The Federal-aid program is affected immediately upon decision to consider the construction of a toll road. Public officials then generally hold in abeyance further activity in construction or even in planning and programing improvements along the line of the route and also on roads intersecting or closely paralleling the proposed toll road. Should improvements be made and the toll road later constructed, highway officials might be placed in the position of having wasted public funds or of entering into competition for traffic with a toll authority whose income depends on the continuance of a substantial advantage in traffic service of its facility over that of parallel free facilities.
On the other hand, to defer planning or construction of free highways may, if the projected toll road is not subsequently built, merely serve to delay for a period the active prosecution of badly needed public improvements. Many toll roads are proposed but not built, and in many instances years elapse between the first proposal and the ultimate decision. A period of 2 to 3 years between the date of formal authorization and the time that financing is assured is common. Meanwhile progress on the route in question, presumably one of the more important in the State, is at a standstill.
Up to this time, these conditions have been somewhat disconcerting, since they upset the orderly programing of improvements that the States and the Federal Government try to achieve. Probably they have not seriously delayed progress on the Interstate System, but only because the funds that have been available have been insufficient to permit marked progress. Should substantial funds for improvement of the Interstate System be available, such delays could be serious unless, of course, sufficient public funds were provided to assure reasonably prompt undertaking of needed improvements.
Effects of completed toll roads
Other effects on the Federal-aid program are felt once a toll road is completed. It is the responsibility of the toll-road authorities to locate the route and determine its access points to the maximum benefit to the route itself, an action that may be taken without regard to its effect on the free road network that must be integrated with the toll road.
With infrequent access points it may well happen that the volume of traffic that should be attracted to or discharged from the toll road at any particular interchange is too great to be satisfactorily accommodated on the existing crossroad. In such a case the public authorities will immediately be urged to improve the connecting highways, not only to benefit the toll road, but also as a proper service to the local traffic to be served by the interchange.
In addition, with interchanges widely spaced on the toll road, it will become necessary for the public officials to develop traffic-collecting routes and perhaps paralleling routes that would be unnecessary of a free route were the more frequent interchanges characteristic available.
This condition is particularly evident as a toll road approaches or bypasses an urban area. Here right-of-way costs and other factors that must be taken into consideration when a route is expected to be liquidated from toll revenues often prevent a close approach to the center of the urban area. Provision of the necessary connections
