Lots of input, on lots of ideas on how to fund transportation in Wisconsin. The legislature's Road to the Future committee got a look at numerous suggestions on how to stabilize the state's transportation fund. Outgoing Transportation Development Association president Bob Cook took a stand on tolls. "As technology improves, tolls and mileage based systems may become more acceptable," Cook said.
But Tom Howells of the Wisconsin Motor Carriers Association was less enthusiastic. "The whole question of tolls has been simply another way to rease revenue," said Howells. "If collecting tolls is a more efficient way to collect the revenue, we certainly would be able to talk about that." Tom Vandenburg with Green Bay-based Schneider National trucking argued for the status quo; "it's Schneider's position that our existing structures should be the structures that are utiliized."
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau provided committee members with a dozen different ways to deal with transportation revenues and expenditures, as it grapples with the issue of whether current transportation fund revenues will be adequate to meet future needs.