Sen. Looney’s tollcollecting days helped shape position

The sun beat down on the tiny West Haven toll booth, where 19yearold Martin Looney leaned out to collect coins and toll tickets from cars and trucks cruising down Interstate 95.

The year was 1967, and the work was hot and monotonous for the young university student. But 52 years later, the state’s lead senator is drawing inspiration for a trucksonly tolling plan from his summer in the toll booth to advance a stalled policy.

In discussions with Gov. Ned Lamont and legislative

leaders, Looney, the Senate president pro tempore, is pressing for a limited tolling plan and more state bonding to fund improvements to the state’s highways, bridges and rails. As they pursue a proposal that can pass the General Assembly, Looney believes his experience as a toll taker highlights the precedent that Connecticut might need to toll freight trucks, but not passenger cars.

“Different rates were charged at different toll stations on a per axle basis for trucks,” said Looney, a New Haven Democrat. “Three axle trucks were charged less than four axle trucks and the rate was different in West Haven than it was in Branford to the east and Stratford to the west.”

Fast forward to the present, “If you make a [toll fee] difference between smaller trucks and larger trucks, that’s something that I’d like to explore,” said Looney, whose chamber has proved a greater obstacle to tolls than the House.

Lamont, who supported trucksonly tolling during his campaign for governor, dismissed the idea on Monday.

“I’m afraid we’ve checked that out with [Secretary] Elaine Chao who runs transportation for the Trump administration and she said trucks only doesn’t work unless you’re rebuilding a bridge from scratch,” Lamont said. “She was pretty firm on trucks only and the ability to do it.”

In contrast, House Speaker Joe Aresimowicz, DBerlin, said he viewed trucks only tolls as an option, although he was not sure “where we will eventually land.”

“Whether it is projectspecific tolling, truck tolling, I am open to any of it,” Aresimowicz said. “If we don’t do something, unfortunately we’re going to have a tragedy here in the state of Connecticut and we’ll only have our selves to blame.”

Rhode Island is the only U.S. state that only tolls trucks, not passenger cars, for the purposes of rebuilding bridges on its interstate, said Bill Cramer, communications director for the International Bridge, Tunnel and Turnpike Association, which represents the toll industry.

“They do it in Rhode Island because Rhode Island 95 is one long bridge,” Lamont said. “That’s not the case here in Connecticut. We’d only be able to do it on a limited number of bridges and [the Federal Highway Administration] wouldn’t allow it otherwise.”

Rhode Island kicked off its tolling program in June, but the American Trucking Associations and other groups filed suit in federal court arguing that the program was violates the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution by “impos[ing] discriminatory and disproportionate burdens on outofstate operators and on truckers who are operating in interstate commerce.”

In March, a federal court judge dismissed the case on the grounds that it should be heard by the state courts of Rhode Island. The trucking groups have appealed the ruling and oral arguments in the appeal will be heard in September.

Lamont and lawmakers are keen to avoid the litigation embroiling Rhode Island’s tolling plan.

“I would love to find a way to do truck only tolling that would not be seen as invalid by the Federal Transportation Department or vulnerable in a lawsuit,” Looney said.

Looney, a general practice lawyer, says Connecticut’s practice of tolling trucks at different rates, when the state had tolls from the 1950s to 1985, may give the state the basis for singling out trucks for tolls.

“We do have a precedent for charging trucks different rates based on their number of axles,” said Looney. “They were charged at a higher rate than others.”

Connecticut had eight toll stations on I95 and Route 52 from Greenwich to Plainfield, as well as three toll stations on the Merritt and Wilbur Cross Parkways and tolls on several bridges around Connecticut. In 1967, cars paid 25 cents at the West Haven toll station or frequent commuters could purchase a ticket book that allowed them to pass at a cheaper rate, Looney remembered.