Like
it or not, get ready to pay tolls on our Interstates and Parkways. Transportation
officials in Hartford say there’s just no other way to raise badly needed
money for over-due infrastructure repairs.
Tolls may not be popular, but neither are collapsing
bridges.
In
the last decade’s debate on highway tolling, here are the five biggest lies
that opponents have used to stall the return of highway tolls:
1) The
Federal Government Won’t Let Us:
Also known as “We’ll have to return millions in federal funding”. Not true, as US DOT officials told us at a
SWRPA-sponsored meeting in Westport years ago.
The federal government regularly allows tolls to be used as traffic
mitigation and revenue raising tools.
2) Our
Highways Should Be Free:
So should ice cream and donuts.
Nothing is free, including the cost of repairing I-95 and removing snow
from the Merritt. Gasoline taxes come
nowhere near to raising the needed revenue. Driving is a privilege, not a
right. It should come with a cost.
3) Tolls
Will Slow Traffic:
It’s not 1965 anymore. Tolling
doesn’t require highway-wide barriers with booths and gates. Just look at the NJ Turnpike or Garden State
Parkway, where barrier-free tolls using EZPass allow you to pay at 55 mph.
4) Tollbooths
Cause Accidents:
See #3 above. This
happened once, 29 years ago, in Milford, and was used as an excuse to end
tolling in the state. If toll barriers are
unsafe, why don’t fiery truck crashes happen daily at the hundreds of other toll
barriers around the US?
5) Highway
Tolls Will Divert Traffic to Local Roads: This may be
true, for about the first week. If
people would rather drive for free on the Boston Post Road than pay 50 cents to
save an hour by taking I-95, let ‘em. Few
drivers are that cheap, or stupid.
Trust
me, I know about tolls and toll booths. I spent three summers in college working
as a toll collector on the Tappan Zee Bridge. The toll was only 50 cents to cross the
mighty Hudson, but people still didn’t like paying it. (Today the toll is $5).
Connecticut
pioneered toll roads as
early as the late 18th century.
But today our state is facing billions in over-due bridge and highway
repairs. And federal aid for
transportation may be cut from $469 million to $301 million. So why are we in
this current mess? Who’s to blame? Us!
We’re
the ones that stupidly pushed CT lawmakers to cut the gas tax 14 cents a gallon
in 1997. And we’re the ones making it
political suicide for legislators today to say they support tolls, even though
they know tolls are inevitable.
Pick
your poison: “free” driving on pothole-filled
highways with collapsing bridges… or pay a few bucks for a safe, speedy ride. I
vote for the tolls.
2 comments:
From a reader in Colorado...
Hi Jim, 1st – I’m from Colorado, so the tolls in CT don’t affect me.
2nd – I agree with almost everything you said! I actually love toll roads, however, I don’t understand why there is such a discrepancy in cost – in TX, I paid about 1/3 as much as I do here in CO – I don’t get it?
3rd – The reason for my email: I would be one to vote for lowering Gas Taxes as well!!!! Why? Because those taxes are rarely used for actually doing something about the roads! CT may have been different, but our roads across the country are in bad shape (bridges too) precisely BECAUSE we don’t use those taxes for what they are SUPPOSED to be used for. They end up paying for people who won’t work, for government programs that have little benefit except for the bureaucrats who run them and for some pet project in Podunk, USA.
I want the government to be starved of money so that they get back to what the government is supposed to do, and that is take care of things like on The Five Biggest Lies About Highway Tolls
John Reeb
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