“Toll increases must be considered imminently,” says the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority (via Boston.com). This news comes just two weeks after a 25- to 50 cent toll increase on I90. What’s the rush? “Fiscal woes” could delay more than $65m worth of construction and maintenance work on the 138-mile-long highway. Time for some regrets as well. In 1996, six exits at the western end of the highway (Exit 1 to Exit 6) became toll-free to passenger vehicles. That move “has deprived the authority of $120 million that could have staved off the growing backlog of maintenance work,” says Turnpike Authority board member Mary Z. Connaughton. State Senator Michael R. Knapik says reinstating tolls on the first six exits "would not be a popular step at all, to say the least.” State Representative David P. Linsky puts a finer point on it. "I am adamantly opposed to tolls going up, because I know that over 50 percent of the tolls we're paying now on the Weston-to-Boston extension aren't going to the road we're riding on, but to the Big Dig," he decries. Taxation without transportation?
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Drivers on the NJ Turnpike feel your pain, Boston.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/12/nyregion/12tolls.html
50% per year for the next for years, and then an annual 3% increase until 2022.
California built Freeways and became a great financial powerhouse state for decades. NY built the Thruway and said that tolls would last “just a few years” until the road was paid for. NY politicians lied. Upstate NY has been a financial basket case for decades.
In other countries private concerns build roads and bridges (even tunnels) and run them for a few decades until turning them over to the government. It’s a system that works, but not here.
Wait…people in Mass are complaining about taxes? I thought thats why they lived there. Ah well. I’m not a fan of toll roads for having to pay tolls, but hardly anyone ever uses any of the toll roads around here, so they shave about fifteen minutes off my drive to work. Pay for convience, I guess.
I can’t think of a single place that deserves taxhikes more. Well, maybe the San Fran area.
Everyone, get your facts straight. MA is not “taxachusetts” any longer. That’s like saying Republicans are fiscal conservatives…
http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/topic/35.html
http://www.massbudget.org/BusinessTaxRanksUpdated.pdf
@ folkdancer:
NY built the Thruway and said that tolls would last “just a few years” until the road was paid for.
I90 tolls in Western NY feature other brutal time wasters:
1) Lack of access. Often you have to drive for dozens of miles east or west to get on. It also drives up congestion on secondary roads.
2) Congestion at tool booths. Yes, even with an Easy-Pass tag, 10-15 minute waits are not uncommon due to very limited numbers of toll lanes.
NY politicians lied. Upstate NY has been a financial basket case for decades.
And the sheeple of NY keep electing the same degenerate political class. The only hope for tolls to disappear: Federal Legislation. Someday, an ambitious wannabe NY Congressman/Senator will capitalize on anti-toll sentiment.
New Jersey’s plans for toll hikes are shocking. Quasimondo, I will feel YOUR pain when those tolls start to skyrocket, vicariously, and once or twice a year when I drive to DC to visit friends and relatives. If those tolls really go up like that, I might end up driving through Pennsylvania instead of on America’s Main Street (the NJ TPK). I actually love it. Anyone who wants a copy of my article on the NJ tpk as an American icon, from Car and Driver, email me at motorlegends@aol.com.
His Lordship, King Jon Corzine I, has decreed that us peasants must give our liege his due. Considering the Atlantic City Expressway and Garden State Parkway are my main conduit roads, I’m pissed. We already pay $2.50 to travel 40 miles, about 6 cents a mile. It will $14 friggin dollars under our liege’s new commands, 35 cents A MILE!!!!
I won’t get into how this
1. Drives transportation and commerce away from the state
2. Disproportionately hurts the poorer commuter versus the wealthier shore and city dweller
3. Will aggravate the decayed condition of our secondary roads and bridges
4. Won’t change anything because the sheeple in NJ will do whatever the Camden County and Essex County Democratic Party command them to do.
Jon Corzine almost loses his life on the Garden State Parkway in South Jersey (actually in my township) for not wearing a seatbelt when his state paid SUV crashed at 90MPH, so now he’s going to take out his vengeance on the toll roads. All the while enriching his buddies at Goldman Sachs with the largest bond issue EVER paid by our ridiculously increased tolls. I’m not one to be overly mean, but it’s actually a shame the Parkway didn’t claim his life; we wouldn’t be paying for his mistake if it had.
Anyone want to protest, he has very quietly announced a series of townhall meetings here
http://www.state.nj.us/townhallmeetings/listing/
Hey, at least your government still owns the roads and sets the fares. Here in Ontario, we ‘leased’ our toll road to a private Spanish company for 99 years – and they set the fares.
Hey hey hey!!!
I don’t want to hear EVEN ONE person from Massachusetts complain about this.
You guys got the Red Sox, the Celtics, AND THE PATRIOTS. If the mayor wants to de-flower every bride in Boston before her marriage I don’t wanna hear a peep out of you guys. NOT A PEEP.
