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A toll bridge is a bridge where a monetary charge (or '' toll'') is required to pass over. Generally the private or public owner, builder and maintainer of the bridge uses the toll to recoup their investment, in much the same way as a toll road.


History

The practice of collecting tolls on bridges harks back to the days of
ferry A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water taxi ...
crossings where people paid a fee to be ferried across stretches of water. As boats became impractical to carry large loads, ferry operators looked for new sources of revenue. Having built a bridge, they hoped to recoup their investment by charging tolls for people, animals, vehicles, and goods to cross it. The original
London Bridge Several bridges named London Bridge have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It r ...
across the river Thames opened as a toll bridge, but an accumulation of funds by the charitable trust that operated the bridge ( Bridge House Estates) saw that the charges were dropped. Using interest on its capital assets, the trust now owns and runs all seven central London bridges at no cost to taxpayers or users. In the United States, private ownership of toll bridges peaked in the mid-19th century, and by the turn of the 20th century most toll bridges were taken over by state highway departments. In some instances, a quasi-governmental authority was formed, and toll revenue bonds were issued to raise funds for construction or operation (or both) of the facility. Peters and Kramer observed that "little research has been done to quantify the impact of toll collection on society as a whole" and therefore they published a comprehensive analysis of the Total Societal Cost (TSC) associated with toll collection as a means of taxation. TSC is the sum of administrative, compliance, fuel and pollution costs. In 2000 they estimated it to be $56,914,732, or 37.3% of revenue collected. They also found that a user of a toll road is subject to a form of triple taxation, and that in the final analysis toll collection is a very inefficient means of funding the development of highway infrastructure. Nakamura and Kockelman (2002) show that tolls are by nature regressive, shifting the burden of taxation disproportionately to the poor and middle classes. Electronic toll collection, branded under names such as EZ-Pass, SunPass, IPass, FasTrak, Treo, GoodToGo, and 407ETR, became increasingly prevalent to metropolitan areas in the 21st century. Amy Finkelstien, a public finance economist at MIT, reports that as the fraction of drivers using electronic toll collection increased, typically toll rates increased as well, because people were less aware of how much they were paying in tolls. Electronic tolling proposals that represented the shadow price of electronic toll collection (instead of the TSC) may have misled decision-makers. The general public has additionally endured an increased administrative burden associated with paying toll bills and navigating toll collection company on-line billing systems. Additionally, visitors to a region may incur e-toll tag fees imposed by their rental car company. The Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980 identified and attempted to address a similar problem associated with the government collection of information. Approvals were to be secured by government agencies before promulgating a paper form, website, survey or electronic submission that will impose an information collection burden on the general public. However, the act did not anticipate and thus address the burden on the public associated with funding infrastructure via electronic toll collection instead of through more traditional forms of taxation.


Removal and continuation of tolls

In some instances, tolls have been removed after retirement of the toll revenue bonds issued to raise funds. Examples include the Robert E. Lee Memorial Bridge in
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which carries U.S. Route 1 across the
James River The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia that begins in the Appalachian Mountains and flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 to Chesapea ...
, and the 4.5-mile long James River Bridge 80 miles downstream which carries
U.S. Highway 17 U.S. Route 17 or U.S. Highway 17 (US 17), also known as the Coastal Highway, is a north–south United States Highway that spans in the southeastern United States. It runs close to the East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Co ...
across the river of the same name near its mouth at
Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's ...
. In other cases, especially major facilities such as the Chesapeake Bay Bridge near
Annapolis, Maryland Annapolis ( ) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Maryland and the county seat of, and only incorporated city in, Anne Arundel County. Situated on the Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, south of Baltimore and about east o ...
, and the George Washington Bridge over Hudson River between New York City and New Jersey, the continued collection of tolls provides a dedicated source of funds for ongoing maintenance and improvements. Sometimes citizens revolt against toll plazas, as was the case in Jacksonville, Florida. Tolls were in place on four bridges crossing the St. Johns River, including I-95. These tolls paid for the respective bridges as well as many other highway projects. As Jacksonville continued to grow, the tolls created bottlenecks on the roadway. In 1988, Jacksonville voters chose to eliminate all the toll booths and replace the revenue with a ½ cent sales tax increase. In 1989, the toll booths were removed, 36 years after the first toll booth went up. In Scotland, the Scottish Parliament purchased the Skye Bridge from its owners in late 2004, ending the requirement to pay an unpopular expensive toll to cross to Skye from the mainland. In 2004, the German government cancelled a contract with the "Toll Collect" syndicate after much negative publicity. The term "Toll Collect" became a popular byword among Germans used to describe everything wrong with their national economy.


