Trucking Organizes to Fight Major Tolls Plan in Missouri
Proposal Calls for Fees on Cross-Country Routes
rucking interests in Missouri have begun organizing opposition to a pair of bills working their way through the General Assembly that would open the way for tolls on three major truck routes and two planned bridges.
The bills call for the state to establish tolls on Interstates 70 and 44 and a stretch of U.S. 71 and use the money to finance planned bridges in St. Louis and Kansas City, said Jay Wunderlich, director of governmental affairs for the Missouri Department of Transportation.
George Burruss, president of the Missouri Motor Carriers Association, told Transport Topics that the association opposes tolls on existing roads. “The idea that tolls are not taxes, as some claim, is simply not correct,” Burruss said in a Jan. 23 memo. “A toll is a tax.”
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