So we now have a proposed resident discount program that increases fares for the communities most impacted but now includes Winthrop, which had never received a reduced toll in the past. This is troubling for three reasons.
(1) It singles out Winthrop to receive a benefit, but one could easily argue that Revere, Lynn or other towns close by should also receive the same benefit as Winthrop. As the overall toll scheme is currently progressing all of the other towns would have to pay $7.00 to use any of the bridges and tunnels.
(2) By benefiting Winthrop and not Revere or other neighboring towns who surely have similar bridge and tunnel usage rates, the only reason I can come up with for adding Winthrop is to gain the particular support of an individual State Rep, who also happens to be the Speaker. It does not seem like good policy to offer benefits and detriments to certain communities solely based on the clout of their representative. Policy should be made on the merits of the proposal and consider the costs and benefits in achieving the stated governmental goal.
(3) There doesn’t seem to be a clear public policy goal with these changes. This change now gives places like South Boston and East Boston, whose residents may rarely use the Tobin (or be impacted by it), an unnecessarily reduced fare (same applies for Charlestown and Chelsea with the tunnels). Effectively, it reduces the potential income from certain residents who receive a discount on a bridge or tunnel that they don’t live near or suffer any impact from. This clouds the original purpose of the discount which was to offer relief to impacted communities. It is not clear to me how the revised Section 43 discount can be justified when it is done across all bridges and tunnels for some impacted and some non-impacted neighborhoods – while leaving out key impacted areas.
Another potential result of Section 43 is that it complicates the role of Senator Petrucelli, who is well positioned (on the Transportation Comm. and represents communities most affected by the tolls) to be a leading opposition voice at the State House on the toll issue. Petrucelli represents, among other areas, East Boston, Winthrop, and Revere. Section 43 pits East Boston’s and Winthrop’s interests against each other, and leaves Revere out in the cold. His position on Section 43 will be made much more difficult given the conflicting interests of his constituents.
In the House, one can imagine the reluctance of House members to oppose a provision that gives a small but direct benefit to Winthrop; especially as they look to quickly gain favor with the new Speaker and jockey for position in the House pecking order. It all seems perfectly designed to be a windfall for one community and the devastation of its neighbors.
Text of Section 43 for your reference:
Section 43. Notwithstanding the provisions of any general or special law to the contrary, residents with private vehicles registered in the town of Winthrop, the city of Chelsea, and in the East Boston section of the city of Boston, the Charlestown section of the city of Boston, the South Boston section of the city of Boston, and the North End section of the city of Boston, as the Boston transportation department has determined the geographical boundaries of such sections, from time to time, shall pay a toll fixed at $.50 above the one-way full rapid transit fare as established from time to time, by the Massachusetts bay transportation authority, for use of any tolled bridge or harbor tunnels into the city of Boston. This toll shall increase automatically consistent with any Massachusetts bay transportation authority authorized increase in the price of the one-way full fare; provided, however, at no time shall a resident eligible for the program identified in this section be required to pay a toll greater than the toll established in accordance with section 42 of this chapter.
and the definition the Public Policy Institute has borrowed from a source we don’t remember is
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p>Of course sometimes “people in authority” look at all the information about a problem and talk to other people before they decide on a solution, sometimes they decide all by themselves.
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p>Smart savvy advocates like Jim are trying to make sure that the “people in authority” of transportation policy have all the information they need and talk to all the affected constituents they can before they decide on a solution.
And to be clear, I’m not saying that I’m sold one way or the other. I do think that any toll discount should be linked to the price of MBTA fare though. In any case…
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p>Winthrop is in fact closer to the Charles/Mystic Rivers mouth to the Boston Harbor, where the bridges and tunnels are. It also suffers more from the airport, which was a key reason why the tunnels were built and built as big as they are. On the flip side, Winthrop isn’t even an MBTA Town… their two buses to/fro Orient Heights are run by the private Paul Revere service, which means standard MBTA discounts and CharlieCards don’t apply.
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p>As for $7, the Ted Williams is $3.50 one way, free the other way. Where does $7 come from?
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p>Surely has similar usage rates? How sure are you? I can’t help but notice that the last three stations on the Blue Line are in Revere; Winthrop has zero T stations. This might lead to reduced tunnel rates from Revere because more of their population are Blue Lining it to work. I don’t know… I’m not as sure as you are given zero data. I do agree with your observation about offering benefits/detriments based on the clout of the representative. I’d also add that giving the toll discount to more cities and towns will result in an even larger constituency who will want to prevent MBTA fare increases, if only to keep their drive to the airport or to downtown cheaper.
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p>I tend to agree. I’m not entirely sold on 43 in general, but it does seem a stretch to include all discounted bridges and tunnels to all impacted neighborhoods. Surely it’s not a technical/technological reason, and while I do like the idea of simplifying complex scenarios, this isn’t really complex and because FastLane works “hands free” it’s not like there’s a strong need for simplification for efficiency’s sake.
I didn’t intend to imply that Winthrop doesn’t deserve some reduced tolls or other consideration for impact mitigation due to the issues you raised above. My point was more that there are several towns close to the tunnels/bridge on the North Shore who would also have a fair argument for receiving some relief from high tolls. It seemed like bad policy to single out one of those several towns as more deserving of a benefit that none of them previously enjoyed with no explanation.
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p>Perhaps if Section 43 was accompanied by a statement from the provision’s authors stating how they chose to include Winthrop and what data they considered in their decision, then we could understand why Revere, Lynn, Saugus and other cities were excluded from the resident discount program.
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p>I didn’t offer data on the tunnel/bridge usage rates of Revere vs. Winthrop because it was ancillary to my main point of the potential Winthrop/DeLeo connection and I thought a generalization would suffice.
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p>The $7 figure comes from the Turnpike’s vote to increase the tolls to $7 by the summer. By the time Section 43 is implemented, barring any change in current policy, Winthrop would otherwise pay $7 in tolls.
that the $7.00 figure wasn’t arrived at to create the greatest driver anger, and lead us down the path to a higher gasoline tax. If the toll increase had been small, or incremental, then we might have accepted it, but this way an opening exists that they are trying to use to have a large tax increase that will do a lot of non toll related transportation things. Without the toll increase threat, the proposed gas tax increase would have a much harder, if not impossible road to follow. Having said that, as a former East Bostonian used to paying $.0.40 toll, I can see that an increase in that figure is both reasonable and due, but numbers such as $7.00, or the subway rate plus $0.50 are inexcusable. $1.00 is acceptable.