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Good news and bad news for turnpike drivers
By adamg on Mon, 11/10/2008 - 2:01pm
If you only drive on the turnpike west of 128, you'll love the governor's plan to eliminate the turnpike authority. If you travel between 128 and downtown, though, you'll hate it: Patrick's proposing to ditch all tolls west of 128, but hike them inside 128 to pay for the Big Dig.
West of 128, the state highway department would take over maintenance of the road; east of it, say hello to your new Massport overlords.
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Comments
Read it again
The plan is to keep the tolls at I-84 (Sturbridge) and West Stockbridge (where it turns into the New York State Thruway). I assume these would become simple cash/ticket/FastLane barriers, with no more ticket system.
Border control!
Gotta keep the riffraff out.
In the meantime, if I get on at 128 and drive out to Framingham, no tolls (well, in my case, I take Rte. 9 west in the morning, then take the turnpike east to 128 in the afternoon, where I cost the turnpike authority 47 cents to process my 30-cent toll, so the new system will be win/win for both me and the state).
Not clear what happens to the Weston toll barrier
since that's right at Route 128, neither west nor east of it.
I can see a couple of unintended consequences to this plan:
- Some NYC-Boston traffic, especially trucks, diverts to I-395 instead of I-84 to avoid both the remaining Sturbridge toll booth and the delays associated with it
- Some towns in central and Western Massachusetts start demanding their own new I-90 interchanges, since without tolls, such interchanges can be simple diamonds.
Informed speculation
Informed as in "me making stuff up, but anyway ..."
There are actually two 128 toll plazas - the one for people continuing toward Boston (or coming from it) and the one for people getting onto/off of 128. I bet the tolls will stay on the Boston one and go away for the 128 one, based on the fact that the former's already more expensive than the latter.
But, why?
I don't necessarily have a problem with taking down the tollbooths but I don't understand why some would come down but not others. Only the ones in the middle???
Is the Mass Pike under-used? I think you could make an argument it is. Perhaps if the tolls all come down, it would take pressure off side roads and actually improve traffic flow?
I guess the increase in tolls at Rt 128 and inside would have another desired effect - perhaps less traffic into the city?
Voila! We have "congestion pricing".
Except for
the people coming in from the south and the north*. You know, the ones who actually are using the tunnels that need to be paid for.
*(Striaght north. 93. People coming in from the northeast pay at the bridge or the tunnels.)
Id like to see a system that
Id like to see a system that actually takes into account that you may be heading on a weird commute. Ive turned down jobs in Framingham because I would hit so many tolls between my place on the northshore and Framingham if I took the correct route that its no longer worth it. Im driving against the grain, so I would be using underutilized roads, I shouldnt have to pay the same toll as those people heading into the city on congested streets. My toll season begins at the airport where I pay 3 dollars just to get onto the pike!
Another Idea
Every year you get a car inspection. Every car inspection notes the number of miles on your car.
Pay by the mile anyone? To make it work, the money would have to be hard-wired to the highway and road system funds, though.
Watch how many people
...suddenly claim they spent the entire year driving around Saskatchewan, and only came back to MA for the inspection, and thus are exempt somehow.
Same thing
Same thing as speeding cameras, which are in wide use in other countries (I got nabbed fair and square by one in Brazil, zipping along in my little Gol, and considered it much better than being stopped by a cop).
But when you bring up speeding cameras in the US, people get all up on their theoretical-litigious high horse and say 'well, can you prove it was me driving my car? Hah? Can ya? It coulda been anybody!'
If they put in mileage-based taxation here, the courts would clog up with idiots suing the government on the basis that you can't prove that somebody didn't steal their car in the middle of the night, drive it to Anchorage, bring it back...
That and you'll get people hacking their car computers right and left to bring down the odometer.
That doesnt solve the
That doesnt solve the problem of congestion. I travel less then 6 miles most days to get to work, but I go right through some of most congested intersections Ive ever seen everyday. It wouldnt be fair for someone who is traveling against the grain who happens to drive 10 miles a day if my tax was less then his, but he wasnt contributing to congestion and I was. I like the concept but it would be hard to enforce. I think they could set the toll booths up in such a way that they charge different prices depending on which way your going and the time of day. So in my case the toll to get onto the pike would be higher then it is now, but once the system saw me heading away from the traffic it would start giving me a break on tolls. On the way back I would get the same treatment for the booths heading into the city, but would once again pay more once I was under Boston and heading back to the airport where I would once again join the traffic.
The entire point would be to encourage people to use the North and South sides of a highway everyday instead of just the north or just the south. In many industries salaries are less once you leave Boston proper anyway, so lower tolls may encourage more people to take those jobs outside of the city, thereby releasing some of the congestion at our bottle necks.
Idiotic plan. This will only
Idiotic plan.
This will only encourage more sprawl outside of Boston as its suddenly cheaper to commute outside 128.
Why are we removing tolls? Modernize them to cost less (less people), but the money is still needed for maintenance and, gasp, encourage commuter rail use.
Well,
It might encourage more suburban sprawl also because more and more people might decided to move closer to their workplaces outside the city. Just speculating.
Gas Tax
Increase the gasoline tax a few cents per gallon, use the resulting revenue to fund MassHighway and the MBTA. Lose the tolls, period. They're inherently unfair, and we're all in this together, right?
You are making entirely too
You are making entirely too much sense. You need to remember the classic political doggerel: "Don't tax you, don't tax me, tax the man behind the tree." The people behind the tree are the poor suckers who happen to live west of Boston and work in the city. Why are they paying for the Big Dig when people from Plymouth and Lynnfield don't have to? Because there is no need to tax them - we already are taxing them.
Next I'll explain why smokers have to pay a new tax to finance the operating budget of the state. That would be because I don't smoke.