Surface Transportation News: The strong performance of express toll lanes

In this issue:

• Express toll lanes’ strong performance
• Bicycles, cars, and economic productivity
• U.S. traffic congestion at record high levels
• Reforming environmental litigation
• Feds ease off driverless truck regulation
• Transit shifts to light rail and bus rapid transit
• News Notes
• Quotable Quote

Express Toll Lanes’ Strong Performance

In news that I missed when it came out earlier this year, Fitch Ratings has increased its investment-grade ratings on toll-financed express toll lanes (ETLs). In its June 24, 2025 “Peer Review of Managed Lanes” report, Fitch explains why it increased the ratings on seven of the 13 express toll lane projects that it has been tracking since they were first implemented (or in the case of two that are not yet in operation, since they had progressed far enough for data on their corridor and planned capacity being available).

The ETLs whose ratings Fitch increased are as follows:

• I-77 Mobility Partners (NC): from BBB to BBB+
• LBJ Infrastructure Group: LLC (TX): from BBB to BBB+
• 95 Express Lanes LLC (VA): from BBB to BBB+
• Riverside County Transportation Commission (SR-91): from BBB+ to A
• Plenary Roads Denver LLC (CO): from BBB- to BBB
• NTE Mobility Partners (TX): from BBB to BBB+
• Colorado HPTE (C-470): from BBB to BBB+

Two high-rated express toll lanes projects that were not upgraded this year were already at the top of the list:

• Orange County Transportation Authority (SR-91): AA-
• Texas DOT (I-35E): A-

The world’s first express toll lanes, SR-91 Express Lanes in Orange County, opened to traffic in December 1995, so their 30th anniversary is coming up. (I was present at both the ground-breaking and the ribbon-cutting, and I still have my hard hat.) At that time, popular opinion and media coverage were both skeptical: either so few people would pay to avoid congestion that the project would fail, or so many would crowd in, resulting in congestion. The same objections were raised when the Florida Department of Transportation opened its first ETLs (on I-95 in Miami in 2008). Express toll lanes have come a long way since then.

The Fitch report provides a lot of interesting details on these projects. Of the 13 that are in operation, six are managed by various government entities, and the other seven were developed and are operated under long-term public-private partnerships (P3s). Appendix D provides details under 10 headings for all 13. One of those details is the pricing policy. Those financed and operated as P3s are listed as using “revenue maximization” as their pricing policy, which the not-yet operational Hampton Roads project (a public-sector project) also plans to use. All the other government-run projects are listed as using “Blend of throughput and revenue maximization.”

With more than 60 ETL projects in operation, the largest fraction of them are conversions of HOV lanes, sometimes (as in Miami) with the addition of a second lane each way. These conversion projects are not financed by toll revenues, and since most have low capital costs compared to toll-financed ETLs that involve building new lanes, they can often cover their operating and maintenance costs from their toll revenue.

The investment-grade ratings of the revenue-financed express toll lanes reflect the public-private partnership companies’ careful selection of very congested corridors in large metro areas. The few (so far) government-sponsored toll-financed express toll lanes appear to have followed the P3 companies’ lead in selecting similar corridors for their projects.

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Bicycles, Cars, and Economic Productivity

The Economist remains my favorite source for worldwide news and analysis. But sometimes, its reporters let their opinions get in the way of facts. A case in point is a two-page article, “Four Wheels Good, Two Wheels Better” in the Oct. 11 edition. The author glibly asserts that electric bikes are transforming travel in European cities (and Montreal) and portrays this as very positive for cities and their residents.

This portrayal misses two very significant points. One key is access to jobs, and the other is how mobility relates to the economic productivity of metro areas. Since the audience for this newsletter is overwhelmingly the United States, my focus here is on access to jobs in U.S. metro areas.

