toll

Sri Lanka, the ancient tropical island nation of 20 million people off the southern tip of India got its first expressway at the weekend, a 60 mile, 95km Southern Expressway between Colombo,  the country's capital city and largest metro area in the middle west coast and Galle on the southwest corner of the island. Built by the national government it has cash toll plazas to raise money to defray some $495m borrowed from aid agencies to finance the $700m project.

The Georgia I-85 toll express lanes (GA85XL) now in their eighth week of operation continue to attract more patronage, but tolls while growing, are still low per mile.  We've worked on seven full weeks of data. Average weekday traffic in the variably priced lanes is now 11,210 vs 4,170 in the first week.

Georgia I-85 Express Lanes (GA/I-85XL) traffic is growing strongly in the third week of operations without loss of travel time advantages as compared to the second week. Tuesday toll-paying traffic Oct 18 is reported at 9200 vs 5773 Tues Oct 11 and 3513 Tues Oct 4.

The launch of managed toll lanes this week on I-85 northeast of Atlanta was so mismanaged that the state Governor intervened after three days and very publicly ordered changes.  For three nights TV, radio and the press in Atlanta reported the fiasco of noticeably worse congestion in the general purpose lanes alongside almost empty "Express" or toll managed lanes on the big highway northeast out of Atlanta, the first in a huge proposed network.

The doctrine that tolls should only be used for adding extra capacity on Interstates - espoused by the Democrat Party administration's transport sec Ray LaHood and the Republican leader of the US House transport committee Cong John Mica alike - is not supported by public opinion according to a survey published by HNTB.

Washington state is having a rough start-up to tolling the 520 bridge. They transitioned to a new customer service contractor Feb 14, and their marketing generated much more telephone call demand for new transponders than they could handle.

Four stalled toll projects in Virginia will share in $1,500m in state funding, according to Virginia secretary of transportation, Sean T Connaughton. This is close to 40% of the $3,861m announced for highway projects by the new Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell as his Transportation Agenda Jan 14. According to Connaughton the four projects to share the $1500m of state funding are:

Like many Democrats this election US Representative Christopher P Carney of the 10th District of Pennsylvania never talks about his party affiliation. And he says his top transportation priority is the Central Susquehanna Valley Thruway project, an upgrade to expressway standard of some 13 miles (21km) of US15 the main north-south highway of his district.

North Carolina DOT has a major I-95 planning & finance study under way that will provide much more solid estimates but our back-of-the-envelop calculations suggest the state should on opening be able to get in the range $300m to $350m/year in annual revenue from the planned tolling of I-95. As the economy grows, toll revenue on NC/I-95 would also grow.

In most of the english speaking world there are toll roads, or tollroads to use the composite word preferred here. The term 'toll' is used more generally as a synonym for cost - and usually it is used in the context of a major burdensome cost.