If you travel the state, get ready for bridge tolling. Not excited? Neither are we.

As representatives and advocates for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) and the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association (PMTA), working on behalf of the one million small businesses and 320,000 hard-working men and women employed in transportation in Pennsylvania, we call for the passage of SB 382, which is currently in the House Transportation Committee, Chaired by Rep. Tim Hennessey, R-Chester.

PennDOT is plowing ahead with its Major Bridge Public-Private Partnership (P3) plan to toll nine interstate bridges in the state, including the I-83 South Bridge. This P3 initiative is intended to generate $2 billion to $3 billion in funding to replace and maintain the bridges over the course of a 30-year contract. It’s essentially a tax, which could cost motorists over $17 billion over the course of the contract.

But unlike other taxes, it was drawn up by a board of bureaucrats, with no legislative oversight or approval.

SB 382 would reform the P3 statute to prevent bureaucratic taxation and void PennDOT’s plan to toll these heavily used bridges throughout the Commonwealth. While there is a need to address transportation funding more broadly, tolling of these bridges will have many unintended consequences, which need to be considered and debated by our elected representatives.

Traffic patterns will shift as motorists avoid the tolls, and small and independent businesses near the bridges will struggle as their customer base decreases. This pattern shift will overload local roadways that were not designed to sustain a high-volume of vehicles, affecting traffic and emergency services, and ultimately, taxes in many localities. The price of shipping goods will increase to account for tolling, and this will affect businesses up and down the supply chain and make Pennsylvania’s small businesses less competitive in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Tolling will in effect create winners and losers depending on which side of the bridge a business finds itself.

It’s important to note that, should this P3 Bridge Tolling project succeed, PennDOT plans to move ahead with other interstate tolling initiatives through its P3 board, including tolling of entire interstate corridors and creating managed lanes, where drivers would pay for use of a special lane.

There is no debate that Pennsylvania businesses need a reliable transportation network to get goods to and from market, but tolling is a bad solution. Studies have shown that tolling is an inefficient way to collect transportation revenue.

While the federal fuel tax costs less than a penny on the dollar to collect, the Pennsylvania Turnpike’s costs exceed 20% of the revenue collected. In fact, as proposed, the bridge tolling project will use the same toll collection process as the Turnpike. This is not encouraging, considering that since it went to all-electronic tolling, the Turnpike has lost $104 million in revenue from users who didn’t pay.

The Commonwealth has the second-highest fuel tax in the nation, and it is already the third most expensive state in which to operate a truck due to taxes and tolls. Yet it perennially struggles to keep up with transportation funding. Solutions are necessary, but the best solutions won’t be those that crush businesses in the state. These include continuing to push for federal infrastructure support, putting a stop to diversions of road and bridge funding, and other more fair and equitable remedies.

But the most important takeaway is that the constitutional power and authority of taxation resides with the General Assembly, not with unelected bureaucrats in roles unaccountable to the public. Decisions as critical to the livelihood of Pennsylvanians deserve to be debated by the legislature. Let the General Assembly decide if the bridges should be tolled. At least we could hold those individuals accountable at the ballot box.

Support Senate Bill 382 and ask Chairman Hennessey to bring SB 382 up for a vote.

(Greg Moreland is Pennsylvania state director of the National Federation of Independent Business and Rebecca Oyler is president and CEO of the Pennsylvania Motor Truck Association.)