For nearly a decade, the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies (CTS) has published annual “Access to Destinations” reports, using data from the 50 largest U.S. metro areas. Their individual tables focus on the extent to which a given mode (auto, bike, transit) enables users to reach a fraction of available jobs within a given time period. I have not been able to find a CTS table that directly compares access to jobs by auto, bicycle, and transit. My Reason Foundation colleague Marc Scribner crunched the numbers from CTS’s 2023 data to enable direct comparisons between modes.

For all 50 metro areas, the average results for jobs reachable within 30 minutes are: cars 42.2%, bikes 2.1%, and transit 0.9%. In 50 minutes, cars reach 84% of jobs, while bikes reach 5.4% and transit 4.5%. The same general pattern prevails in the large majority of the 50 metro areas. For example, Kansas City residents can reach 60% of jobs by car in 30 minutes, 1.7% of jobs via bike, and 0.5% via transit. In Minneapolis, the comparable numbers for 30 minutes are 49% via car in 30 minutes, 2% by bike, and 0.8% by transit. And within 50 minutes in Minneapolis, it’s 87% of jobs by car, 5.2% by bike, and 3.9% by transit. The good news for cyclists is that in the large majority of metro areas, biking beats transit for access to jobs. However, bikes are in a distant second place after cars.

One of the most important functions of a large metro area is to provide a huge array of job opportunities for people with a very wide array of skills and experience. For this to work well, a transportation system needs to enable this for a large majority of its population. That is not possible with concepts like the “15-minute city” beloved by some urban planners.

Among those who have educated me on the relationship between transportation and urban area productivity is former World Bank urban planner, Alain Bertaud (now at NYU’s Marron Institute). In his book Order Without Design: How Markets Shape Cities (MIT Press, 2018), Bertaud explains the relationship between an urban area’s economic productivity and its transportation system.

The underlying idea is that a large urban area makes possible a far greater number of high-value connections between potential employers and potential employees. Bertaud and a number of other economists have pointed out and quantified the relationship between access to jobs (as in the CTS studies) and the urban area’s economic productivity. As Bertaud puts it, “The effective size of the labor market depends on travel time and the spatial distribution of jobs.” The ability to reach a large number of jobs in as short a time as possible is the key factor in the increased economic productivity of an urban area.

One of the first studies to quantify this effect was by Remy Prud’homme and Chang-Woon Lee (Urban Studies, Oct. 1999). They found that, for a sample of 22 French metro areas, a 10% increase in how far one can travel in 25 minutes increased the productivity of a metro area by 1.3%. Others who have done similar studies include Robert Cervero, David Hartgen, Alan Pisarski, and Steven Polzin. In a large 2012 policy study of potential transportation improvements in the metro areas of southeast Florida, I proposed and analyzed a three-county express toll lanes network. I drew on the above research to estimate the economic productivity gains from my estimated reductions in vehicle hours of travel. Based on computer modeling done for me by the regional planning agency, I estimated the projected increase in gross regional product was 0.5%, amounting to $3.5 billion per year.

These economic benefits will not be generated by increasing the commute share of bicycles and transit, at least in the large majority of U.S. urban areas. European governments can dream on about carless cities, but at the expense of continued economic stagnation.

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U.S. Traffic Congestion at Record High Levels

The Texas A&M Transportation Institute (TTI) has released its 2025 Urban Mobility Report, which analyzes traffic congestion nationwide. The study includes data from 494 urban areas. The headline message is that urban roadway travel has more than recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic years and, as of 2024, traffic congestion reached the highest levels ever recorded.

But travel has changed significantly since the pandemic. Hybrid (home/workplace) working and the ongoing increase in online purchases with commercial delivery have changed when and where travel occurs—but have not led to a reduction in congestion. And due to the latter, truck congestion is 19% worse than in 2019, compared with total vehicle congestion being up only 10%.

Here are a few summary statistics to give you an overview of the five-year change between 2019 and 2024.

Average delay per auto commuter	+17%
Travel time index	+3 points (from 1.23 to 1.26)
Overall travel delay (billions of hours)	+10%
Truck congestion cost	+43%
Overall congestion cost	+16%

The TTI report also provides graphs illustrating the reduced morning peak and a significantly increased evening peak in vehicle travel, along with an increasing weekend peak in the mid-afternoon.

