The tax, which is set at 18.4 cents per gallon, is not indexed to inflation and has not been raised since 1993. In addition, the rise of hybrid vehicles and more fuel-efficient cars and trucks has caused the tax revenues to fall. The Highway Trust Fund will be bankrupt next year unless Congress acts, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The pro-toll effort has the support of many state and local transportation officials. They argue that local officials, who can raise their own fuel and sales taxes, cannot come up with the trillions of dollars needed to repair, or in some cases rebuild, sections of the federal Interstate System.

“If Congress is not going to sufficiently fund transportation, and there is no appetite to increase the gas tax, we have to have the ability to add tolls,” said former Gov. Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, co-chairman of the Building America’s Future Educational Fund, a bipartisan group that is intended to address transportation issues.

The opponents, under an umbrella group called the Alliance for a Toll-Free Interstate, include the American Trucking Association, UPS, FedEx, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts. The companies say that adding tolls would cause drivers to be taxed twice for driving on the same road — once in paying federal gasoline taxes and again by tolls.

And they argue that the new tolls could hurt states that would have to pay for repairs on secondary roads that would deteriorate faster if enough drivers used them as alternatives. By law, money from the Highway Trust Fund cannot be used for state roads.

“Tolling existing Interstate lanes is the least efficient, least effective mechanism to fund transportation in the long term,” said Hayes Framme, a spokesman for the alliance.

Congress banned tolls on Interstate highways in 1956 when it created the national system under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.