For a Jersey driver, tolled at every turn, there is nothing quite as satisfying as heading out across the country on the Interstate Highway System.

Once you escape our area, you might as well throw your E-ZPass out the window.

This is a great pleasure. But there are many forces conspiring against those of us who want to keep the “free” in freeway.

Some years ago there was a move to put tolls on Interstate 80 across Pennsylvania, but it was beaten back by the forces of freedom. Just recently such a move was throttled in Wyoming.

But the politicians planning such moves are never satisfied. We learned last week that the New Jersey Turnpike Commission, which implemented a massive toll hike just eight years ago, is pondering yet another price increase.

That became news only because Advance Media reporter Larry Higgs was the sole media representative at the commission meeting, which was being held the same day as Gov. Phil Murphy’s budget speech.

Higgs noticed a “last-minute addition” to the agenda that called for hearings later this month on “proposed capital program and supporting revenue enhancement.”

Officials provided no other details, so we don’t know just what those revenue enhancements might be. But as recently as 2012, the Turnpike Authority, which also runs the Garden State Parkway, got a revenue enhancement to the tune of 53 percent.

And then in 2016, the state Department of transportation got another big revenue enhancement, a hike in the gas tax to the current 23 cents a gallon.

I don’t mind paying the gas tax. You have to pay for roads in some fashion, and at current rates the state and federal gas tax costs the driver of a typical car only about two cents a mile.

But current Turnpike tolls can exceed 30 cents per mile on the northern end – on top of the gas tax. That’s enough enhancement for now.

The defenders of tolls say that paying them is a choice. You can always go up Routes 1 and 9 if you don’t feel like paying them.

True. But then there’s the latest revenue enhancement that every red-blooded American driver despises.

That’s right; I’m talking about the dread VMT.

That’s bureaucratese for “Vehicle Mileage Tax.” The people pushing the VMT want every car to be fitted with what amounts to a glorified E-ZPass transponder, one that can measure your mileage wherever you go.

I’d like to blame this on those nanny-state Democrats, but there are plenty of Republicans pushing it as well. I learned that when I came across an article on the website of the nation’s leading toll-advocacy group, the International Bridge, Turnpike and Tunnel Association, otherwise known as the IBTTA.

The article described how the Republican ranking member on the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Sam Graves of Missouri, “is looking to vehicle miles tax/traveled to raise $1 trillion for highway, bridge, and other infrastructure repairs.”

The article went on to state that leading Democrats also endorse the VMT and that all are hoping to get the Trump administration to back the idea of a national VMT.

But what interested me, as a Jersey driver, was the author’s citing of our Transportation Commissioner, Diane Gutierrez-Scaccetti, in the piece.

“There is no more important funding decision than that which involves this nation’s transportation network,” she is quoted as telling the House Ways and Means Committee at a Jan. 29 hearing. “When the transportation system fails, our economy is in jeopardy. When the transportation system fails, families are disconnected and most importantly, when our transportation system fails, our national defense is compromised.”

Gutierrez-Scaccetti is second vice-president of the IBTTA. Before Murphy hired her, she was executive director of the Florida Turnpike, where she was a leading innovator in the field of maximizing toll revenues. She’s also chair of the Turnpike Authority board.

The article implied that she supported the VMT. But does she? Neither the IBTTA nor the DOT press people could tell me.

However in that committee testimony, Gutierrez-Scaccetti came out in favor of a less controversial proposal to rescue the federal Highway Trust Fund, which can no longer fund the Interstate Highway System: She advocated indexing the federal gas tax to inflation.

“Do not abandon the gas tax as the primary method of funding transportation projects,” she testified.

That certainly sounds like common sense.

Now just change “primary” to “only” and you’ve got a proposal that we Jersey drivers would love to see.

But when it comes to toll hikes, we’ve had a lifetime supply.