# Supplemental Brief — McKeown v. Delaware Bridge Authority

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URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/documents/brief%3Amicro_IA40386010_1627%3A2

## Record

- **Collection:** Supreme Court brief
- **Document type:** Supplemental Brief
- **Published:** January 1, 2002
- **Citation:** 535 U.S. 1079

## Text

; Supreme Court, U.S.
£ FILED

MAY 14 #002
No. 01-1421

“CPMCE OFTHE CLARK

In The
Supreme Court of the United States

KEVIN MCKEOWN

Petitioner,

THE DELAWARE BRIDGE AUTHORITY, et al.,

Respondents.

On Petition for a Writ of Certiorari to the United States
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit

SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF

Kevin McKeown

1200 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W.
P.O. Box 7228

Washington, D.C. 20044-7228
(202) 223-8030

Pro Se Petitioner

TABLE OF CITED AUTHORITIES

Cases:

Whitman, EPA, et al. v. American Trucking
Association, 531 U.S. 457, 121 S. Ct. 903
(decided February 27, 2001)

Acts of Congress:

Clean Air Act (“CAA”)

TABLE OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX A:

STUDY: A MODEL OF THE TOTAL COST OF
HIGHWAY TOLL COLLECTION BY PROFESSORS
PETERS AND KRAMER

1
SUPPLEMENTAL BRIEF FOR PETITIONER

The petition demonstrates that lower court findings in
this case create a conflict with Whitman, EPA, et al. v.
American Trucking Association, 531 U.S. 457, 121 S. Ct.
903 (decided February 27, 2001) and with provisions of the
Clean Air Act. Since the filing of this petition, petitioner has
been made aware of an important study (Appendix “A”) by
Professors from The City University of New York and
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania which indicates that
toll booths create significant amounts of pollutants in
violation of The Clean Air Act.

1. Respondents do not dispute their violations of
The Clean Air Act, that a conflict exists that requires this
Court’s full consideration or that this matter greatly affects
the health and welfare of vast amounts of U.S. citizens.
Further, respondents consented to Professors’ Peters and
Kramer request to present this study to this Honorable Court.
In short, the importance of the question presented iS
essentially unchallenged.

2. As this Court observed in Whitman, EPA, et
al. v. American Trucking Association, Congress intended to
protect the public without cost concerns and expressly
provided that the best technology available be utilized.

3. Toll booths violate The Clean Air Act when
they slow and otherwise impede the movement of toxic
substance emitting vehicles and unnecessarily add to
environmental pollutants. As in Whitman, EPA, et_al
which affirmed a Court of Appeals finding that §109(b) of
the Clean Air Act unambiguously bars cost considerations,
the current operation of toll booths must stopped.

4. This case presents important questions which
impact the health, welfare and civil rights of every citizen of
the United States, and is not limited to the states in which toll
booths operate.

CONCLUSION

Accordingly, Petitioner respectfully prays that this
Honorable Court grant the petition for Writ of Certiorari.

Respectfully submitted,

Kevin McKeown -

1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Box 7228

Washington, D.C. 20044-7228
202-223-8030

Pro Se Petitioner

A Model of the Total Cost of Highway Toll

Collection
- by:

Jonathan Peters
Assistant Professor of Finance
The City University of New York
7 The College of Staten Island
3N207
2800 Victory Boulevard
Staten Island, NY 10314
(718) 982 — 2958 (718) 982 - 2965 FAX
jpeters@postbox.csi.cuny.edu

Jonathan K. Kramer
Professor of Finance
Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
125 deFrancesco Building
Kutztown, PA 19530
(610) 683-4704 (610) 683-1514 FAX
jkramer@kutztown.edu
Presented at
Eastern Economics Association Annual Meetings
February 2001
New York, New York

Appendix A-1

Forthcoming in the Proceedings of the 24" Annual
Conference of the Association of Pennsylvania
University Business and Economic Faculties
October 2002.

A Model of the Total Cost of Highway Toll
Collection

Introduction

Air quality and greenhouse gas emissions are
important issues around the world. Most solutions to air
quality issues have some type of negative economic
impact such as monitoring costs and/or constraints on
economic growth. One potential means of emission
control that does not have a negative impact on
economic growth is improved toll collection on toll
bridges and roads. The traditional manual collection
method causes motorists to decelerate from, and
reaccelerate to, highway speeds. This, combined with
the affects of queuing at toll plazas during peak travel
periods, results in significant environmental costs.
However, current models of the cost of toll collection do
not account for these costs and therefore significantly
underestimate the benefits to society of improved toll
collection. We propose extending current models to
account for these environmental costs.

Appendix A-2

Literature Review

Prior research on toll collection has focused on the
compliance and administrative costs of the collection
process. Vickrey (1963) is the first to outline a theory
of the optimal pricing of road networks. Arnott, de
Palma and Lindsey (1997) extend the Vickrey model by
creating a structural model of road congestion that
considers congestion technology and_ behavioral
decisions of drivers in determining optimal toll pricing.
Sheila and Wilson (1991) consider the idea of optimal
tolls and the deadweight loss to society created by
traffic delays resulting from the toll collection process.

