Trucking Companies Form Anti-Toll Group – Road Safety Could Be Compromised | Shapiro, Washburn & Sharp

Several trucking companies as well as trucking trade organizations are joining other consumer and business organizations to make a new anti-toll group. The purpose of the group is to keep existing interstates completely toll free, because adding tolls will push traffic onto local roads, which could compromise safety.

The Alliance for Toll-Free Interstates features major trucking industry members, such as UPS, Old Dominion, FedEx and the American Trucking Associations.

ATFI stated this week that it wants to show the public and the government the negative effects that implementing tolls on interstates has on the economy and business.

The group came together this year in response to several pilot programs in several states to allow tolls on current interstate highways, even though federal law does not allow tolling on existing interstates. ATFI also says that the tolling industry is lobbying Congress to change the law and to allow more tolls.

Also, the next highway bill in Congress is coming up soon, and politicians seek solutions to keep the Highway Trust Fund from going broke. ATFI is trying to show that tolls are an unreliable and inefficient way to generate funds for infrastructure.

Trucking giant Old Dominion stated this month that the company supports better funds for highways, tolls are not the way to do it. The company’s spokesman said that tolls are not efficient and increase costs of moving goods.

They also cut efficiency and safety by pushing interstate traffic onto local roads. Moving heavy truck traffic onto local roads is unsafe for truckers, commuters and the communities which they are driving through. Heavy truck traffic should be left to the interstate highways, which were built to move high levels of traffic in as safe a manner as possible.