Toll talk won’t cease
Trucks targeted in revenue proposal
Ned Lamont, the Democrats’ endorsed candidate for governor, has been pitching the idea of highway tolls — but only for trucks — as a way to raise the kind of revenue that could help pull Connecticut out of its budgetary death spiral.
Last week, the state of Rhode Island instituted just such a trucks-only tolling program on Interstate 95. No sooner was the first dollar collected than the trucking industry vowed to fight the new toll in court.
The new Rhode Island law is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Interstate Commerce clause, and Connecticut’s would be the same, said Joe Scully, president of the Connecticut Motor Transportation Association and the voice of truckers in the state Capitol. Truckers already pay their fair share, Scully said.
“Under congestion pricing, it makes it unaffordable to drive on the highway,” Scully said.
At a time when the most important election issue may be the state’s transportation crisis — nonstop traffic, aging highways and bridges and crowded trains — most of the eight hopefuls for governor are opposed to tolls, framing the issue as just another source of revenue to be squandered by legislators and government.
Oz Griebel, an independent candidate for governor who is the former chairman of the state’s Transportation Strategy Board, says that highway tolls are vitally needed, and inevitable. Bridgeport Mayor Joe Ganim, hoping to petition his way onto the Democratic primary in August, also favors tolls.
The rest of the pack are looking for other ways to address the state’s infrastructure problem.
Lamont, a Greenwich businessman best known for nearly defeating U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman in 2006, says that trucks-only tolls, with higher prices during commuting hours, would open up the highways for cars during the morning and evening rushes.
“When it comes to transportation I need a more reliable and predictable revenue stream that we can leverage and make the investments we need,” Lamont said recently on the campaign trail. “That starts with electronic tolling, when some of our biggest trucks, coming in from out of state, using our roads tax-free, create tons of maintenance issues, and we’ll see where it goes from there.”
Joe McGee, vice president for policy at the Fairfield County Business Council, says transportation is the key to the state’s economic future and the
crisis demands creative thinking.
“This whole issue of transportation is important,” McGee said. “But we really need to hear their specifics, because the state is in trouble.”
He called Lamont’s idea for trucks-only tolls, charging them more — so-called “congestion pricing” — during rush hours to discourage driving, the kind of “out-of-the-box thinking” that Connecticut may need.
Griebel, who was chairman of the state transportation board back when it began work in 2001 said, “I believe in electronic tolls.
They have to be a piece of the game.”
David Stemerman, a former hedge fund executive from Greenwich who hopes to petition on to the Republican primary ballot, wants to add one or two lanes to I-95 to ease congestion. Of the candidates for governor, he has the widest-ranging transportation proposal with plans to pursue public-private partnerships to save money and a massive audit of the state Department of Transportation to identify waste.
“This should be a terrific business opportunity,” he said.