Special to TBN: Peter Samuel comments on the push for a Maryland tax raise:

The Baltimore Examiner, January 5, reports:

"New tax revenues were the drum beat heard by Maryland Economic business advocates Thursday.

"Talking to 150 economic development officials, Maryland legislative leaders emphasized the need for new tax revenues, particularly to support transportation, and a key committee chairman suggested abolishing the corporate income tax in exchange for an expansion of the sales tax.

"Heads of some of the region’s largest business advocacy groups attending the meeting of the Maryland Economic Development Association in Annapolis agreed that new funding sources for road and transits was needed and the time was right to take a comprehensive look at state revenue sources."

Certainly there's a need for a comprehensive new look at funding transportation, but it should NOT focus on new or increased taxation. There's far too much tax levied on behalf of transportation already.

Transportation should be largely financed directly - by charges for use. That's the way we finance electricity, gas, telephones, food, housing, most of our goods and services. Sure, collecting tolls used to be a cumbersome business so the gas tax was a second best or proxy for a toll at places where it wasn't practical to install toll booths.

In the past two decades however technology has transformed toll collection. Properly applied in an open road environment tolls or direct charges for road use can be collected at highway speed via transponders even sticker tags on the windshields of cars, by cameras that read license plate numbers, by satellite location finding (GPS), possibly even via cell phones.

It is now technically feasible to collect tolls all over the highway network and to do it efficiently and without hassle for motorists. Only light gantry structures are needed over the roadway at select points.

Politically charging tolls for a presently free road is more difficult. People need to be shown they will get benefits greater than the costs they'll pay, and that there will be offsetting reductions in taxes. Only successful operating examples will be persuasive.

Major benefit of tolls can be the use of variable prices through the day to manage traffic so breakdown of flow into stop-and-go is avoided. This principle is being applied ever day at a number of special toll express lanes around the country - 91 Express Lanes in Orange County CA, I-15 San Diego, I-25 in Denver CO, and I-394 in Minneapolis.

Whereas the all too familiar stop-and-go drops peak hour speeds from a freeflow 65mph to an average 25mph and drops throughput from around 2,000 vehicles/lane/hour to 1,200 (just when maximum throughput is most needed) management of lanes to prevent the breakdown of flow can keep traffic flowing at 1,800 vehicles/lane/hour at 65mph right through the peak. It's a lot less hassle for drivers, making for quicker and much more reliable travel times, and results in improved safety - fewer rearenders.

Leaders of Utah Taxpayers Association are advocating a move to replace taxes with tolls to pay for roads. As a first step they are suggesting all new highway capacity be financed with tolls, varied to manage free flow. I think we should be advocating the same thing here.

Peter Samuel is editor TOLLROADSnews a specialized news service on toll roads issues and is a senior fellow in transportation studies at the Reason Foundation. He lives in Frederick maryland. He is contactable: petersamuel@mac.com