Now keep in mind that a Framingham-to-Newton commuter — someone who is getting no more direct benefit from the Big Dig than anyone else in eastern Massachusetts — is already being asked to effectively pay around $6/gallon.
Most people who don’t drive the Turnpike regularly have no idea what a financial burden it is. A friend of mine who commutes to town daily from the South Shore recently had to head to the western suburbs for a week of meetings. It was an eye-opener. “The Turnpike is expensive!” he told me. It sure is — especially when you compare it to people elsewhere in the Boston metropolitan area who commute on toll-free highways.
Why are taxpayers in the western suburbs paying more than many people in Boston who are benefiting most from the Big Dig’s new traffic flow and open space?
Why are people in Framingham and other western suburbs being asked to shoulder more of a financial burden for the Big Dig than everyone else — including Boston residents abutting the actual project and South Shore commuters who use it?
What about commuters from the South Shore who commute into Boston and use the road? Why are they paying less than people in Framingham who don’t use the Big Dig?
Why are my tax dollars going to pay for everyone else’s roads, but then we’re asked not only to pay tolls for our own road, but pay tolls to fund a completely different road — a road that many of us use less frequently than other commuters, such as South Shore residents who drive it daily for free?
Or even worse, negotiating the Braintree split. Or Route 24. The Turnpike commute is a Sunday drive by comparison.
Trust me. Even though there are no tolls, driving into Boston from the South Shore is not a free commute.
(That said, I do believe that the Turnpike Authority should be abolished, the tolls removed, and the gas tax adjusted enough to cover the lost revenue. And I do think that it’s wrong to use Turnpike tolls to pay for the Big Dig.)
who knows, maybe you’d see a drop-off in traffic đŸ™‚ … because using those roads could become less appealing for some. Although of course it would take awhile for the traffic patterns to readjust.
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p>Thanks for supporting reducing the tolls and using gas tax revenues instead. That’s much fairer.
This hardly seems fair, though the perspective is different for me. Since I live on the NH line 93 and 3 are my major arteries and the Pike is for longer and rarer trips. I also can’t imagine the inevitable increased volume on 9 and 20 as people try to avoid the tolls. It also sounded like some regulatory board gets to set these rates and that doesn’t seem right. For anybody other than the legislature and Governor enacting a law to do this strikes me as taxation without representation. If we were going to have tolls it would make more sense to toll the Zakim Bridge, O’Neill Tunnel, and Williams Tunnel, but I’d rather just fund it out of the state budget. I’m not in favor of an increased gas tax as my circumstances are such that I don’t want to pay more than absolutely necessary for gas.
be fairer (if wildly unpopular. Or would it be?).
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p>But you know, these cost are real and don’t even include environmental externalities (which, if include would probably bump gasoline well over $7 per gallon).
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p>Who ought to pay them, in your view?
Either all the people using and benefiting from the actual road — that means tolls into Boston from all directions, not just the west; and if life were fair, it would mean property owners in the area who are benefiting from the new open space; or all the people in the Commonwealth.
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p>I can grudgingly live with paying a reasonable toll for maintenance of the portion of the road I use — although everyone needs to do that, then, including people in western Mass. who are using the Pike toll-free, and people at the Rte. 16 entrance/exit in Newton who got their toll eliminated.
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p>I do think tolls on the airport tunnels need to be increased. When I need to drive to the airport, it’s fair to ask me to pay for the cost of that portion of the road.
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p>What I cannot tolerate is being soaked as a cash cow to pay for some other project. That is utterly unacceptable.
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p>The Pike tolls should have been eliminated once the initial construction bonds were paid off. They weren’t, and instead a whole separate organization was kept to maintain the road. OK, but then at least keep the charges in line with the portion of the road being serviced.
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p>Personally, I think it’s unreasonable to charge a toll on most portions of the state’s major east-west highway without doing the same thing on major north-south highways. But clearly we’re not going to see tolls on Rte. 128 or Rte. 495 anytime soon … yet my tax dollars pay to keep up those roads, and no one else’s tax dollars pay to keep up the Pike. Reasonable?
