Moody's Investor Service reports that while most tolled highways it monitors across the U.S. have stable financial conditions, higher gas prices could depress toll collections and eventually force higher tolls.

"Increased tolling, as well as innovations such as indexing tolls to inflation, increased use of electronic toll collection (ETC) and open road tolling (ORT), or cashless tolling and congestion pricing could enhance toll revenues and decrease capital borrowing costs, both key considerations in toll road credit ratings," the public finance company wrote in its annual report on the toll-road sector. "Tolling policies that keep pace with reasonable assumptions about both operating and capital costs are central to strong ratings."

Moody's determined most of the 45 toll roads to which it issues a bond rating are solvent, with only four scoring a "negative" outlook. All three toll facilities in Pa. - the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission, the Delaware River Port Authority and the Pa. Turnpike Commission - were judged as fiscally stable.

But circumstances are subject to change. The U.S. Department of Transportation recently reported a roughly 10 billion-mile drop in drivers' road travel in May 2008 from the total distance traveled in May 2007.

As such, politicians are looking less enthusiastically toward gas taxes to fund highways, bridges and other transportation priorities. Gov. Ed Rendell, D, has been touting a proposed lease of the Pa. Turnpike to generate $12.8 billion for the state's ailing roads and bridges since 2006.

Rendell spokesman Barry Ciccocioppo said the plan would aid the state in avoiding undertaking excessive debt to repair transportation infrastructure. State funding for bridges has tripled in the last five years; however, the number of structurally deficient bridges in Pa. has not decreased.

"It's with that concern in mind that the governor proposed leasing the Pa. Turnpike," Mr. Ciccocioppo said.

Whether leased or not, tolls on the turnpike are scheduled to rise by 25 percent in 2009. But the governor has also considered expansion of state tolling facilities and has given qualified support to tolling Interstate 80.

Critics of the plan note that the funds would not merely help repair the east-west interstate, but would finance train and bus systems in major urban areas.

"It is more than a toll," said Matthew Brouillette, president of the Harrisburg-based Commonwealth Foundation. "It is a tax that could be redistributed to the mass transit systems in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh."

Mr. Brouillette said he would welcome tolling on any major highway, provided it came as part of a public-private partnership and did not send out revenues to be spent on unrelated projects.



Bradley Vasoli can be reached at bvasoli@thebulletin.us