That amounts to a whopping 15 cents per mile for drivers who use it for daily round-trips. Toll roads cost drivers more because they are inherently more expensive to operate and less efficient than freeways. Simply collecting the tolls costs money, whether it's done by automated collection machines, electronic transponders, or human toll collectors. Toll roads are wastefully designed because their physical layout is dictated by the need to collect tolls rather than by the best route for traffic flow to connecting roads. Tollways waste time because most drivers must either slow down to pay, or take a longer route to avoid paying a toll.
Toll roads crowd non-tolled freeways with drivers avoiding the tollways.
Finally, toll roads pollute the environment, generating needless exhaust from the drivers who must decrease speed to pay. In essence, there's not much good to be said about toll roads. And unless voters sit up and take notice, they will be here before we know it, costing drivers hundreds of dollars a year on top of gas taxes. It's ironic that San Diegans have devoted so much attention to the recent, high-volume legal fracases over municipal bonds for the stadium and the Convention Center. Pamela Lawton Wilson was a legal affairs reporter in San Diego from 1989 to 1993.