The report’s second section, beginning on page 45, consists of numerous tables showing congestion specifics for very large, large, medium, and small urban areas. These tables generally compare data from 2024 with 2023. Here are a few examples from the top five urban areas in each group.

Person Hours of Delay Per Commuter
	2024	2023
Very Large (15 areas)
Los Angeles	137	131
San Francisco	134	132
New York	99	97
Miami	93	92
Washington, DC	90	89
Large (32 areas)
Riverside (CA)	95	88
San Jose	94	93
Nashville	83	82
Denver	76	72
Minneapolis	73	68
Medium (33 areas)
Honolulu	81	79
Bridgeport	77	73
Baton Rouge	68	67
Charleston	68	66
New Orleans	68	59

Annual Total Metro Area Congestion Cost ($B)
	2024	2023
Very Large (15)
Los Angeles	$29.5	$27.6
San Francisco	$7.1	$6.8
New York	$24.2	$22.9
Chicago	$11.8	$10.0
Washington	$6.2	$5.9
Large (32)
Riverside	$3.7	$3.3
San Jose	$3.1	$3.0
Nashville	$1.8	$1.7
Portland	$2.4	$2.2
Denver	$3.5	$3.2
Medium (33)
Honolulu	$1.2	$1.1
Baton Rouge	$0.9	$0.8
Bridgeport	$1.4	$1.2
New Orleans	$1.6	$1.6
Charleston	$0.8	$0.7

Note that for the metro areas’ congestion cost data, the metro areas are listed in order of their per-motorist congestion cost, which accounts for lower aggregated numbers in smaller metro areas, such as San Francisco and Baton Rouge.

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Reforming Environmental Litigation, Continued

In my 2024 Reason Foundation policy paper, “Reforming Environmental Litigation,” my research found that the kind of lengthy, time-consuming, and project-cost-increasing litigation was not a part of the original National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) but was invented by appeals courts and then became part of environmental regulation. My research found that this kind of after-the-environmental-review-studies litigation is unusual among peer countries in Europe and Australia/New Zealand.

The study also documented Stanford University research on the extent and outcome of such litigation. While litigation actually stopped relatively few infrastructure projects directly, it more often led to significantly increasing their cost, which led to some being terminated—not by the litigation but by the increased cost making the project no longer viable to construct. Finally, the study summarized an array of litigation reforms suggested by think tanks and academic researchers.

I’m pleased to see that interest in reforming such litigation is picking up support. Some of this is coming from supporters of green energy projects, such as wind, solar, and high-voltage transmission lines. But my assessment of potential political support suggested that the most likely path to success would be a bipartisan coalition of groups supporting both transportation and energy/environmental infrastructure.

That’s an overly long introduction to a recent proposal from the Breakthrough Institute called “Reboot NEPA,” written by Marc Levitt, Breakthrough’s Director of Environmental Regulatory Reform.

Levitt begins by explaining what he means by a “reboot” of the NEPA legislation, signed by President Nixon 55 years ago. “Rebooting NEPA means returning the law to its originally intended purpose as a tool for environmentally informed infrastructure planning and for public engagement.” NEPA’s drafters “did not set out to create a litigation machine,” he writes, and points to NEPA’s intellectual architect, Lynton Caldwell, as emphasizing planning and public exposure as NEPA’s core purpose.

Levitt goes on to explain that the Supreme Court’s Seven County decision narrowed the scope of environmental reviews, and another decision eliminated the Council on Environmental Quality’s authority to issue regulations. So it makes sense to figure out a rethinking of how environmental reviews should  be carried out going forward, and fixing the litigation problem should be a major part of this reboot.

The paper then sets forth several specific reform proposals, as follows.

