It’s unfortunate that Gov. Kim Reynolds acted so quickly a couple weeks ago to stifle talk about turning Interstate 80 into a toll road.

I understand why she did it. Most Iowans don’t like toll roads, and Reynolds didn’t want to start a discussion that could cost her votes.
 
Ignoring problems is a political skill she learned from her mentor, former Gov. Terry Branstad. It served him well.

But it does not always serve the people of Iowa. Many of the issues Branstad ignored are still around, including transportation problems.
 
By dismissing the toll-road idea, Reynolds missed an opportunity to lead a long-overdue conversation about the future of transportation in Iowa.

Transportation should be a concern of all Iowans. It’s something we all use every day. We need to talk about how and why it is changing, even if Reynolds does not want to join the conversation. 

Let’s start with this question: Are interstate highways the quickest and most efficient way to move people and goods across the state? 

I argue that they are not, and I’ll come back to that in a minute. 

But let’s assume the answer is “yes,” because that’s what most Iowans believe.

If that’s the consensus, then the question becomes what do we need to do to make Interstate 80 as efficient and cost-effective as possible.
 
The Iowa Department of Transportation tried to launch that conversation by proposing I-80 be widened from four lanes to six with three lanes going east and three going west.

The upgrade would cost about $3.8 billion, and the DOT said it could be paid for by doing what other states have done, turning I-80 into a toll road. The agency proposed charging cars 8 cents a mile for each of the 248 miles inside the I-80 toll gates and charging trucks 24 cents a mile.

At those rates, it would cost a car just under $20 in tolls to go from Council Bluffs to Davenport, and it would cost trucks just under $60.
 
The DOT estimated it would take 35 years of tolls to pay off the cost of the proposed I-80 widening. 

Another option, raising the gas tax by 10 cents a gallon, would bring in about $200 million a year, or enough to pay off the upgrades in roughly 20 to 25 years, assuming transportation patterns remain unchanged, which they won’t.

We should also consider the impact of electric cars and driverless vehicles and how driving patterns could change if I-80 becomes a toll road. 

Then there’s the alternative no one talks about, but which should be front and center in any transportation discussion: railroads. 

Railroads require a smaller footprint than interstate highways and are clearly more efficient and less polluting. And they’re more popular with younger people who would rather look at their electronic devices than drive a car. 
The success of high-speed rail in other countries is tied to higher fuel prices.

In the past, when the price of gasoline increased here, we also thought about bringing rail passenger service back to Iowa, only to forget about it when gas prices fell. 

Today gasoline prices are relatively low. But we know they will go up again, and at some point they’ll stay up. Not to mention the damage that superhighways do to our environment.  

That makes this a good time to start a conversation about the future of transportation in Iowa and to look at all options. 

If you view it from the standpoint that we have $3.8 billion to spend, which is how much it will cost to widen Interstate 80, we need to place all options on the table and come up with a solution that will work in 2050, not rebuild a vision from 1950.