EACH TUB STANDS ON ITS OWN BOTTOM. Destination: Freedom comes to terms with the reality that Tolls for Road Improvement mean Tolls for Road Improvement.

Last week, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania was hit with the reality that, under federal law, tolls collected on Interstate 80 could not be used to fund other planned highway and transit projects, and the hand-wringing and recriminations began.

But the outcome of the decision should have been no surprise to state lawmakers. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood made it perfectly clear that, under the pilot program that was enacted to allow states to collect tolls on federally funded interstates, all revenue collected was required to be used to improve only the highway being tolled. In Pennsylvania’s case, that would mean that only I-80 could benefit from I-80 tolls.

Lawmakers should have known this back in 2007 when they passed the Act 44 transportation funding bill, essentially pinning their hopes on the idea that Washington would apparently bend the rules and allow them to use the money accrued from the I-80 tolls to pay for any number of road and bridge projects in the state, in addition to funding municipal transit agencies.

To the extent that tolls on the interstate highways induce substitutions toward the freight railroads, which of late have been earning enough to attract new capital, and toward passenger train operators, which at one time were competitive with less-subsidized and slower forms of personal transportation, we will probably see efficiency gains.

And what's this about paying for other road and bridge projects? I was under the impression that the road network was self-supporting.