I do not understand how US Interstates can charge tolls...they get the same funding all other interstate highways get. There is no other way to get across Ohio other than the turnpike, so every one is forced on to it. If you tried to cross the state on the north side in any other way it would probably take a day. Fuel taxes are supposed to pay for the roads, and everyone pays fuel taxes. I don’t understand why the eastern states have such a huge proliferation for toll roads (In fact I believe almost all of them were temporary (temporary 50 years ago). Western states (with the exception of money grubbing California and a wee bit in Texas) do not have toll roads, and our roads have to go over mountains and stuff, Ohio’s turnpike is 300 miles of perfectly flat road.
Ohio 2 gets from Toledo to Elyria fairly well and is limited access for a good part of the way.
Montana has plenty of miles of “flat”(nothing is really flat out West) highway with only a few passes in the west.
Interstates are funded and maintained in four ways:
Toll roads, that mostly predate the Interstate Highway System and were grandfathered into it.
Chargeable Interstate Highways, the 42,000 miles which form the heart of the system in the 50 states, DC, and Puerto Rico.* They are financed by the Federal government via gas taxes and the like.
Non-Chargeable interstates that are financed solely by the states, but are numbered as part of the system.
A small number of roads or parts of roads that are maintained by municipal authorities.
*Several states have unsigned Interstates. They are signed as state or US highways but financed as part of the system. All four of Alaska’s (Interstates A1-A4) and all three of Puerto Rico’s (Interstates PR1-PR3) are part of the system, but not built to Interstate standards.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_Highway_System