Getting There: Myths abound when officials talk toll increases

The Baltimore Sun ^ | June 27, 2011 | Michael Dresser

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

When Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. won election as governor in 2002, he was faced with a tricky problem.

He had campaigned on a pledge to build the long-delayed Intercounty Connector in suburban Washington. The highway project would cost a fortune, far more than the state could afford out of its Transportation Trust Fund, and the Republican Ehrlich had taken a hard line against new taxes. He had to come up with some way to pay the $2.6 billion it would eventually cost.

The answer? He would make it a toll road. And to give his policies a semblance of geographical balance, he would launch a second $1 billion-plus megaproject in the Baltimore area: widening Interstate 95 northeast of the city by adding express toll lanes.

The opposition was underwhelming. The public, accustomed to thinking of tolls as relatively painless trifles, hardly raised a fuss. Business leaders were thrilled. Journalists, including myself, were distracted by the sexy issue of slots and barely paid attention when tolls were raised on the Harbor and Susquehanna River crossings in 2003.

Yes, the environmentalists tried to warn us that the ICC tolls would be high. And they were proved right. But I don't recall them ever talking about the tolls on the Fort McHenry Tunnel and Key Bridge. Had they successfully tapped into concerns about regional equity, they might have been more effective.

When the Ehrlich administration came up with its debt-heavy financing package for the ICC and the I-95 Express Toll Lanes, legislators forced some tweaks but basically gave it their blessing. A few far-out liberals raised a fuss, but the Democratic leadership and Republican minority were all for it.

[Rocky]

The big lie of the toll roads is that once it is paid for we will drop the tolls,

That was the lie that was told to Houston residents when they were building the beltway around Houston. The politicians said the tolls would stop after twenty years. When the twenty years was up, a reporter confronted the guy who was in charge of the toll roads.

He said, "If we eliminate the tolls on the beltway, we will have to find another source of revenue for the new roads we are building." Of course, the guys who were in charge twenty years ago are long gone and can't be held accountable for the false promises they made.