, leading to bills being sent to motorists in remote parts of Ontario who have never been near the tollway.

References

David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito, Rival Road Builders: Private Toll Roads in Nevada, 1852-1880, Nevada Historical Quarterly 41 (Summer 1998), 71-91.

Daniel B. Klein, The Voluntary Provision of Public Goods? The Turnpike Companies of Early America, Economic Inquiry 28 (October 1990), 788-94.

Daniel B. Klein and Chi Yin, Use, Esteem, and Profit in Voluntary Provision: Toll Roads in California, 1850-1902, Economic Inquiry 34 (October 1996), 680-92.

External links

Turnpikes and Toll Roads in Nineteenth-Century America (EH.Net Economic History encyclopedia)

Road transport | Toll roads | Monopoly (economics)

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