IU traffic expert: new toll road is bad idea

The IBJ

Indiana University transportation professor William R. Black said Gov. Mitch Daniels' plan to wrap part of the Indianapolis area with a new toll road "does not make a lot of sense to me." The cities to be linked-Pendleton, Greenfield, Shelbyville, Franklin, Martinsville and Mooresville-have plenty of good roads to stimulate their economies, said Black, who has consulted to the Indiana Department of Transportation.

Moreover, semi-trailer trucks, the vehicles most likely to pay tolls, will continue using Interstate 465 for free as much as possible. "One seriously has to question whether a new highway would indeed be feasible in terms of the tolls it would collect," Black said.

In fact, he said, a new road, counter-intuitively, is likely to actually make traffic worse. That's because the new road breed more traffic; the more roads the nation builds, the more traffic they attract, Black said. "These things bing with them a lot of extra baggage."