Right way to pay: improving North Carolina's interstate highways will cost more than $20 billion over 25 years. Charge based on usage is the best way to keep traffic moving.

• Author: Hood, John
• Position: Free & Clear

Have you been on North Carolina's stretch of Interstate 95 lately? How about the parking lots otherwise known as 1-77, I-85 and I-40 during the rush hours in our major cities? Or on a rural stretch of one of these highways after an accident? The answer to at least one of these questions is likely to be a "yes," which means that you have personal experience with North Carolina's share of a broader problem: the poor condition of our nation's largest surface-transportation system.

Interstate-quality highways were a major boon to the productivity of American commerce and the quality of American life. But now, more than half a century after construction began on the network, its age is showing. The original interstates were designed to last 50 years. Some have reached that point already. Most other interstates will do so over the next two decades.

Even discounting for probably inflated estimates from firms that stand to gain from such projects, the cost of updating our interstate system to the demands of the 21st century is likely to approach $1 trillion over the next 35 years. That's about $600 billion to rebuild the existing roadways plus another $400 billion to add sufficient lanes, shoulders and other infrastructure to accommodate the mobility and safety needs of the motorists who will use them. Here are the relevant estimates for our state, according to a 2013 report from the Los Angeles-based Reason Foundation: Over the next 35 years, we'll need to spend $11.3 billion reconstructing North Carolina's interstates and an additional $9.4 billion widening them.

The expected stream of revenue from current state and federal taxes won't even come close to financing the job. Yes, you can quote this fiscal conservative on that. I know very well that transportation departments waste money, as do most government agencies (and large bureaucracies of any kind, as it happens). Here in North Carolina, my John Locke Foundation colleagues and I have identified many millions of dollars in annual savings from eliminating low-priority road projects, contracting out services, and ending diversions of gas and car taxes to non-highway programs. Recent reforms enacted by state legislators and the McCrory administration will produce some of these savings in the coming years. Our leaders should go further in advancing such reforms. But that still won't be enough, not if we want to get our interstates and other critical roads into shape over the coming decades.

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