There are many reasons to avoid major highways and toll roads, but no honest shunpiker will deny that avoiding the tolls themselves is one of them.
The most basic reason why people avoid tolls is simple economy. Tolls cost money, and money doesn't grow on trees. Especially when driving for non-business reasons (where saving time is less important), avoiding tolls saves money. When traveling for pleasure, the money you save by avoiding tolls can be spent on things that are actually fun.
For example, I frequently have to drive between New York City and Philadelphia. There are several ways to do this, but only one is both toll-free and reasonably direct: taking either the Lincoln Tunnel or the Holland Tunnel (preferably the latter because it shortens the distance a bit) from Manhattan to New Jersey, taking U.S. Route 1 to Lawrenceville, New Jersey, and then picking up I-95 to avoid the toll bridge over the Delaware River. There are other routes that would save me time, such as taking the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island, then taking the Goethals Bridge to the New Jersey Turnpike. But the tolls along those routes would add at least $20.00 - $30.00 to the cost of my trip. I'd rather spend that money on a decent meal than give it to the government.
The trip I make back from seeing my parents in Upstate New York is another good example. Because they're west of the Hudson River and I'm east of it, inevitably I'll have to pay a toll somewhere. But the Hudson River crossings are a lot more expensive downstate than they are upstate. In addition, I-87 (part of the New York State Thruway), which runs along the western side of the Hudson, is a toll road south of Albany. But an excellent free alternative, the beautiful and scenic Taconic State Parkway, runs along the eastern side of the Hudson. By crossing the Hudson on the Rip Van Winkle Bridge (where the toll is only $1.00 and is collected eastbound only), and then traveling south on the Taconic, I save about $10.00 in tolls -- and the trip is actually a little bit faster most of the time.
Shunpikers, by and large, have always resented tolls. Early on in the history of turnpikes, private companies built and operated most toll roads. Typically, the title to the land was retained by the government, who would grant rights-of-way to the private turnpike operators. Many people objected to this use of public lands for private profit, especially because the tolls tended to be exorbitant and the whole system riddled with corruption.
Nowadays, privately operated toll roads are rare, but the corruption persists. Many (or possibly most) tolls on modern bridges, tunnels, and roads were supposed to have been abolished decades ago. Typically, these projects were funded at least partly by bonds; and typically, the bond issues that were presented to voters specified that the bonds would be repaid by toll revenues, after which the tolls would be abolished.
In reality, tolls rarely disappear. Once the bonds are paid off, governments find other reasons to keep the toll booths up. Sometimes they cite the need to maintain the roads, bridges, and tunnels; but more and more often, tolls revenues are diverted to public mass transit projects, essentially punishing drivers by forcing them to subsidize public transit systems.
Robert Moses, Master Builder
The essential unfairness of using vehicle tolls to subsidize mass transit is blatantly illustrated in New York City. The bulk of the roads, bridges, and tunnels in the New York City area were built by the great Robert Moses, who used the toll revenues from his Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (TBTA) to fund more road projects.
In 1940, the NYC government intentionally bankrupted the private companies who had been running the city's public transportation system by refusing them a fare increase from five cents to seven cents. When the private companies went under, the City took over the system itself (and raised the fare to ten cents, not surprisingly). Needless to say, over the next two decades or so, the inevitable happened: The city government drove the system into the ground via waste, mismanagement, and corruption. By the 1960's, despite additional fare increases of 350 percent, the NYC transit system was essentially bankrupt.
In 1966, New York City mayor John Lindsay and New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller (who rarely agreed on anything) conspired to come up with a plan ostensibly designed to rescue the city's transit system. But the real objective was to get Robert Moses out of the way. Why? Because both politicians had plans to restructure public transit financing by illegally using TBTA revenues to subsidize mass transit, and Robert Moses would never allow that to happen without a fight.
Robert Moses was certainly an interesting character, with his own share of faults and failings. But he did get things done. He built practically every major highway, park, and bridge in New York and held as many as a dozen state and city government posts simultaneously (often without pay). Even his detractors grudgingly agree that he did get his seemingly impossible projects completed on-time and within budget. Most importantly, Robert Moses had never been accused of corruption or ill-gotten personal gain, not even by his fiercest critics. In that regard, he was as honest as the day was long.
