Mandelbaum On The FHWA, I-80, And The Loss Of Imagination
From David Mandelbaum, GT Philadelphia.
On April 6, the Federal Highway Administration disapproved Pennsylvania's proposal to 
impose tolls on Interstate 80, one of two main east-west highways through the Commonwealth. The funds were to be used to provide secure funding for a broad range of transportation needs in Pennsylvania, including, importantly, capital improvements to the major metropolitan public transportation systems. FHWA reasoned that federal law restricted the use of toll revenues to improvements of I-80, and would not permit use of the funds to rebuild other roads and bridges or to fund mass transit.
If you believe that the cost of transportation fuels will increase because of climate policy, international politics, or availability of petroleum, then you believe that those regions that can do business 
with less fuel will do better. Cities with better transit will, all other things equal, be where businesses and people want to be. In the process, the nation as a whole will become more efficient as activity flows to those places. As a practical matter, capital improvements to urban transit systems are just not going to be funded by the bus fairy. Pennsylvania tried one interesting approach to having one transportation mode help fund the sort of capital improvements that climate-friendliness and energy-efficiency would require. We see here an example of the sclerotic complexity that rebuilding the economy for an energy- or carbon-constrained world encounters.
I don't disagree with the need for a funding source, but my thoughts devolve to the question of which government paid for the construction of the road and why the state should be able to impose a user fee on a federal capital project. It annoys me every time I take I-95 though Delaware. Maybe the state paid for part of it or it is responsible for the maintenance. If that's the case, at least there is a foothold of an argument.
Here's a link to the letter from the Secretary of the DOT. http://www.paturnpike.com/I80/pdf/Interstate%2080%20Letter%20to%20Rendell1.pdf Looks like PennDOT does pay for maintenance, probably with federal tax dollars. Just sent too much $ to the Turnpike Commission (called by one legislator, a "cauldron of corrpution").
It was an innovative plan that made a lot of sense -- impose a toll (that could have been designed to fall most heavily on large through trucks) on the mode of mobility that will harm our long-term economic viability and use the proceeds to subsidize our future economic well-being. Unfortunately, the federal law got in the way. I can't say I disagree with the interpretation of the law, but it is a pity that we're so bound by the past.
Just curious if the author or readers of this post have ideas about how to overcome the "sclerotic complexity" of accelerating the inevitable transformation of our economy. I struggle with how to get from here to there in a democracy populated by people with a very high discount rate, and a low economic and scientific literacy.