If MA had done more oversight of the Big Pig, er Big Dig they might not be in this problem now.
Pleeeze dont take this as a defense of Taxachusetts. But the I 90 extension to Logan airport is a wonderful thing. I 90 in general from end to end in MA and most of NY too is one of my favorite roads. Mebbe because i only use it to get to fun stuff. I havent driven I 95 south of RI in over 30 yrs. When I head south, I drive an hour west and then cut south on I 81. Its a much less stressful drive.
Yeas ago, Connecticut had some 19 toll booths, most of them along I95. We have none now, as CT began tearing the things down after an 18-wheeler slammed into a line of cars waiting in line at a toll booth, killing seven women and children in a fiery accident.
Every now and again, the state’s need for cash resurrects talk of reinstating some form of toll roads. Hopefully, that won’t come to pass.
PA is trying to toll I-80 and has asked Uncle Sugar for permission to do so. A large chunk of the proceeds will go to pay for the SEPTA public transport in Philly. Your looking at 25 dollars one way from Ohio to NJ for a car, 330 for a semi truck. Federal money built it now the PA legislature wants to use it as an ATM.
jazbo123:
I can’t think of a single place that deserves taxhikes more. Well, maybe the San Fran area.
Care to explain that one?
Abolish income tax and we can talk about constitutionally correct direct taxes (i.e. tolls for roads.)
Here in Knoxville, with the convergence of I-40 and I-75, they have been proposing a bypass for the utterly huge amount of Interstate truck traffic which currently goes right through the center of town for over 25 miles.
Give us a new bypass with tolls and put the trucks on it. I am in no way against truckers, but on any given morning there is a big rig for every ten cars, and that is no exaggeration.
Give Eastern TN the bypass toll road now!
Jesse :
January 17th, 2008 at 10:29 am
jazbo123:
I can’t think of a single place that deserves taxhikes more. Well, maybe the San Fran area.
Care to explain that one?
They are both areas that continuously vote in redistributionist politicians.
They are both areas that continuously vote in redistributionist politicians.
The irony of this statment is that if we talk about redistribution of federal tax revenues, it is states like Mass, California and New York that get far less than they pay out. The perfect example is the power of low-population farm states that benefit from farm-subsidy and ethanol programs.
morbo,
I feel your pain. I used to live in Camden County NJ. Finally got out and moved to New Castle County DE (of all the Northeastern states, Delaware seemed to be the most sane). Now I live in FL.
jazbo123 :
January 17th, 2008 at 11:43 am
They are both areas that continuously vote in redistributionist politicians.
So because we tend to vote liberal we deserve an unnecessary tax on a road that was paid off years ago? I don’t follow.
bunkie: The irony of this statment is that if we talk about redistribution of federal tax revenues, it is states like Mass, California and New York that get far less than they pay out.
Maybe that is because their populations tend to elect legislators who favor higher federal taxes designed to hit higher income earners…the only problem being that, given that the cost of living is higher in those states, salaries must be higher, too.
Hence, residents are more likely to be hit with taxes designed to “soak the rich,” because by, say, Alabama standards, even upper-middle income folks in California or New York are “rich,” if we consider income.
(The dirty little secret of taxation is that just taxing the super rich – i.e, the Paris Hiltons and Donald Trumps of the world – will not raise nearly enough revenue to pay for government programs. Hence, the need to hit middle-income and upper-middle income taxpayers with increased taxes. Guess what – most of those taxpayers live in New York, California, Massachusetts, etc.)
If I recall correctly, one of the Democrat candidates for president (I believe it was Barack Obama) wanted to hike taxes on incomes over $75,000.
Out here in rural Pennsylvania, I can live quite nicely on $75,000 a year. I doubt that would be the case in San Francisco or Boston, especially if I am buying a house.
bunkie: The perfect example is the power of low-population farm states that benefit from farm-subsidy and ethanol programs.
And yet, every time the federal government attempts to cut or eliminate farm subsidies, we are treated to stories about the “failing family farmer” and how awful it is that the federal government isn’t doing anything to help him (or her).
Most of those stories are played up Democrats, and I even recall several prominent actresses (Sissy Spacek and Jessica Lange among them – I’d be shocked if they are Republicans or even Libertarians) testifying before Congress, urging it to “do something” for farmers. When Democrats lead the charge to eliminate farm subsidies, let me know…
@GS650G: That’s not entirely accurate. Gov. Rendell’s plan to toll I-80 would generate some revenue to create stable funding sources for SEPTA and for Port Authority Transit in Pittsburgh (as well as other transit agencies in smaller Pennsylvania cities), but a majority of the revenue would be used to maintain and rebuild the state’s shockingly rundown road and highway infrastructure. Since I-80 is overwhelmingly used by out-of-state cars and trucks that are merely crossing PA (in connects NYC with points west, and crosses a whole lotta nothing in PA), it sort of makes sense. Make someone else pay.