When an appellate court on Thursday shot down the Wolf administration’s plan to impose tolls on nine major highway bridges, it added urgency to the need to rebuild the state’s highway tax structure.

PennDOT wanted to borrow money to repair or replace the bridges by borrowing the money and paying off the loans with revenue from tolls on those bridges.

The plan had some broad advantages. First is that it would ensure the timely repair or replacement of the bridges. Second is that tolls would generate some out-of-state revenue.

But the plan drew strong opposition from communities in the vicinity of the targeted bridges whose residents regularly traverse them, and from the trucking industry and other elements of the shipping industry.

While opposing tolling, legislators have not offered any alternative. PennDOT, which is responsible for than 40,000 miles of roads and 25,000 bridges, says it needs about $15 billion to attend to documented highway and bridge maintenance needs, but it’s clear that the current state tax structure to pay for that work is inadequate.

As Pennsylvania drivers know, they pay a whopping 58 cents-per-gallon gasoline tax to fund road and bridge work. But revenue from that tax is stagnant or declining due to the increasing fuel efficiency of modern vehicles. And relying on fossil-fuel taxes itself will become a fossil as electric vehicles, including trucks and buses, inexorably replace conventionally powered vehicles. EVs accounted for about 8.5% of new vehicle sales in 2021, and they are projected to account for about 20% over the next two years.

So the Commonwealth Court’s rejection of bridge-tolling only adds to the need for the state to devise a different means of taxation to fix roads and bridges.

Rather than complaining about whatever the administration devises, legislators should create a taxation system based not on fuel consumption, but on individual vehicle miles driven. The technology is available, and is akin to the E-ZPass system that is the standard on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

— The Citizens’ Voice, Wilkes-Barre via TNS