• Codify (early) meaningful public input to improve projects and mitigate impacts. Specifically, he proposes that agencies open a 60-day public comment period when they announce a planned environmental study.
• Limit project-stopping relief to cases of substantial undisclosed adverse environmental effects.
• Use AI and modern software to evaluate project eligibility for categorial exclusions, check completeness of applications, and integrate public comments into the environmental study.
• Mandate and fund an interagency NEPA platform and cross-agency data-sharing.
• Establish a centralized NEPA court or procedural review body.
• Codify Seven Counties limits on environmental review scope.
• Require agency follow-up on mitigation measures (because EPA has no such mechanism).
• Modernize EPA’s Clean Air Act Section 309 review role.
• Eliminate ineffectual page and time limits.

Some of these go into details that I am not competent to assess. But the overall thrust of this approach strikes me as reasonable and realistic. It would preserve useful public input at the start of the review process, rather than attacking environmental reviews after they have been completed. And a designated review court or body could prevent venue-shopping by project opponents.

Those are my initial reactions, as an engineer/policy analyst with no legal training. I hope these proposals lead to significant discussion and generate needed NEPA reform by Congress.

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Federal Regulators Clear Driverless Truck Barrier, For Now
By Marc Scribner

Fully automated semi-trucks without a driver onboard were put into commercial service for the first time earlier this year. Aurora Innovation began driverless operations on a route between Dallas and Houston, with plans to quickly expand in the Sun Belt and beyond. However, the company’s expansion plans were threatened by an obscure federal regulation mandating the use of roadway warning devices. Aurora requested and then was denied a waiver from the rule, which spawned a legal challenge from the company. In a turn of events, regulators decided to grant Aurora its waiver last month, clearing the path for more driverless truck deployments. But this remedy is temporary and highlights the need for durable regulatory reform to support automated vehicle deployments.

The challenge begins with a decades-old federal regulation on safety procedures when commercial motor vehicles are stopped on or along roadways (49 C.F.R. § 392.22). The rule requires that within 10 minutes of stopping, warning triangles or flares must be placed in three locations around the stopped vehicle to alert approaching motorists of the potential hazard. This is no easy undertaking when there is no driver in the truck cab to place these devices.

In Jan. 2023, Aurora and Waymo petitioned the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) for a waiver from the warning device rule. Granting a waiver is conditioned on a finding of safety equivalence, so the companies proposed adding light beacons that would be mounted on the outside of the truck cabs and presented research showing the warning beacons would be more effective at alerting drivers than conventional warning triangles or flares.

This did not prove persuasive with FMCSA, which in Dec. 2024 denied Aurora and Waymo’s waiver request. The agency argued the evidence provided by the companies was insufficient to demonstrate safety equivalence. But just weeks later in Jan. 2025, FMCSA announced a study on warning devices, conceding that it had no empirical evidence to support the existing rule. So, companies seeking relief from the warning device requirement faced the impossible task of demonstrating safety equivalence to a nonexistent standard.

This regulatory catch-22 was not lost on Aurora, which quickly filed suit challenging the denial of its waiver. The good news is that FMCSA ultimately relented in Oct. 2025, granting Aurora its waiver. The terms and conditions of the waiver give Aurora a three-month reprieve from the warning device rule until Jan. 9, 2026. It also allows other motor carriers operating autonomous trucks to gain relief from the rule if those carriers first notify FMCSA and certify that they will comply with the terms of the waiver.

During that period, motor carriers operating under the waiver must inform the agency of any crashes involving trucks equipped with warning beacons within five days. Carriers must also file a performance report with FMCSA within 30 days of the end of the waiver’s term (or within 30 days of prematurely ceasing operations under the waiver). If FMCSA is satisfied that the terms have been met after the three-month waiver period, it will reissue the waiver.

While FMCSA’s about-face on the warning device rule is welcome, it is still a temporary solution. Given that it has already admitted that there is no safety evidence to support the underlying rule, the agency should move quickly to establish a permanent compliance pathway for driverless trucks. Reason Foundation has developed draft legislation that would order FMCSA to codify a permanent exemption for driverless trucks equipped with warning beacons.

