Bill to enable toll road in Little Cottonwood Canyon advances — may lead to expanded tolls that replace state gasoline tax

A proposal designed to bring a toll road to Little Cottonwood Canyon sped past its first obstacle Wednesday — with hints that toll roads may spread statewide and become a major funding replacement for current gasoline taxes.

The Senate Transportation Committee voted 7-0 to endorse SB71 to make it easier for the state to use electronic tolling. Among the provisions: allowing new systems that avoid toll booths by using TV cameras to read license plates of passing cars, deduct tolls from online accounts or send bills to the vehicle’s owner.

Senate President Wayne Niederhauser, R-Sandy, whose district includes Little Cottonwood Canyon, said he is sponsoring the bill in large part to more easily allow a toll road there to reduce congestion.

“On a weekend or on a snow day at Alta or Snowbird … you cannot find a parking place if you get up in the canyon at 10 a.m.,” he said. “It’s unbelievable congestion.”

When the canyon closes temporarily for avalanche control, he said traffic backs up for miles “and I can’t get out of my subdivision.” He said a toll would encourage carpooling or the use of mass transit to help solve problems.

But Niederhauser also sees expansion of toll roads statewide as a way to help ensure that motorists pay more of the cost of the highways they use. He said the general fund now subsidizes highways by $600 million annually, and he would like to see that money go instead to schools.

“I believe in five to 10 years that the gas tax will be obsolete,” or at least irrelevant as more electric and alternative fuel vehicles are purchased that entirely escape that tax. He said the gas tax now already pays only about half the cost of highways.

“How are we going to fund these roads?” he asked. “Tolling has to be one of those options. I don’t like it. I know the public doesn’t like it,” but he said few options remain as the gas tax collects less and less revenue.

Committee members said they also see tolling as a major part of the future — and said similar technology may even someday track the number of miles that vehicles travel as the basis of a new tax to that would replace the gasoline tax.

“Eventually I can see us phasing out gas tax and going strictly toll,” said Sen. Kevin Van Tassell, R-Vernal.

Niederhauser added, “This is just the beginning about how we are going to fund cars in the future. We have electric cars coming. We might have hydrogen cars coming. How are they going to participate” in highway funding?

Using tolls to reduce canyon congestion is more feasible than building trains up the canyons, as some have proposed, Niederhauser said.

“That’s billions of dollars,” he said of a canyon rail system. “If we’re to prioritize transit on where it is needed the most, canyon transportation is going to be down the list a ways.”

Niederhauser noted that existing law already allows toll roads in Utah. “This is a modernization bill to deal with modern technologies and how we will toll in the future.”

from The Salt Lake Tribune http://ift.tt/2DB6fmB