2012.02.07
Editorial: The results of no-tax ideology
Toll roads in Virginia’s future
Hampton Roads drivers are finding out public/private partnerships are no free ride. They won’t be the last.
Republican complacency that Virginia really has no need to raise transportation taxes, just the will to spend tax dollars more wisely and efficiently, has given way to a new refrain, though the tune remains the same.
Virginia does need to put a lot more money into its deteriorating transportation system, and quickly, Gov. Bob McDonnell acknowledges. But raise the gas tax — or any tax — to do so? Pish posh.
No tax? We have a gas tax, an income tax, a sales tax, fees, licenses, etc. Where do you get this “no tax” stuff.
Comment by Henry — February 7, 2012 @ 8:15 am
Use the road, pay the toll. I like it way more than tax everyone.
Comment by Uptheriver — February 7, 2012 @ 8:55 am
How about we just stop wasteful spending in other areas to make up for the “shortfall” in money to fix our transportation system.
Comment by JimW — February 7, 2012 @ 9:26 am
The RTEB doesn’t consider a toll to be a form of user tax?
Comment by 89Hoo — February 7, 2012 @ 9:39 am
If people do not want to pay for roads and bridges, then the VDOT should close all public information offices and fire personnel involved in any kind of public outreach, involvement or information. Save the money spent informing and updating an apathetic public and spend it on infrastructure. If the people do not care, why should VDOT? If that is not enough, fire all the engineers who look at new projects and design them. If we have no money for them, this is wasted time, effort and money. VDOT needs to give the public exactly what it pays for an not a dimes worth more. They want to only be in the patching, paving and refurb business as we lose corporations and money, so be it.
Comment by Sandi Saunders — February 7, 2012 @ 11:07 am
#2 Use the gas to drive Virginia’s roads, pay the gas tax. What’s the diff, UTR? Except that you pay no matter what road you drive on, which seems fair to me. And you don’t have to pay unnecessary money to build toll plazas. And you don’t have to pay people to work the plazas. And traffic doesn’t get slowed at every toll area, backing up folks even more.
Comment by gdad — February 7, 2012 @ 12:07 pm
Having grown up in Hampton Roads and been there during the time when the last remaining toll facility was there, I can explain why people there are highly opposed. I-264 connecting I-64 near Newtown Road with the Virginia Beach oceanfront used to be State Route 44, which was a toll facility. If you are driving it near Mt. Trashmore, you can still see the remaining indications of the major toll plaza that used to be located there, mainly the odd, seemingly misplaced hump in the highway. The tolls were enacted on that highway to fund its construction (opened in 1967), much like the PPTA plans call for. However, the tolls were left in place after construction of the highway was paid off (1995), drawing the ire of citizens of the region. The tolls were eventually removed (1996) and the facility re-designated as an extension of I-264 (1999), which used to end at the interchange with I-64 and SR 44. The tolls for that highway were not overly onerous though, a quarter at the main plaza and a dime at the on/off ramps.
$1.84 each way for the Downtown or Midtown Tunnels would go over like a turd in a punch bowl. And re-adding the tolls to the Elizabeth River crossings, after they had been removed in 1988/89 after the last round of major construction of those crossings was completed will just tick off a lot of citizens and commuters, and rightly so. Tolls, like taxes, are hard beasts to remove once they are put in place for ‘temporary’ reasons. I don’t think people would have as much of an issue if the tolls were for a completely new facility, but having them re-enacted on current toll-free facilities is just an awful way to go. And the thought of doing this to other highways across the state is simply piss-poor policy, the result of which is a lack of political stones by our state leadership and the anti-tax GOP which have painted themselves into the proverbial corner with their short-sighted philosophy. A modest bump in the fuels tax would provide immediate and meaningful transportation funding to help construct such projects, without needing to enact extremely costly tolls, which are nothing more than highly localized taxes. Considering that the $1.84 each way could conceivably cost a commuter almost $1,000 per year, people ought to be angry about this. Even a dime per gallon tax bump on fuel sales would be more palatable, costing just $75 for a year for someone who drove 15,000 miles in a 20 mpg vehicle. And, it would shore up transportation funding across the entire state, not just on one highway.
