Despite opposition from local trucking groups, Rhode Island is planning to resume collecting its truck-only tolls in 2026.
On Tuesday, June 10, the state’s House Finance Committee voted 11-3 to approve a reworked $14.33 billion budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year – April through June 2026. Included in the state’s budget was an estimated $10 million in revenue collected through the RhodeWorks truck tolling program.
That figure mirrors the number announced in January by Gov. Dan McKee, when the governor’s office unveiled its original budget proposal.
“The committee also maintained the governor’s assumption that the state’s toll gantries for commercial trucks, shut down for several years over a lawsuit that the state ultimately won, would be reactivated by the final months of the year to generate $10 million in revenue,” the committee said.
The committee expects those tolls to resume in the first half of 2026. The state estimates that given a full year to perform, the tolls will generate roughly $40 million in revenue for Rhode Island.
The state is looking to resume the truck-only tolls following a lengthy court battle.
In September 2022, a U.S. District Court in Rhode Island ruled that the state’s truck tolling plan violated the dormant commerce clause – which prohibits states from imposing charges with the intent to discriminate in favor of domestic, and against out-of-state or interstate, entities.
Less than a month after being ordered to stop collecting tolls, the state appealed the district court’s ruling. In December 2024, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the state, opening the door for the state to turn the tolls back on, with some adjustments.
While the appeals court determined the state could resume its tolling program, it declared the daily caps placed on the tolls to be unconstitutional, stating they disproportionately benefitted local trucking companies.
Without the daily caps in place, local trucking groups do not support the state resuming the truck-only tolls.
In May, the Rhode Island Trucking Association sent a letter to the governor and members of the state’s General Assembly, urging lawmakers to not reinstate the tolls without a daily cap.
According to the trucking group, the daily caps were added to the 2016 legislation that established the tolls as means to “protect local businesses and stymie opposition” for the tolling program.
“The caps were a covenant made with the local business community and within the General Assembly to ensure passage,” Christopher Maxwell, president of the Rhode Island Trucking Association, said in the group’s letter. “Proceeding to reactivate the tolls without the caps would defy a promise made a decade ago and would decimate our state’s supply chain by levying unsustainable tolls on the local trucking industry, small businesses and ultimately the consumer.”
The group said that operating under an uncapped program would result in an estimated 94% of the tolls collected from the program coming from local businesses.
“This is not even close to the legislation passed in 2016, and our state’s leaders have an obligation to stop any version of it from being implemented,” Maxwell said. “The program was originally meant to target interstate carriers, and now it’s all backfired. A deal is a deal.”
The approved budget will now head to the full House of Representatives, which is scheduled to take it up on June 17. LL
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