Death of tolls all about trust

Let’s talk tolls. The main reason that the tolls for bridges proposal is DOA is because of the T word, Trust. Gov. Ned Lamont started off by saying tolls only for trucks, just like Rhode Island. He repeated this proposal five weeks after his election during a Channel 8 interview; later, when he encountered resistance, he proposed not tolling the Merritt Parkway to woo the Fairfield County representatives only to rescind that statement just hours later.

He also promised no new taxes, and now you pay a dime when you need a plastic bag, you pay an additional fee when you trade in your old vehicle during the purchase of a new vehicle. You pay an additional tax on food, and by the way, how about that debacle? For a while it looked like there was going to be a food fight over the new taxes before he retreated and blamed the Department of Revenue Services for misinterpreting the tax.

Now the new proposal is only to fix specific bridges and roads with the tolls gathered at those bridges, and the tolls would go away when the bridges are repaired. Does anyone believe that, Ned?

The Republican proposal is to use half of the rainy day fund to fix the bridges and highways instead of tolling. The governor responds that he doesn’t think that is the right use of the fund. Are you kidding me, Ned?

If you can’t use the rainyday fund to repair critical bridges and roads that pose safety hazards to our citizens, then what is your plan for the rainyday fund? Are we going to save the rainyday fund for some activity right about reelection time?

The fact of the matter is if the bridges and roads are that dangerous, then it would be criminal not to repair them with the funds that are available.

Another part of his proposal was to repair, improve and modernize the transportation system throughout Connecticut, including the rails and buses.

I’m in favor of improving the rails if we include penalties for severe delays. I’m not talking about a train that’s 15 minutes late, but when you have delays of an hour or more the riders should be refunded, and a penalty paid to the state. I realize that at times there might be events that would impact their arrival and departure like hurricanes, snowstorms and other severe weather events, but when it’s simply poor management or poor response to issues causing delays, then MetroNorth should have to pony up.

Here’s an idea for you, Ned, since we are constantly hearing about user fees for the roads and we seem to forget that the gasoline tax is a user fee — how about determining the average gasoline tax amount paid by the average driver and then adding that amount yearly to all electric vehicles registration or a portion of that for hybrid users? Why should they get away without paying the

If you can’t use the rainyday fund to repair critical bridges and roads that pose safety hazards to our citizens, then what is your plan for the rainyday fund?

user fee? Are they not users of the bridges and roads? Yet we have more and more electric vehicles and on the Merritt Parkway we have free chargers for these users. You can see a few highend Teslas parked there every day. Nobody is giving me free gasoline.

I understand this was done to promote the use of electric and hybrid vehicles and reduce emissions, but I purchased a zeroemission vehicle and I’m not getting any free juice.

If we are in such dire straits for money, then let’s look to cut spending and go after revenue that we deserve.

Also, go back to your trucksonly proposal, those 53foot 40,000pound monsters traveling through our state are tearing up the roads and bridges, many of them are unsafe and by the amount of tractor trailers jackknifing and blocking traffic the biggest reasons for the long commute, you have a chance with that. Rhode Island seems to be collecting those tolls and winning the court cases against them.

Tolls are dead regardless of the commentaries. Pay attention to what the people are saying, we don’t want them.

Edward Marczyszak lives in Seymour.