Needless to say, both Rockefeller and Lindsay hated him.
The whole subsidy idea was illegal as hell. The conditions governing the TBTA bonds specifically forbade such diversions. But Governor Nelson Rockefeller's brother John ran the Chase Manhattan Bank (which held most of the bonds); so there was no challenge to the blatantly illegal theft of TBTA funds. Before long, Robert Moses was stripped of his authority and his building capital, and the greatest builder in the city's history was out of a job.
With Moses out of the way, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) was formed in 1968, and the TBTA was absorbed into the MTA. The MTA has proven itself to be perhaps the most inefficient, wasteful, and arrogantly corrupt bureaucracy in the history of humankind. Nonetheless, the MTA now owns the bridges and tunnels, and they use the bulk of the toll revenues to subsidize mass transit. (It's also worth noting that the mass transit fares themselves have also skyrocketed — by a factor of about 4,000 percent — since the private operators were forced out of business and the government took over the system.)
To add insult to injury, new highway construction in New York City has been virtually nonexistent since Robert Moses was stripped of power, and the existing bridges and tunnels now under MTA's control are falling into dangerous states of disrepair. Ironic, isn't it? Billions of dollars in bridge and tunnel tolls are being siphoned off and diverted to mass transit, while the bridges and tunnels themselves are in danger of collapsing due to lack of proper maintenance.
The end result? Every day, hundreds of thousands of the region's drivers (along with countless truckers and other transient drivers) get raped by the MTA. Car drivers pay tolls as high as $11.00 (the rates for trucks are much higher) to wait in traffic for upwards of an hour, to drive across unsafe bridges that were paid for decades ago.
The MTA's response? "Use public transportation!" What they fail to realize is that few sane people drive into New York City by choice. Most of those who do are truck drivers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, exterminators, maids, couriers, and other blue-collar workers who have no choice but to drive into the city because they have to carry tools, supplies, or merchandise. Nonetheless, these blue-collar drivers are forced to subsidize the subway and commuter train rides of the stockbrokers, commodities traders, and other Wall Street types who only need to carry their briefcases and their inflated egos from their suburban homes into their jobs in the city.
Toll delay in the NYC area
One of the biggest problems with tolls is that they must be collected, and especially in busy Metropolitan areas, the delays leading to toll booths often cause delays. In and around New York City, these delays can sometimes exceed an hour -- more than eating up whatever time savings were realized by using the toll roads.
This problem could be considerably alleviated by using RFID tags (the EZ-Pass system), which eliminates the need to hand the money to an actual human toll collector. But the speed limit at EZ-Pass booths is often set at the ridiculously low speed of 5 MPH, despite the system's being capable of reading the tags at speeds in excess of 50 MPH. Why? Because drivers who exceed the idiotically low speed limits can be mailed speeding tickets, further fattening government coffers by systematically stealing from motorists.
In addition to the annoyance and expense to motorists, toll booth delays also waste fuel, increase pollution, and deprive local economies of millions of dollars by way of lost productivity.
Turnpike service areas are another reason why shunpikers avoid toll roads and other limited-access highways. These facilities typically charge inflated prices for food, gas, emergency car repairs, and other travel necessities in order to pay the ridiculously high rents and concession fees demanded by state highway authorities.
Toll road rest areas also litter the paths back from the restrooms with trinket stands, gumball and candy machines, arcade games, and other attractions directly aimed at whiney, bored children. These distractions are placed there deliberately, in the hope that parents will be coerced into coughing up their spare change to stop their kids from screaming, "But I want to PLAAAAAAY!" on their way back to the car.
Note that most of these attractions are placed so as to attract children's attention on their way out of the buildings. This is intentional. On their way into the buildings, children are too preoccupied with their full bladders or bowels to be distracted by even the most glitzy rip offs. So the machines are positioned to attract attention on the way out, after the children's needs to pee and poop have been relieved.
Shunpikers know that secondary roads usually provide better food offerings and lower prices than turnpike rest areas, and usually without the potty blackmail. Roadside diners typically serve bigger portions of better food at lower prices than any turnpike rest area. Of course, sometimes you have to look around for the really good joints, which is one of the reasons why our forum includes our favorite shunpiking food finds.