Can we please get some real leadership in Richmond, before the damage done is too costly to fix? There’s the old saying from Purolator oil filters: “You can pay a little now, or a lot later.’ The point is that a smaller short-term expense can help prevent more expensive repairs later, kind of how we have not funded highway maintenance correctly and wind up having to perform major rehabilitation of highways and build completely new bridges, often at a cost many dozens or hundreds of times more costly than the regular maintenance would have run. And applying this to the revenue situation, we can all pay a little now in the way of a modest fuels tax increase, or we can all pay a lot later when tolls are enacted on facilities all over the state that fall into such horrid disrepair or severe congestion that tolls are the only way to raise large, immediate revenues for repairs and also to serve as a deterrent to their use to relieve congestion. We can do better, so why doesn’t the GOP leadership think the same? Or for that matter, the Democrats too? This has been a multi-Governor, multi-GA failure of leadership from both sides, that has gone on far too long.
Comment by Other John — February 7, 2012 @ 12:13 pm
gdad, from a Virginian-Pilot article I read recently, they mentioned the tolls on the Midtown/Downtown Tunnels would be EZ-Pass only, no toll facilities would be constructed. (but that’s not to say toll facilities wouldn’t be constructed on say I-95, I-85, I-81, etc, where there would be space to place such facilities)
If anyone drove through either tunnel and didn’t have an EZ-Pass transponder in their vehicle, camera systems will snap a photo of the license plate and then send a bill to the driver for the toll, plus a processing fee.
That will surely tick off out-of-town tourists who get a bill for multiple tolls plus the processing fee, if they lack an EZ-Pass. Plus, it will likely deter people from using either tunnel. I know I wouldn’t. I’d probably just drive the extra amount down 464 to Military Highway or I-64 and cross the Elizabeth River down there to get to Portsmouth, which since I would rarely go there anyway, wouldn’t exactly be a problem.
For a driver coming from Virginia Beach going to Portsmouth, it’s about 6.5 miles on I-264 using the Downtown Tunnel. If they opted to go around the HR Beltway to skip the toll, it’s a tick over 22 miles. 16 miles longer and about 15-20 minutes more, traffic depending, but it would save them the nearly $2 each way. It would be hard to wash the cost though, since the two-way toll would equal out to close to the amount of gas to drive the longer way, which I suspect is why the toll was placed at such a high level, so as to pretty much force people to pay it because even though it’s expensive, it’ll save them time and probably a little money versus the alternatives.
Nothing like creating an onerous, essentially compulsory ‘fee’ instead of addressing the existing taxation structure to fix the revenue problems. Something to consider, the cost for the project is projected to cost $2.5 billion to upgrade the Downtown Tunnel and expand the Midtown Tunnel to 4-lanes. Current daily traffic volumes for both tunnels is 79,000 vehicles per day(41K at Downtown, 38K at Midtown). Per day, that will result in $145,360 in toll revenue, at the minimum (trucks will be charged more). Per year, that comes to $53 million in revenues.
The ridiculous thing is that there has been discussion of a ‘Third Crossing’ that would connect Norfolk to Newport News, via Craney Island in Portsmouth. That project was estimated to cost only a hair more than the Downtown/Midtown project is projected to cost, and it would not only provide an additional traffic-relieving link between Norfolk and Portsmouth, but would also provide a new link between the Peninsula and Southside, to help relieve congestion on the HRBT and MMMBT. Plus, tolls on that new facility would be far more palatable because it would be completely brand-new, not a retrofit of an existing toll-free highway.
Comment by Other John — February 7, 2012 @ 12:48 pm