Missouri Considers Tolls Roads

As Missouri highway officials figure out what to do now that a fuel and sales tax provision to pay for highway improvements was soundly defeated, they are looking at the possibility of tolls.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the state Highways and Transportation Commission has started discussing toll roads as a possible solution to the lack of revenue, with Commissioner Jim Anderson saying the department should make toll roads its top legislative priority. Current state law says that no state road money can go toward toll roads, and voters defeated attempts to change the state constitution in 1970 and 1992.
However, state law does allow toll roads and bridges to be built by a private company or a nonprofit group called a “transportation corporation.”
The latter concept could be used to pay for a new I-70 bridge across the Mississippi River in St. Louis, say transportation officials. A 2002 study showed that tolls could pay for 40 percent to 80 percent of the cost of such a bridge. A new Mississippi River bridge was on the list of projects that would have been covered by Proposition B with the help of federal funding.