POLICY TRADEOFFS AND BYPASS. Illinois makes it more costly to be a trucking company, truckers react.

Trucking firms are leaving the state and they are not likely to come back anytime soon, said Midwest Truckers Association Executive Vice President Don Schaefer.

"We are at a point in time in Illinois where it is very hard to run a business that makes money because of all the fees," Schaefer said. In the last year more than 12 percent of trucks have not renewed their registration in Illinois.

The DeKalb toll plaza, along with others in the state, increased the rate it charges trucks from $3 to more than $9 in January. At that rate, some companies are opting to bypass the tollway and take local roads.

Roy’s Transportation, a 43-year-old company in Rochelle, has nine 18-wheelers but can only afford to put eight on the road."I told my drivers to take local roads until they pass the DeKalb toll because it costs so much," said Pat Burch, owner of Roy’s Transportation. "I would like to take the tollway because it is safer and faster but it is just too expensive right now."

Higher overhead in Illinois are allowing firms from Iowa to compete with Roy’s to haul freight to Chicago.

"My license fees have gone up, my fuel costs have doubled and the tollway price has tripled," Burch said. "I cannot even pass my costs on to the companies I am hauling for because of the competition."

I think that last sentence summarizes the reality of a price-taker. The toll authority makes a less-than-spectacular rebuttal.

The fee at the DeKalb toll is in line with the with the rest of the tollway system, said Joelle McGinnis, spokeswoman for the Illinois Tollway.

"We base our fee on the number of miles traveled between tolls," McGinnis said. "The large fee for the DeKalb toll is because there are less toll stops on that stretch of tollway."

There's more to this than distance. Weight-based truck tolls increased on January 1. In addition, there is a special surcharge during peak hours in the Chicago area. Both changes are consistent with allocative efficiency. The existence of non-toll state and U.S. highways paralleling the toll roads provides a powerful incentive for truckers to bypass the toll roads and pound the two-lanes to pieces faster.

There's a project in Texas called the Trans-Texas Corridor under which separate toll lanes for trucks and automobiles will share a right of way with freight and possibly high speed passenger railroad tracks. Such a project might be of use as a way of providing additional capacity on the Chicago-St. Louis and Chicago-Carbondale corridors, as well as attenuating the unsafe practice of mixing trucks and passenger automobiles on the same roads.