But the legacy requirement on warning device placement is only one regulatory barrier facing autonomous trucks. Numerous other rules are written in a manner that presumes a human driver is seated in the cab operating the vehicle and should be updated. To that end, Rep. Vince Fong (R-CA) introduced the AMERICA DRIVES Act (H.R. 4661) in July.

In addition to ordering FMCSA to interpret warning beacons as compliant with the warning device rule, Rep. Fong’s bill would order the agency to clarify human-centric requirements such as those that apply to hours of service, drug testing, and commercial driver’s license do not apply to autonomous trucks. It also importantly forbids the secretary of transportation from promulgating any regulation in the future that would discriminate against or unduly burden motor carriers operating autonomous commercial motor vehicles relative to their conventional counterparts and thereby establishing a technology-neutral mandate.

Rep. Fong’s AMERICA DRIVES Act has yet to be considered by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. Including it in the forthcoming surface transportation reauthorization bill due next year would go a long way in modernizing outdated federal regulations for autonomous vehicles.

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Transit Evolves from HRT to LRT to BRT
by Baruch Feigenbaum

When light rail (LRT) burst onto the transportation scene 45 years ago, it was envisioned as a way of bringing the benefits of heavy rail (HRT) at a much lower price. And that first light rail line in San Diego succeeded. However, as transit agencies soon found out, constructing light rail, was on average, about 75% of the costs of constructing heavy rail. And, in general, LRT was slower and could carry significantly fewer people. Over the last 10 years, a growing number of transit agencies began choosing bus rapid transit (BRT) instead. A recent Eno Transportation Weekly article detailed the strength of this trend.

How prolific is the change? Examining the number of projects receiving federal funding provides a clue. Several federal programs can fund LRT but the Capital Investment Grants (CIG) program is the most extensive. In 2007, 28 projects were funded by the CIG program. Fifteen were light rail projects and only one was BRT. In 2017, when 31 projects were funded, 10 were light rail, six were BRT, and five were streetcar projects. In 2024, among the 50 projects seeking CIG funding, 30, or the majority, are BRT projects. It should be noted that in 2007 and 2017 Republicans controlled the White House. In the past, Democrats have been more likely to support rail projects than Republicans. The fact that the Biden administration was such a big supporter of bus rapid transit shows how times have changed.

Nationwide BRT ridership has also rebounded from COVID-19 more robustly than LRT ridership. According to the most recent numbers from 2023, BRT ridership is at 60 million, less than 5% from its 2015 high-water mark of 63 million. LRT’s 300 million riders may sound more impressive, but its 2017 ridership peak was 500 million. Streetcar’s ridership was almost 60 million in 2017 and is now below 40 million. More new BRT systems have been added than new rail systems in the last five years, but not in proportion to the ridership numbers.

What has led to the change in project selection? The biggest factor is cost. BRT is doing to LRT what LRT did to HRT. The difference is BRT is significantly less expensive than LRT. A BRT-heavy line with its exclusive guideway costs $103 million per mile in Canada, while the Maryland Purple Rail LRT, which shares part of its running way with automobiles, costs $562 million per mile. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transportation Authority (MARTA) reduced its costs by more than 50% by swapping out an LRT line for a BRT line. 

Another factor is the flexibility. All BRT systems have running ways that give buses priority, enhanced stations, larger vehicles, enhanced use of technology, including off-board fare collection, intelligent transportation systems such as transit signal priority, and more frequent service. Many also have level boarding platforms and electronic signage. However, there are three types of BRT service, heavy, lite, and freeway. BRT Heavy operates in a dedicated lane and is best for corridors with 20 or more buses per hour. Constructing a dedicated lane has costs, which transit agencies must fund. But if there is a sufficient number of buses, the cost is justified. BRT Lite operates in mixed traffic, which means automobile drivers pay the cost for the lane. One of the things that separates BRT Lite from regular bus service is the use of transit signal priority (TSP) and queue jumps. These technologies provide buses with an early green cycle or an extended green cycle and use of a lane (often a right-turn lane) at intersections to bypass traffic. BRT Freeway operates on limited-access highways. Some lines include stops in the median, making it quicker and easier for buses to pick up passengers than if they had to exit and reenter the highway.