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p>If someone wants to institute a “congestion tax” and charge everyone for the privilege of driving into Boston/Cambridge from all directions, fine. But it’s completely and utterly unacceptable to tell people commuting between Framingham and Newton that they have to pay an extra $500 a year in tolls — in addition to their state income taxes — to fund a project in Boston, when the people driving into Boston from other places and are actually using the road pay nothing.
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p>How crazy is it to hike tolls 15 miles west of the Big Dig, and not charge a toll on the Big Dig itself?
The point of this post is that commuters should not be asked to pay for a service (Big Dig) that does not benefit them.
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p>I agree. Tolls should be directed at those who use the system. Tolls are not only more efficient than an increase in the gas tax, but they are more fair in this sense.
The reason everyone should pay some of the cost of all the roads–including roads they never use personally–is that those roads form a network that benefit everyone (though not equally, and not always in straightforward ways). The network of transportation enables economic growth, jobs, and (maybe someday if we ever get out of the current mess) prosperity.
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p>In your terms, we have met “those who use the system” and them is us.
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p>Tolls are not more efficient than an increase in the gas tax–they are less. They incur a transaction cost every time traffic lines up at the toll booth, in terms of time and carbon emissions. And, where a gas tax encourages less driving, tolls only encourage more congestion on untolled roads.
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p>By the way, tolls would affect me much less than more gasoline taxes–I do drive but seldom on the highways we are discussion.
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p>Well, they disagree with the second half anyway.
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p>Economist perspective: People choose Road A over Road B because Road A has a lower cost [financial, time, stress, etc]. More precisely, they choose Road A because it both (a) has the least cost, and (b) gets them to a destination that provides them with greater value than the cost of taking the road.
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p>So, if the price of Road A goes up, will people switch to Road B? Sure, some will. But some will now notice that the cheapest choice, Road B, is more expensive than the value of their destination, and will therefore just stay home.
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p>It’s exactly the same argument as to why higher gas taxes decrease congestion. The cost of going from source to destination goes up, and therefore sometimes it ain’t worth the higher price and people stay home.
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p>Traffic Engineer perspective: when demand for a road [or supply of a road] decreases, either because it’s priced higher or because a lane is down for construction, “most of the time the increase in traffic on alternative routes [is] nowhere near the traffic ‘lost’ on the affected roads”.*
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p>When gas tax goes up, all roads see a[n uneven] decrease in demand. When tolls go up, that road sees a large decrease and other roads see a small increase. In both cases, total demand goes down.
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p>Now, here’s the kicker. Highway traffic is non-linear. There’s an optimal number of cars per mile — any more and every car suffers because there’s too much friction on the road. Tolls can be used to ensure that the highway operates at maximum capacity. Are they doing this at MassPike? If so, only by accident, and it ain’t likely. But they could. They could vary the rate of the toll to ensure that it doesn’t become overly congested. This would result in a much more efficient road.
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p>Here’s the kicker, part 2. When the highways have high occupancy, the act of clumping cars to pay tolls and then letting them out one at a time actually reduces traffic and wasted gas. This is the same reason why some states have traffic lights entering freeways — the idea is to keep the cars moving at a steady rate by de-clumping them. The best example of this is with rice and a funnel. If you pour the rice in to the funnel fast, the grains slowly make their way through the funnel. However, if you slow down the speed in which you pour, the rice actually gets through the funnel faster. Tolls aren’t the funnel — they serve as a way to moderate how fast the rice is pouring because they allow a maximum of x cars through per minute. By moderating the flow, they serve to improve the efficiency of the highway — not because of cost, but because they de-clump the cars and ensure that not too many are in too short a span of road.
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p>Personally, I’d love to see both (a) a higher gas tax, (b) tolls on all major MA thoroughfares which vary as a function of congestion, and then (c) a Boston congestion tax. Admittedly, I have no idea how to implement (c) given the number of surface roads in to and out of the city… but London figured it out so I imagine it could be done.
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p> * Traffic, p 156.
My suggestion… add tolls to the other arteries, and use congestion based pricing.
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p>It’s true that eliminating the tolls and raising the gas tax could be revenue neutral. But, it’s also true that by reducing the marginal cost of driving on the MassPike, more people will do it. This is absolutely not a question — this is a certainty. If you eliminate the tolls on the MassPike, the traffic will worsen.
