RALEIGH – How many motorists would pay more than $1,000 a year for a faster commute from southern Wake County to the Research Triangle Park? It looks like we are about to find out.

According to Triangle Business Journal, a trip on a 19-mile stretch of the new Triangle Expressway from NC 147 to Holly Springs could cost as much as $4.19. For someone making the trip every workday for 50 weeks, that would translate to $1,038.

However, most drivers on the new road won’t pay that much because they’ll acquire an electronic transponder for billing. That’s cheaper for the toll-road authority to use than the camera-based system that will be in place for everyone else, so it will be offering regular users a strong incentive to get transponders – a 35 percent price break.

Still, even $675 is a lot to ask for a quicker commute. TBJ points out that the transponder rate of 14.5 cents a mile for the new expressway will be a bit higher than the national average for new toll roads. The 22 cent-a-mile rate for motorists without transponders will be significantly above average.

State transportation officials are betting that many Triangle commuters will be willing to pay it. For one thing, the new Triangle Expressway will have no booths at all – not even for travelers passing through the Triangle on the way to somewhere else (they’ll get billed by camera). So the road will really move. Some toll roads in other states use a blended approach that results in traffic snarls around booths.

Furthermore, the current rush-hour traffic problems along the southern part of the Triangle market can be frustrating and time-consuming. Officials believe that many motorists will conclude that tolls are actually less costly to them than enduring delays and wasting their valuable time.

As a longtime proponent of modern tollways for North Carolina, I am hopeful that the new Triangle Expressway will prove its worth. The user-pays principle should prevail in transportation, as in other services, so as many limited-access roads as possible should be priced accordingly, preferably through private contracts or asset sales. While taxes on cars and motor fuels constitute a rough approximation of a user fee, they don’t serve to connect the use of particular roads to their cost. Tolling is the right tool for that job.

No one has come up with a viable means of charging direct prices for unlimited-access roads, however. Ideas such as GPS-based charges or mileage fees face grave practical and political obstacles. For now, then, city street grids and most rural and suburban highways will continue to derive their revenue indirectly, from car and gas taxes, rather than from direct charges.

As with all prices, there is no “just” or “right” price for traveling a particular roadway. It depends. Consumers will vote with their feet – and their hands on their steering wheels – if they perceive that the value to them of the new Triangle Expressway is less than $675 to $1,000 a year.

To those who prefer to operate in a world of pristine, 25-year government planning documents, such uncertainties are no doubt scary. To the rest of us, they are an inescapable feature of life in the real world.

Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.