Contrast this with LRT. Traditional LRT, which operates in a dedicated guideway (track and overhead wires), is more expensive than a lane of pavement. Streetcars, which operate in mixed traffic, are cheaper but slower, and they cannot change lanes. As a result, streetcars often get stuck behind slow-moving vehicles. The average Streetcar speed is 4-5 mph, about the same as a fast walk. BRT Lite averages 20 mph. LRT and BRT are both heavy, averaging about 25-30 mph, while BRT Freeway averages 55 mph.

Congress also played a role. In 2005’s Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient, Transportation Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), Congress added Small Starts to the Capital Improvement Grants, which encouraged transit agencies to pursue smaller, less-expensive projects. In 2015, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act eliminated the requirement that CIG-grant recipients provide frequent service on the weekends. Because project planning, environmental review, and construction in transportation projects often takes 5-10 years, legislation may not lead to policy changes for 10-20 years. Hence, the recent uptick in BRT activity. 

However, some places are sticking with rail. Los Angeles Metro is adding nine miles and four stations to the A Line, part of an ambitious slate of 28 infrastructure projects the region is building for the 2028 Olympics. Kansas City is doubling the length of its streetcar system. Yet, most places have made the decision that the lower costs and flexibility of bus rapid transit make it a better choice than rail.

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News Notes

Louisiana Governor Suspends P3 Bridge’s Tolls
On Oct. 3, Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana DOTD ordered a stop to toll collection on the P3-developed Belle Chasse Bridge in Plaquemines Parish. The replacement bridge was developed under a long-term design-build-finance-operate-maintain P3 concession with a consortium led by Plenary. Toll revenue is the primary source of funds to pay the project’s bondholders and (they hope) a return on the equity investors’ capital. The cash toll is $2.26, and with a GeauxPass transponder it’s only 25 cents. But late fees for toll payments have aroused residents to protest to public officials. DOTD has begun negotiations with Plenary over technical issues and what residents regard as overly aggressive collection efforts on overdue bills.

FDOT Announces Project to Add 17 Miles of Express Lanes to I-4
While the Orlando portion of I-4 has 20.8 miles of express toll lanes, which are relieving considerable congestion there, FDOT announced on Oct. 21 that it will now add 17 miles of ETLs to I-4 in Hillsborough County, in the Tampa region of the state. Most of the ETLs in Orlando are two lanes each way, but funding constraints have led to this initial project adding one lane each way for the 17 miles to be added in Hillsborough County. FDOT told Construction Dive that this project has been in FDOT plans for 15 years. This initial project can fit within I-4’s existing right-of-way.

Missing Link on Capital Beltway Managed Lanes Postponed
The National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board, on Oct. 16, voted not to add the I-495 Southside Express Lanes project to the region’s long-term strategic plan. The final vote on this decision will take place on Dec. 7 by the Metropolitan Council of Governments. The reason for holding off is that Maryland officials have not approved this express toll lane’s terminating point to be across the Woodrow Wilson Bridge in Maryland. If the lanes stop short on the Virginia side of the bridge, they will accommodate far less traffic, and hence generate a lot less toll revenue, which reduces the ability to finance this missing link based on projected toll revenue, as all the rest of that network has been financed.

Toll Road to Orlando Sanford Airport Approved
The Central Florida Expressway Authority last month decided to proceed with a proposed project to add a $200 million, two-mile toll road between SR 417 and the Orlando Sanford Airport. The rationale for the project is to reduce congestion on East Lake Mary Blvd. by nearly 50%. The agency is also planning a $1.59 billion toll road designated as SR 534 to alleviate severe congestion on Narcoossee Road. Construction is planned to begin in 2027.

