Making Interstate-80 a toll road was listed by Iowa D-O-T officials as an option for financing expansion of the route. Representative Gary Carlson, a Republican from Muscatine, says as the D-O-T begins planning for the future, officials are “trying not to shut off any ideas.”
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Carlson is chairman of the House Transportation Committee. He says due to congestion on Interstate-80, expanding the corridor from four-lanes to six-lanes through eastern Iowa is a “very real possibility.” But Carlson says using traffic tolls as collateral for loans to finance road construction isn’t working well in other states.
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Carlson says legislators might revisit the issue in the future if vehicles get so sophisticated that a toll could be charged automatically — but only to the out-of-state vehicles traveling through Iowa.
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