Posted on 01/07/2021 7:22:12 PM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
Michigan drivers and taxpayers have been complaining about road and highway conditions for years.
But the solutions policymakers have recently proposed ranged from the politically impossible, like raising the gas tax 45 cents per gallon, to financially-risky short-term fixes like borrowing billions in bonds to pay for teacher pension contributions so that money could be shifted to funding for roads.
But it seems like Michigan lawmakers may be warming up to a long-term, sustainable, users-pay solution to achieving better roads: tolling.
Lansing's interest in tolling has gone back decades but this year the state Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration have taken big steps to make tolling a reality.
This spring, Public Act 140 of 2020 authorized a two-part tolling study to look at whether tolling is a feasible way to help rebuild the state's Interstates and major freeways. The legislation enjoyed strong bipartisan support in both the House and Senate and from a wide range of stakeholders, including the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT).
The tolling study could provide a pathway for a long-term solution to funding and modernizing Michigan's highways, which are in poor condition and experiencing growing traffic congestion compared to the rest of the nation.
Although Michiganders might have apprehension about tolling, it is a proven way to reduce traffic congestion and improve roadway conditions. Tolling also employs the user-pays principle that would negate the need for considering an unpopular statewide tax increase to fund certain road repairs.
(Excerpt) Read more at bridgemi.com ...
No; only trained highway workers can do that.
But they do like to get paid something for their labors.
The REST of us poor smucks alREADY use the user-pays principle at the PUMP!
Tolls are a GREAT way of taxation without representation to travelers THRU the state!
This is not toll related, but when I travel west; on I70 from Indianapolis; I make sure I've enough gas so I do NOT have to buy it in Illinois!
What force in politics would do THAT?
Besides; yer 'smart' phone/car already KNOWS where you've been, and will make assumptions on that data to guess where you MIGHT be going next!
Didn't this kind of thing used to be called bribery?
If the Mafia does it it's called EXTORTION; so...
The piece of I70 in Kansas between KC and Topeka is in really good shape!
And the plazas do NOT rip you off on the gas prices.
I was gonna mention the bridge! LMAO!!
Sorry; but tolls are NOT needed at all to do this!
https://www.eff.org/pages/automated-license-plate-readers-alpr
Right—but tolls are the rationalization for the plate readers.
What automated tolls make possible of course is pricing the riff-raff off the roads and out of their cars.
The real purpose of that tolling plan was to generate revenue from motorists who travel through the state and don't pay any fuel taxes.
I’ll say! Everything’s undoubtedly a damned GPS nowadays.
We’ll be lucky if we simply become more like Europe (the liberal ideal). But with the Commies in charge, it will be more like good ol’ Eastern Europe behind the Iron Curtain or Cuba or Venezuela, at least in states like Maryland.
I can see that. Just monitor the EZ-Pass records of the Deplorables.
Yep. The IMF wants to tie your browser searches to access to credit. Maybe they’ll come up with browsing-history and social media post-based tolls and access.
No, because it would incite violence and road rage at the toll booths.
Not necessarily when they’re highway-speed gantries.
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