Billing changes, equipment replacement part of delayed truck toll restart
All trucks will be charged the same amount when Rhode Island’s controversial tolling system is turned back on.
As NBC10 reported last week, the tolls are about a year from being switched on, which is roughly 9 months behind schedule.
The initial plan was to have the tolls back on this spring, but state officials revealed last week more of the idle equipment needs replacing than first thought.
“We’re really back to square one,” Rhode Island Department of Transportation Director Peter Alviti said Thursday on WPRO radio with Gene Valicenti.
“Right now, we’re looking at early next year for the beginning of collection of tolls,” Alviti said. “Now we have to have the equipment installers go back and inspect all of the rather intricate devices, electronic devices, that have been out there for several years in the elements.”
The truck tolls were first turned on in 2018 to help pay for then-Gov. Gina Raimondo's RhodeWorks road repair plan.
But trucking companies sued, claiming the tolls were unfair.
The tolls collected about $100 million before a judge sided with the truckers in 2022 and ordered the tolls shut off.
An appeals court ruling in late 2024 allowed for the tolls to be turned back on, though only if the state scrapped the price break given to local truckers.
Since then, state officials have been working on how to make that happen.
A RIDOT spokesman says the agency does not yet know the cost of turning the tolls back on, as they wait for bids to come in.
Alviti claims some of the equipment would have been replaced a couple times over by now anyway if the tolls had been on this whole time.
RIDOT, he says, cancelled the maintenance contract as the court case played out.
“We didn’t want to keep spending money with the uncertainty of the lawsuit being played out in court,” Alviti said on WPRO.
Alviti said the plan is for all trucks to be charged the same when the tolls come back on, to comply with the court decision.
RIDOT says the toll rates have not yet been determined.
Alviti also said the plan for turning the tolls back on now includes rebuilding the billing system from scratch.
When the tolls were on before, they piggy-backed on the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority EZ Pass billing system.
RIDOT says it will now be better to have its own network because of changes since back then.
The billing system is now out to bid, with a vendor expected to be chosen in about two months.
“When we turn the switch on, it will work 100% from day one, forever,” Alviti told Valicenti Thursday.
Gov. Dan McKee’s budget plan for the next fiscal year beginning in July, unveiled last week, anticipates collecting $20 million from the tolls, which appears to about six months worth, aligning with the early 2027 timeline to turn them back on.
McKee’s budget for the current fiscal year assumed $10 million in toll revenue based on the previous spring 2026 turn on expectation.