Waymo Reports Far Fewer Serious Accidents Than Other Vehicles
In September, autonomous vehicle developer Waymo released a report on the 45 most serious crashes in which its vehicles were involved in recent months. Its fleet of AVs has logged 96 million miles of travel as of June 2025. Waymo estimates that typical human drivers would have gotten into airbag-triggering crashes 159 times in that amount of travel. But the Waymo vehicles had only 34 airbag crashes—79% less. Similarly, for injury-causing crashes, Waymo data showed that its vehicles has such crashes 80% less often. More details are in a column by Kai Williams.

Potential North Carolina Toll Lanes on I-40 Near Asheville
The MPO of French Broad River, NC is considering a feasibility study of adding 16 miles of toll lanes on I-40 from Exit 44 to Exit 27. Interest in the concept has been sparked by the benefits of such lanes in Charlotte and Raleigh.

Pennsylvania DOT Reports Unsolicited P3 Proposals
On Oct. 1, PennDOT announced that it would welcome unsolicited proposals for P3 transportation projects, Infralogic reported. Proposals were due by Oct. 31, not enough time to prepare something large and costly, so the responses may focus more on services than on infrastructure. Proposals will be reviewed by the seven-member Public Private Transportation Partnership Board.

Louisiana DOTD Moving Forward on St. Bernard Corridor
According to an Oct. 1 news release, the Port of New Orleans and DOTD have signed an agreement to work together on planning the St. Bernard Transportation Corridor, a new roadway to connect the planned Louisiana International Terminal to the Interstate highway system. The corridor is intended for freight traffic, reducing the burden on local roads. It is also intended as a hurricane evacuation route for St. Bernard Parish and its surroundings. No cost estimates are available, but tolls have been mentioned in some discussions of the project.

Arkansas DOT Launches I-49 Extension Project
In September, ARDOT held a groundbreaking for a new bridge across the Arkansas River near Barling, AR. It is the first step in a project that will add 14 miles of four-laned I-49, at an estimated cost of $1.3 billion. The project will build I-49 between Barling and Alma. The long-term vision of Arkansas and several other states is an I-49 that extends from the Gulf Coast to the Canadian border, but many stretches remain unbuilt.

Alabama Approves Plan for $3.5 Billion Mobile River Bridge
The Alabama Toll Road, Bridge, and Tunnel Authority has approved a plan for this new toll-assisted bridge. Personal vehicle tolls will be capped at $2.50, but heavy trucks will pay $15-18. The existing causeway, two tunnels, and another small bridge will remain non-tolled. With the project no longer viable as a long-term P3, as originally planned, the bridge will be built by a design-build contractor, Kiewit. Moreover, the plan calls for removing the tolls once the bonds have been paid off—a very 20th-century model.

Pennsylvania Plans Statewide Truck Parking Expansion
On Oct. 6, PennDOT announced that it plans to add 1,200 truck parking spaces at 133 locations statewide by the end of 2026. PennDOT says the new facilities will be added near Interstate on-ramps, at weigh stations, and various other locations along highway rights of way. PennDOT Secretary Mike Carroll noted that he holds a commercial driver’s license himself and fully appreciates the need for more truck parking along major highways.

Highway Trust Fund’s Record Users-Pay Deficit
Jeff Davis reported in Eno Transportation Weekly that the federal Highway Trust Fund ran an all-time high deficit of $30.6 billion in FY 2025. That’s an increase from the previous year’s deficit of $26.7 billion. The user tax revenues increased by only $1.2 billion, but total highway and transit spending increased by $5.2 billion, “pushed upward by the massive funding increase provided by the IIJA infrastructure law,” all of which is borrowed money.  

Missouri DOT Under Way on Statewide I-70 Reconstruction and Widening
Because Missouri legislators have never approved tolling, rebuilding aged I-70 (one of the earliest-built Interstates) cannot use toll financing, as Indiana now plans to do. Instead, it is using $2.8 billion in state general funds in a decade-long effort to rebuild and widen (to three lanes each way) all 200 miles of I-70. More than a decade ago, Missouri was part of a four-state Corridors of the Future project whose consensus result was to rebuild the four-state corridor with heavy-duty truck toll lanes. The current project will spend $350 million to rebuild the portion between Blue Springs and Odessa. It is the third of eight such projects, all being paid for by general taxpayers rather than Interstate users.

