Warning!!!!! The tax & spend folks are coming:-()
Posted on 03/21/2008 5:46:09 PM PDT by Ken H
New plan suggests every road leading to Washington, DC should have a toll booth.
Local government officials in the Washington, DC area released a plan yesterday calling for the addition of toll booths to every road leading to the nation's capital. Federal gas tax funding worth $300,000 was used to pay for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments study which took eighteen months to complete.
The first element of the plan has entered the construction phase. High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes are being added to the Beltway and to Interstates 95 and 395, providing an extra lane of desperately needed highway capacity. Under the favorite scenario of the transportation planners, however, toll booths will be added to roads that have already been built and thus the tolling plan will only add new fees for usage of lanes that are currently free. The study explained that the building of new lanes with "value pricing" was only financially feasible in certain high-traffic areas.
The list of targets for toll booth additions includes the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, the Clara Barton Parkway, the George Washington Memorial Parkway, Suitland Parkway, Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, Arlington Memorial Bridge and part of Independence Avenue -- all of which are currently free to use for all motorists. The National Park Service, which is in charge of these roads, expressed outrage at the proposal.
"With the high volumes of commuter traffic using these routes daily, it is easy to forget that the primary purpose of these parkways is to provide a natural, scenic travel route into the nation's capital," wrote Park Service National Capital Region Director Joseph M. Lawler.
Lawler condemned the thought of adding unsightly toll booths to the park roads and suggested the collection of a toll would violate a law that prohibits the charging of any fees to visit a national park within the District of Columbia.
Although the plan is designed to tax motorists for the purpose of further subsidizing bus and rail service, the report suggested adding extra bus capacity would offer limited value.
"The addition of extensive transit service to the Variably Priced Lane networks resulted in system-wide increases in transit use of around 4 percent," the report stated.
A summary copy of the study is available in a 1mb PDF file at the source link below.
Source: TPB Regional Value Pricing Study (Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments, 3/20/2008)
Warning!!!!! The tax & spend folks are coming:-()
You know, we could condense "cost about the same as a 3-diamond Spitzer date" into a monetary value, similar to the fecal quantity value: "Courics". We could call this amount: one "Spitzer".
This is one of the big reasons why people in surrounding counties in MD and VA opposed DC statehood.
Democrats, building a bridge to the 18th century.
Of course, they would naturally simply pass the cost on to their consitutents of get some lobbyist to pay for it.
Is it possible to despise these people anymore than I do now?
Right of way in rush hour is a scarce good. It can either be rationed through waiting time or through tolls. Take your pick.
If the tolls served only as a means to alleviate congestion (i.e. no toll when traffic is low) and were offset by tax cuts elsewhere, I would support this proposal.
Wanna bet that members of Congress exempt themselves from having to pay?
They want to get you both coming and going...and in between too.
If you ever travel the Massachusetts Turnpike at rush hour, you will see that toll booths cause tremendous traffic congestion.
YOu get the increased wait time, plus having to pay the toll.
This will enrage the bureaucrats who commute into DC. This anger will cause them to take it out on we the great unwashed. How many other cities will now go and do likewise?
I recall crawling Eastward toward the Tappan Zee Bridge (New York State) on a Sunday evening. Even after I could SEE the bridge towers, it took two more hours to cross it. Once across, the traffic flowed along at 45 mph.
Good point, but smart tags on cars are the way around that. For some roads, such as the George Washington Parkway, smart tags may have to be mandatory during rush hour. It’s either that or have people sit around and wait each morning and evening.
At one time I would have liked to visit D.C. This only gives me another reason to not waste my time. The place is unsafe.
I don’t have a smart tag, and won’t have one. I know it’s just a matter of time before they are used to track speeders.
Yet another reason for D.C. to be nationalized. That is, the federal government eminent domain buying of all private land in the city.
Then get rid of private buildings, and upgrade the cities infrastructure, and build new buildings on top of it. Restrict car and truck traffic in the city, and set up a complex and efficient mass transit system to replace all the cars and trucks.
The city no longer needs a dishonest city government at all, just a management bureau in charge of security, infrastructure, police, fire and emergency medical services.
The Watergate complex would be leased by a hotel chain, and restaurants/bars and other businesses would be leased as government franchises, like on military bases.
This means that most street crime ends. Traffic jams end. There is a LOT more space for government buildings, parks, memorials and monuments.
Since much of the city streets would be oriented to pedestrians, moving sidewalks such as those used in airport concourses would move lots of people medium distances efficiently.
Otherwise, much of the city would be landscaped open land instead of filled with old and decaying ghetto.
Washington D.C. should be the property of the people of the United States, not ruled over by some drug dealing punk with the misfortune to be born there.
So I have to pay a fee before I am able to lobby my government? Isn’t that the same as a poll tax?
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