Building the New Jersey Turnpike.
With the completion by Massachusetts of a free expressway to the New Hampshire line and the opening of the Maine Turnpike, traffic congestion became intolerable on New Hampshire’s 15-mile portion of U.S. Route 1. Unable to obtain an increase in the gas tax from the Legislature to finance major improvements for the old winding road, the Highway Commission asked for authority to build a toll road financed by State bonds. The bonds, backed by the faith and credit of the State, sold for a net interest rate of only 1.58 percent. The toll road, built in only 1 year, opened to traffic in 1950 and was enormously profitable from the outset—so much so that the Legislature decided to build two more toll roads in other parts of the State.
In 1945 the New Jersey Legislature authorized a system of free expressways and parkways to relieve congestion in the densely settled New York–Philadelphia corridor. The system was started in 1946, but in a few years it became evident that highway revenues were insufficient to complete the system in any reasonable time. The Legislature then set up the New Jersey Turnpike Authority in 1949 to build the principal artery between the George Washington Bridge and the Delaware River, a distance of 117 miles. By-passing the New York bond houses, the Authority sold its revenue bonds to a consortium of 53 insurance companies in February 1950. It then embarked on a round-the-clock construction program that finished the $285 million toll road in less than 3 years.
From the opening of the first section in 1952, the turnpike was a resounding success and by 1953 was returning six times the operating expenses for a net operating revenue of $18.2 million per year. Traffic was 22 million vehicles during 1953 of which only about 12 percent were trucks and buses.
In 1947 the New York Legislature authorized Westchester County to collect a 10-cent toll on the Hutchinson River and Sawmill River Parkways provided the county reimbursed the Federal Government for the $2.15 million of Federal-aid funds spent on these parkways.[N 1]
The Toll Road Bandwagon Begins to Roll
The Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire and New Jersey Turnpikes showed rather conclusively that the public was impatient with obsolete, congested highways and was willing to pay handsomely for modern freeways.[N 2] Other States, equally short of capital funds, began to consider credit financing schemes backed by tolls. Oklahoma in 1953 completed the 88-mile Turner Turnpike between Oklahoma City and Tulsa. New York, which had started its thruway as a free expressway, switched to toll financing in 1954 to accelerate construction. And West Virginia completed a 2-lane toll road from Charleston to Princeton in 1954. Colorado built the 17-mile Denver-Boulder Turnpike in 1952.
- ↑ The Hayden-Cartwright Act of 1934 authorized the expenditure of Federal-aid funds on “such main parkways as may be designated by the State and approved by the Secretary of Agriculture as part of the Federal-aid highway system.”
- ↑ In 1953 the average State gasoline tax was about 5 to 6 cents per gallon, and the Federal tax was 2 cents per gallon. Thus, the States and the Government were collecting ½ cent per mile for providing and maintaining the public highways. On top of this the toll roads collected about 1½ cents per mile in tolls so turnpikes cost their users about four times as much as free roads. There were, of course, offsetting economies in time, operating costs, and distance savings which made the turnpikes attractive.