Friedman and Waldfogel (1995) and Burris and
Hildebrand (1996) document some of the major issues
related to the administrative and compliance costs of
toll collection. In addition, Friedman and Waldfogel
(1995) measure these costs using a case study of a
Massachusetts Turnpike toll plaza and data from the
New Jersey Turnpike Authority. While all of these
studies address the cost issues that are important to
administrators, they ignore the environmental costs.

In this study, we extend the Friedman and Waldfogel
(1995) model by adding variables that measure the
environmental impact of toll collection. We then use
this model to calculate the total societal cost (TSC) of

Appendix A-3

toll collection on the Garden State Parkway (GSP) in
New Jersey using Sisson’s (1995) estimates for
automobile emissions, and the New Jersey Highway
Authority's traffic volume estimates. Our results clearly
indicate that the environmental cost of toll collection is
significant and should be included in any measure of
total collection cost.

Methodology

The total cost of toll collection is equal to the sum of the
administrative, compliance, and environmental costs.
The Friedman and Waldfogel (1995) model measures
the administrative and compliance costs. According
to their model, administrative costs (AC) incurred
during time t are equal to:

AC; = wrlt + urK (1)

Where wr equais the cost of operating a tollbooth per
time period, L; is the number of tollbooths staffed and
operational during time period t, u; includes the user
cost of toll collection capital (including both borrowing
and depreciation) per time period, and K equals the
value of toll collection capital. Therefore, over any

Appendix A-4

extended period of time (for example, a year)
administrative costs equal:

AC =w,5'T, +KYu, (2)
‘=0 1=0

Compliance costs (CC) are measured as wQ, where w
is the value of the road user's time and Q is the total
amount of time the driver (assuming no passengers) is
delayed in compliance:

Q= (24 + ag (3)

where fd equals the fixed delay, q: equals the number
of vehicles in the queue at time t, L, equals the number
of lanes staffed at time t, a equals the number of
vehicles that can be processed per lane per time
period, or the throughput rate, and a; is the number of
vehicles arriving per time period. Therefore, according
to this model, total collection costs (TC) equal:

TC =AC+CC (4)
However, as Sisson (1995) points out, the process of
toll collection creates a significant amount of additional
pollution as compared to transit at highway speeds.

This is not accounted for in equation 4. To calculate

Appendix A-5

the pollution cost per pollutant x (PC,), we use the
following equation:

PC, = (fp + (vp rx) Px (5)

where fp equals the fixed acceleration pollution of
pollutant x per toll collection, vp equals the queuing
pollution of pollutant x, 1 is the average rate of
production of pollutant x per time period, and p, is the
cost of pollutant x to society on a per unit basis. Total
pollution cost (PC) is equal to:

rt = YPC, (6)

xz]

where m is the total number of pollutants being
measured. We add this variable to the right-hand side
of equation 4, that we call the total societal cost of toll
collection (TSC):

TSC = AC +CC+PC (7)
Case Study: The Garden State Parkway

New Jersey’s Garden State Parkway (GSP) is 173

miles long and has eleven major toll barriers and

twenty ramp toll plazas. Based on data collected from

the New Jersey Highway Authority we calculate the
Appendix A-6

a

total societal cost of toll collection on the GSP for the
year 2000 using the model outlined above. Our goal is
to demonstrate that when pollution costs are ignored,
the total cost of toll collection is _ significantly
understated.

Administrative Costs (AC)

The New Jersey Highway Authority estimates that
administrative costs on the GSP (including the cost of
capital and the labor costs of toll collectors and
administrators) were $0.07 per toll collection in the year
2000. They also report 436,161,722 toll collections at
the major toll barriers for the same year. Therefore, we
estimate administrative costs to be $30,531,321 for the
year 2000.

Compliance Costs (CC)

The Friedman and Waldfoge! (1996) model was
designed for use on a two stop toll road where the
driver stops once to pick up ticket and then again to
pay the toll. While this is consistent with many toll
collection systems such as the NJ Turnpike and the
Massachusetts Turnpike, on the Garden State
Parkway, drivers stop repeatedly for the duration of the
trip with a maximum distance of 24.76 miles and a
minimum of 5.79 miles between major toll barriers. A
driver following the whole route of the GSP would stop

Appendix A-7

at 11 barriers along the route. Therefore, we need to
modify Friedman and Waldfogel’s (1995) compliance
cost function so that it calculates costs on a per stop
basis: CC; = (fd+vd))w (8)
where CC; equals the compliance cost at time t (per
stop), fd equals the fixed delay, vd; is the variable delay
at time period t, and w equals the value of the road
user's time. The Triborough Bridge and Tunnel
Authority estimates that the theoretical maximum for
the number of vehicles a tollbooth can process is 250
per hour. Based on this, we calculate the fixed delay
as 7.2 seconds per car. With 436,161,722 toll stops
occurring in the year 2000, at a delay of 7.2 seconds
per stop, this totals 872,323 hours spent paying tolls.
At an average wage rate of $20 per hour’, this
represents a total compliance cost (CC) of $17,446,469
for the year 2000.
Pollution Costs (PC)

