How about tolls on Rte. 3 to add a lane?

^ This is exactly the kind of wrong-headed attitude that I meant.

Congestion pricing is VERY progressive, not regressive. What's regressive is forcing a bus full of passengers to get stuck in traffic. Congestion pricing can both help pay the cost of running the bus (making it cheap and easy for low-income workers to use it) and can keep the bus out of traffic jams (making it reliable).

People on the bottom of the totem pole, whose boss says "Be here on the dot of 9:00 or you're fired," are stuck

If your boss says that, do you really think it's an excuse to say "well, I was stuck in traffic, but at least everybody else was stuck in the same exact traffic."

Sounds more like spite, to me.

the idea is to widen the southern end of Route 3 to three lanes in each direction (a project that has been on the radar for a long time, even with the construction of the Old Colony lines).

Construction would be financed by a private company, which would foot the capital for the work based on the expected future toll revenue they will receive for operating the road once it is widened.

This is similar to the funding strategy that was used for Virginia's HOT lanes on the Capital Beltway (open) and I-95 (pending).

First, to qualify for an Interstate designation, especially extension of a principal (i.e. not a loop or spur route) Interstate, the roadway in question has to be in substantial conformance with current Interstate design standards. Most of Route 3 south of Derby Street does not meet those standards.

Second, per established conventions for numbering Interstate highways, a principal Interstate route should connect to another Interstate route at its beginning and end points. Although there are some exceptions to this rule (such as I-90 ending at Route 1A in East Boston), both AASHTO and FHWA, which normally oversee the assignment of Interstate numbers (not counting Interstate 99 in Pennsylvania, which was created by an Act of Congress), have been very reluctant to grant exceptions to the current numbering conventions.

Lastly, there has been a project under discussion since the 1990s to widen Route 24 between Fall River and Raynham. If and when this project (which is still being pursued despite the work on South Coast Rail) is completed, MassDOT's plan is to disconnect I-93 from I-95 in Canton and re-route it via current Route 24 down to I-195 in Fall River. What the broken link between I-95 and Route 24 will be numbered is anybody's guess at this point, but that's another story.

While other states, such as New York, currently have roads designated as "Future Interstate XX", that designation has been established for specific corridors where providing an Interstate route is deemed to improve connectivity within the Interstate system. With respect, I'm not convinced that extending the I-93 designation down to Cape Cod will provide enough improved Interstate connectivity to justify the re-designation.

A small percentage of people who have been using "smart" tolling and EzPass have been getting huge fines when not getting ignoring multiple bills or notifications that they used an E-ZPass lane without a transponder. FIFY.

As for "their credit card charges did not go through", for all practical purposes this is impossible. You obviously don't know how E-ZPass accounts works.

Hey, they take care of the kid during the day, and they are regulated by the Department of Early Education. All I know is that my kid learned the word oval there.

and then beats Liz Warren tolls will be a thing of the past.....