Toll collection

It has become increasingly common for a toll bridge to only charge a fee in one direction. This helps reduce the
traffic congestion Traffic congestion is a condition in transport that is characterized by slower speeds, longer trip times, and increased vehicular queueing. Traffic congestion on urban road networks has increased substantially since the 1950s. When traffic de ...
in the other direction, and generally does not significantly reduce revenue, especially when those travelling the one direction are forced to come back over the same or a different toll bridge.


Toll avoidance: shunpiking

A practice known as shunpiking evolved which entails finding another route for the specific purpose of avoiding payment of tolls. In some situations where the tolls were increased or felt to be unreasonably high, informal shunpiking by individuals escalated into a form of
boycott A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...
by regular users, with the goal of applying the financial stress of lost toll revenue to the authority determining the levy. One such example of shunpiking as a form of boycott occurred at the James River Bridge in eastern Virginia. After years of lower-than-anticipated revenues on the narrow privately-funded structure built in 1928, the state of Virginia finally purchased the facility in 1949 and increased the tolls in 1955 without visibly improving the roadway, with the notable exception of a new toll plaza. The increased toll rates incensed the public and business users alike.
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, head of Smithfield Packing Company, the producer of Smithfield Hams, ordered his truck drivers to take a different route and cross a smaller and cheaper bridge.Lon Wagner
Groups driven to save James River toll plaza
The Virginian-Pilot, June 20, 2004
Tolls continued for 20 more years, and were finally removed from the old bridge in 1976.


Historic examples of toll bridges


England

*
London Bridge Several bridges named London Bridge have spanned the River Thames between the City of London and Southwark, in central London. The current crossing, which opened to traffic in 1973, is a box girder bridge built from concrete and steel. It r ...
* The Humber Bridge: Previously the world's longest bridge, the Humber bridge links the counties of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire near the port city of Kingston upon Hull * Bristol Clifton Suspension Bridge * Wandsworth Bridge: Originally designed by Julian Tolmé in 1873, it was a toll bridge until it was taken into public ownership in 1880 and made toll-free.


Ireland

* Ha'penny Bridge: This cast iron pedestrian bridge was built in 1816 over the River Liffey in Dublin and takes its name from the historical toll amount (a half-penny).


North America

* Ambassador Bridge between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario, Canada; a bridge privately built in 1929. * Collins Bridge, longest wooden bridge in the world when opened in 1913, across Biscayne Bay between Miami on the mainland and the barrier island which became
Miami Beach, Florida Miami Beach is a coastal resort city in Miami-Dade County, Florida. It was incorporated on March 26, 1915. The municipality is located on natural and artificial island, man-made barrier islands between the Atlantic Ocean and Biscayne Bay, the ...
. * George Rogers Clark Memorial Bridge crossing the
Ohio River The Ohio River is a long river in the United States. It is located at the boundary of the Midwestern and Southern United States, flowing southwesterly from western Pennsylvania to its mouth on the Mississippi River at the southern tip of Illino ...
between Louisville, Kentucky and
Clarksville, Indiana Clarksville is a town in Clark County, Indiana, United States, along the Ohio River and is a part of the Louisville Metropolitan area. The population was 22,333 at the 2020 census. The town was founded in 1783 by early resident George Rogers Cla ...
. Opened as a toll bridge in 1929; tolls removed in 1946. * James River Bridge, longest bridge over water in the world when completed in 1928, across the
James River The James River is a river in the U.S. state of Virginia that begins in the Appalachian Mountains and flows U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map , accessed April 1, 2011 to Chesapea ...
between then- Warwick County and Isle of Wight County near
Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's ...
. * Florida Overseas Highway between Florida and
Key West, Florida Key West ( es, Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Sigsbee Park, Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Isla ...
. Built on the former alignment of the Key West Extensions of the
Florida East Coast Railway The Florida East Coast Railway is a Class II railroad operating in the U.S. state of Florida, currently owned by Grupo México. Built primarily in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century, the FEC was a pr ...
, it included the Seven Mile Bridge. * San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge between
Oakland Oakland is the largest city and the county seat of Alameda County, California, United States. A major West Coast port, Oakland is the largest city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area, the third largest city overall in the Bay A ...
and San Francisco. *
Golden Gate Bridge The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate, the strait connecting San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the U.S. city of San Francisco, California—the northern tip of the San Francisco Pen ...
between San Francisco and
Marin County Marin County is a county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael. Marin County is acros ...
. * Mackinac Bridge connecting the Upper Peninsula and Lower Peninsula of Michigan at the Strait of Mackinac connecting
Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...
and
Lake Huron Lake Huron ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. Hydrology, Hydrologically, it comprises the easterly portion of Lake Michigan–Huron, having the same surface elevation as Lake Michigan, to which it is connected by the , Strait ...
* Sunshine Skyway Bridge between Tampa, Florida and St. Petersburg, Florida


See also

* List of toll bridges


References

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