Oklahoma Turnpike Widening
The state’s busiest highway, the 31-mile John Kilpatrick Turnpike, will be widened to three lanes each way and will add interchanges. The Oklahoma Turnpike Authority will spend $375 million of its toll revenue for the project, the agency announced in early October.

New Zealand Considering P3 Toll Roads
Back in June, the New Zealand Transport Ministry hired Citi to examine the potential of P3 toll roads, as the ministry considers P3 concessions for several potential new toll roads. Infralogic (Sept. 23) reported that Australian toll road company Transurban has partnered with Canadian pension fund La Caisse and NZ pension fund New Zealand Super in anticipation of potential toll road P3 concessions. Transport Minister Chris Bishop told Infralogic that the agency wants to learn of potential interest in such concessions for any or all of the three proposed toll roads.

Czech Republic Plans Two New Highway P3 Projects
Two planned motorway projects are likely to be procured as long-term P3s, according to Infralogic (Sept. 24). One is the Prague to Voracice portion of the D3 motorway; the other is the Bzenec-Breclav section of the D55 motorway. The projects will be procured as 25-30-year design-build-finance-operate-maintain (DBFOM) concessions financed based on availability payments. Both are planned to be operational by 2033.

Italian Court Vetoes Sicily Bridge Project
Politico reported that Italy’s Court of Auditors rejected the government’s plan to build a €13.5 billion suspension bridge across the Strait of Messina between Italy and Sicily. The 3.7 km suspension bridge would be the world’s longest, if built. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni deemed the ruling “an act of overreach.”

Bridge Across Long Island Sound Proposed
Newsweek reported that a proposed 14-mile bridge between Long Island (NY) and southern Connecticut is currently being debated. Connecticut developer Steve Shapiro has revived an idea dating back to New York’s powerful Robert Moses in the 1950s. The bridge cost has been estimated at $50 billion, but Shapiro estimates that the toll revenue (at $39 per crossing) would pay for the construction in 48 years.

Tunnel Boring Machine Completes Virginia Tunneling
ENR reported (Oct. 13) that the tunnel boring machine for the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel expansion project in Virginia has completed its second (final) bore for the $3.9 billion project. When completed, the project will accommodate two GP lanes and two express toll lanes in each direction.

MassDOT to Re-Procure Service Plaza P3 contract
Infralogic reported (Oct. 16) that Massachusetts DOT will carry out a new procurement competition for a company to operate and manage the 18 service plazas on the Massachusetts Turnpike. Negotiations with Applegreen, which won the initial selection, led the company to withdraw.

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Quotable Quote

“We believe an important step . . . is to reboot NEPA [National Environmental Policy Act]. The regulation has mutated far beyond what its drafters intended, becoming a vehicle for costly and overwhelmingly ineffective litigation. Comprehensive reform would place clearer bounds on the original function of NEPA—informed planning and public engagement—preventing the administrative bloat that has characterized the law since its passage. Rebooting NEPA would prevent the administrative ping-ponging that has become standard over the last two decades, as Democrats and Republican administrations each weaponize the statute for their own aims. And it will avoid the unintended consequences of some well-meaning proposals, such as environmental review page limits that merely shuffle content to report appendices, or the neutering of a regulation under a Republican president that could easily be revived on Day One of a Democratic successor.”
—Alex Trebath, Marc Levitt, and Elizabeth McCarthy, “Keeping the Window Open,” The Ecomodernist, Oct. 27, 2025 

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The post Surface Transportation News: The strong performance of express toll lanes appeared first on Reason Foundation.

Source: https://reason.org/transportation-news/express-toll-lanes-strong-performance/