Rebecca Green, writing for the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, reports a study underway to construct a privately owned, interstate quality toll road that would link I-94 in northwestern Indiana to I-57 in eastern Illinois to avoid congestion in the Chicago area. The Indiana Department of Transportation, and presumably its counterpart in Illinois, are going to spend $5 to $10 million dollars on the study over the next 3 years.
If the goal is to relieve congestion, wouldn’t making it a gratis[*] road more effectively achieve the goal? There are more poor drivers than rich ones, right?
[*] I say “gratis” because “freeway” has a meaning, and it’s not the one people like Mike McDaniel use. A “freeway” is a highway where the traffic is free-flowing, i.e., without intersections where the main flow of traffic must stop.