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p>So, my proposal: toll the other highways, and choose the toll based on the actual congestion in real-time. Nobody on the roads? Price is free. As they get more use, price goes up. Major traffic jam? Price even higher. Apply this to all highways. Aggregate the data, put it on the web in easy to use form, and watch as people change their habits a bit, resulting in a much smoother flowing highway system.
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p>The reality is that a large chunk of the rush hour commute has no flexibility — they’re 8-5ers, so to speak. However, a significant portion does have some flex, and those people would exercise their flexibility to everyone’s benefit. Quite often, the reduction of a few percent of autos on a highway can yield a dramatic improvement in flow. Conversely, a few cars more than optimum and the system grinds.
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p>The book “Traffic” by Tom Vanderbilt is a nice non-technical explanation of this [and some other counter intuitive realities surrounding driving].
Jump On Route 9 and avoid the toll all together. Tolls are voluntary.
You might want to pack a breakfast when you get joined by a few million of your closets friends but that the cost of freedom.
I might tell you about how much fun a jaunt down 93 is every morning but why bother. Just rest assured that people who dont drive the pike EVER arent any more concerned with your costs than you are concerned with mine.
if you’re commuting to/from Newton Corner, because Rte. 9 is a bit out of the way, adding about 20% in mileage daily to the commute.
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p>And Turnpike traffic isn’t as light as it used to be, even with the tolls, now that there’s been so much development along the Rte. 495 corridor.
privatize the whole thing. We can have the Dunkin Donuts Expressway, and how about the AIG Turnpike, starting out life under a bailout? Now that I’ve ranted some, the whole idea of privatization is bad, bad, bad. You lose the asset, then when the operator decides his bottom line is not healthy enough, up go the tolls, and not every few years, either.
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p>They have a lot of nerve trying to push a toll increase on us. Outrage doesn’t begin to describe the emotion. The Turnpike Authority has to be put out of business, top to bottom, 100%, not some time later, but now. They exist for their own benefit only. Everyone benefits from the roads, bridges, and tunnels, and everyone should pay for it across the population, not some poor slobs who have to use it daily to get to work. Fund the road network via the general fund with tax that properly reflects their worth to our economy.
The Pike has been a refuge for hacks and cronies since it’s inception. I have been driving on it for 25 years and still boil when I pay the tolls. I remember back in 1997 (I think) when the tolls were scheduled to go away. It was another one of those classic “In X years we will stop collecting tolls and turn the road over to the highway department…” What a bunch of bullshit and shame on me and others for believing it for a second. Once government gets a source of funding it will NEVER get shut off. So the Pike comes up with this lame idea that the Pike could only be turned over the highway department in “good working condition”. So they take out another $200-300 million to add more toll booths, repave hundreds of miles, work on bridges… and extend the tolls for another 30 years.
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p>Get this straight… the Pike will NEVER close as a toll road since politicians can NEVER turn away from a buck. The people from west of Boston will get screwed forever.
$8.50 to go through a tunnel that might fall on my head?
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p>That’s the most asinine increase I’ve ever heard of. Chelsea and Everett should get ready for a nice influx of traffic if that goes through. And repair work on the Tobin better step up a notch.
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p>Seriously, why do the NS people get screwed just because some braintrust decided to put an airport in the middle of the harbor and another one thought it would be a good idea to put roads under a swamp? EVERYBODY benefits from Logan and the tunnels in the way of economy, jobs, postal svcs., etc.
I’m fully behind that increase. Coupling parking at Logan (which is ridiculously overpriced in any event – my sis out in LA was agog at what parking costs are at Logan v. LAX), and I’ll surely be booking out of those airports instead of Logan. Just so far you can push things.
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p>Think moving towards gas tax v. hammering the Western Suburbs for a project they largely don’t travel on only makes sense. But I’d be leery about “congestion pricing” and all of that if I’m Boston. In many ways, Boston is primarily a mutually inconvenient place for parties to meet (this was hammered home to me about 15 years ago meeting with a bunch of Union Plan representatives at a downtown law firm). Noone was actually locatged in Boston, and when everyone figured out that we all spent about $30 apiece to park for an hour and a half, wished that some of these fancy law offices had a 128 satellite office with free parking that would have been much easier for everyone to get to without the costs involved.