We estimate the pollution costs related to toll collection on the GSP
using Sisson’s (1995) estimates of pollution production from decelerating

an automobile to zero miles per hour and then reaccelerating to the same
speed. Sisson (1995) examined three vehicle classes (pre-1979, 1980-
1988, and 1989-1994) in his study and their corresponding production of —
Nitrous

Appendix A-8

Oxide, Hydrocarbons, and Carbon Monoxide. While

' The estimated wage rate is from the Bureau of Labor Statistic’s 1998
estimate of the average income of New Jersey residents ($39,516).
Dividing this number by a two thousand hour work year results in an
average hourly wage of $19.75.

this was representative of the automobile population in
1995, our estimates of pollution production in 2000 are
taken from the most recent period.” The fleet average
output of pollutants for this cohort, per acceleration, net
of what would be created by a quarter mile transit at 65
m.p.h., are given in row two of Table 1. Based on
these estimates, the cost per kg of pollutant, and the
total number of toll collections on the GSP during the
year 2000, we estimate the total cost of pollution from
toll collection at $12,702,011. With toll collection
revenue on the GSP reported to be $152,656,602 for
the year 2000, pollution costs represent 8.32% of
revenue collected’. ,

Appendix A-9

2 Emission standards for Hydrocarbons, Carbon Monoxide, and Nitrous
Oxide have remained constant for automobiles and light trucks since
1994. The Sisson (1995) data is attached as Appendix 1.

3 Details of our pollution calculations are included in Appendix 2.

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-Appendix A-10-

This estimate is on the conservative side because we
did not estimate the queuing costs for the GSP. Given
that the commuter on the GSP currently has three
payment choices — manual, exact change and low-
speed EZ-Pass, and that traffic volumes vary greatly
over the course of the day, estimating the costs related
to queuing are very complex and beyond the scope of
this study. Nevertheless, including queuing would only
increase pollution costs aS a percent of revenue
collected, further bolstering our argument in favor of
including pollution costs in the total cost equation.

Total Societal Cost (TSC)

From equation 5, total societal cost represents the sum
of administrative, compliance and pollution costs. In
the case of the GSP in the year 2000, we estimate total
societal cost of toll collection to be $54,566,340 or
39.75% of revenue collected (see Table 2), and
pollution costs represent 20.93% of TSC, only slightly
less than compliance costs.

Appendix A-11

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Conclusion

Economists should not ignore pollution costs when
estimating the total cost of toll collection. By examining
the pollution costs on the Garden State Parkway we
have shown that, even without measuring the
environmental impact. of queuing, pollution costs
constitute 20.93% of the total societal cost of toll
‘ collection, or 8.32% of revenue collected.

The model we develop in this paper will assist public
policy makers in making optimal decisions regarding
toll collection procedures. For example, the cost
estimates in this Paper are based on a one hundred
percent manual toll collection process.‘ If high speed,
automated toll collection procedures were
implemented, or if tolls were Partially or completely
eliminated, we would expect pollution costs to decline
Significantly. These types of policy issues can only be
properly analyzed if- all costs/benefits are accounted
for, including those regarding the environment.

Appendix A-13

* The GSP is currently only using a low speed collection method, which
our research indicates results in almost the Same amount of pollution as
manual toll collection. See our kinetic energy calculations attached as
Appendix 3 for further details on the loss of energy caused by the
slowing of vehicles in toll plaza.

Bibliography

Arnott, Richard, Andre de Palma and Robin
Lindsey. “A Structural Model of Peak-Period
Congestion: A Traffic Bottleneck with Elastic Demand.”
American Economic Review 83 No. 1 (March 1993): ©
161-79.

Burris, Mark W. and Hilderbrand, Eric D. "Using
Microsimulation to Quantify the Impact of Electronic
Toll Collection” /TE Journal Vol. 66 (July 1996): 21-24.

Friedman, David and Waldfogel, Joel. “The
Administrative and Compliance Cost of Manual
Highway Toll Collection: Evidence from Massachusetts
and New Jersey.” National Tax Journal Volume 48,
Number 2 (June 1995): 217-228.

New Jersey Highway Authority. "Traffic Counts and
Revenue Collection by Toll Plaza - 2000".
Woodbridge, New Jersey, 2001

Seila, Andrew F. and Paul W. Wilson. “Deadweight
Loss in Highway Toll Collection.” Transportation
Research-B Vol. 25B No. 2/3 (1991): 127-141.

Appendix A-14

Sisson, Mark. “Air Quality benefits of electronic toll
collection.” Transportation Quarterly Volume 49 (Fall
1995): 93-101.

Vickrey, William S. “Pricing in Urban and Suburban
Transport.” American Economic Review Volume 53
No. 2 (May 1963): 452-465.

Appendix A-15

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Appendix A-18

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