Posted by:
Anonymous on
May 18, 2007 at
9:56AM EST
Story #1:
http://www.openmass.org/bills/show/3368
A meeting was held yesterday at the state house on House 3684 – It is a petition filed at the request of Leonard Golder regarding the establishment of toll booths at the New Hampshire border on certain highways. This is an idea to put tolls on Routes 3, 93, 95, 495, the major highways from New Hampshire into Massachusetts.
The money raised would, theoretically, go to transportation projects.
Story #2:
In New Hampshire, some people are having problems with the EZ-Pass system incorrectly targeting them for payment on toll fines and fees.
http://www.seacoastonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070516/NEWS/70516002
(3) Comments
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Posted by: Connor MacLeod on May 18, 2007 10:57AM EST
Just out of curiosity, who's Leonard Golder? Should that be a household name?
Anyways, I'm not against the concept of tolls in theory. I do think they've indirectly led to an incredibly inefficient, patronage-laden and sometimes flat-out corrupt agency...the MTA...but at the same time, I give the MassPike credit for being one of the more pleasant drives in the state. The roads are usually in good shape, and the landscaping is nice.
I'm also, in general, against the idea of some highways being tolled and some not. So in the end I suppose I support Mr. Golder's petition. Isn't there is some rule that tolls collected must be used for funding/maintaining the road they're collected on? That would be a good thing...I-95 on the north shore could use some work, so could I-93.
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Posted by: Charlie D. on May 18, 2007 12:11PM EST
The danger is that people will take local roads to get into MA instead to avoid the tolls.
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Posted by: Brad Deltan on May 21, 2007 11:23AM EST
Charlie - that's always a possibility, but there are ways to mitigate that problem. You can do quite a bit to reconfigure the local roads with strategic one-ways and traffic lights that make it a giant pain in the ass to bypass the toll, but it's not too bad for the locals.
Plus at this point, usually the morning commute traffic on I-93, Rt.3 and I-95 is completely backed up past Nashua and Portsmouth anyway...so the risk of people getting off the highway to find shortcuts on local roads has already happened. Tolls won't change that much.
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