Yes, sounds like a good VP for Romney!
RINOs is as RINOs does...
These tolls here are a really bad idea...
I get the need to raise revenue (how cutting spending and putting more toward transportation?) but people want the bloody traffic to move and tolls bog everything down...
want to p.o. people royally, put up tolls.
I don’t think tolls are a bad idea. Making people pay to fix the congestion problems they are partly the cause of, rather than putting the burden on others, is a conservative idea. It’s not like the tolls pay for an entire road, most costs are still covered by the gas tax.
And I also think it’s a good idea sometimes to toll something to build something else — if that something else will help those using the thing being tolled. FOr example, look at the two tunnels. The one can’t really be expanded, but expanding the other tunnel would lessen traffic in the downtown tunnel, so those users would benefit, even if that tunnel isn’t upgraded.
The most extreme example I can think of for this is in downtown Baltimore — where they put tolls on an I-95 tunnel, and used it to build two new tunnels, which ended up connected to a road that somewhat parallels 95, but is separate from it. Clearly that new tunnel was helpful to those using the old I-95 tunnel (in fact I believe 895 actually uses the old tunnels, and 95 has the new ones, but I’m just trying to make a point).
I don’t like the idea of tolling things that used to be free, in order to provide new benefits for others. I’m not a fan of the HOT lane concept on I-95 for that reason, even though for now current legal uses of the HOV lanes will still get to use them for free, and the private company taking them over is supposed to ENSURE that those HOV users move as quickly as they did before. This is impossible of course, because the whole point of HOT was there was unused capacity, and increasing to the capacity of the road will slow down traffic, probably to within the speed limit but people WERE going faster.
Anyway, I know a lot of people just hate tolls. But we do have some real traffic problems in a few places where people have CHOSEN to live one place and work in another, and they made the choice based on the contributions of all taxpayers to building those roads, and now those roads are almost impossible for casual users because you can’t count on getting anywhere at major periods of the day.
If tolls make those people pay fairly for those choices, we all benefit.
of course, part of the reason for tolls is beause the anti-tax crowd is serious here in Virginia, and so if you really need more revenue, this is the only way to get it — especially since nobody will approve selling the ABC stores.
I hated the Portsmouth {downtown} Tunnel in the late 70's. Hampton Roads Tunnel was OK and when I was there the toll had been lifted a year or so earlier.