VA Senate Bill to Expand Tolling Authority

BOO! BOO BOO BOO!!!!! So they want to toll all the major roads? Like the cost of living isn't already high enough around here, especially for young people who didn't grow up here and already owned a home. If this keeps up, eventually this region will have no new employees to fill all the jobs.

Looks like this delegate proposes the Commonwealth establish "user fees" (tolls) for Interstate Highway use statewide (instead of raising taxes) to provide funds to improve and maintain Virginia's highway and road system.

Would we rather pay an Interstate toll or increased state taxes?

Oddly enough, I think this will generate opposition to tolls in general. Tolls are a regressive tax that disproportionately hurt lower-income people. There is no political way they could put tolls on all the interstates. The opposition party can simply point out that user-fees are undemocratic, and other states can and will retaliate, and the trucking industry will go ballistic at the idea of being tolled everywhere when they already pay extra user fees.

What an asinine and mentally bankrupt idea. It shows a complete lack of real thinking about transportation.

The problem here is that the Governor has the political cohones to state the truth (taxes for infrastructure) while the anti-tax Republicans are in the last-ditch stonewalling away.

It's our own fault for electing majority Republicans from NoVA to the state legislature. I'd piss on them all if they'd just hold still. [V]

I pointed out gas tax vs. tolls on a different post and was pointedly told that there is no relationship between gas taxes and transportation.

Tolls appear to be the only way to force us to use public transportation for commuting. If there's a better way to get commuters on public transportation, recommend proposing it.

Building new roads for cars won't work - eventually you run out of places to put new roads. Sponge or Dick Boyd can probably tell us how much pavement is needed for every 1 million people added, and we all know that it's only a matter of time before we add that many to the region. Maybe years, maybe tens of years, but, like the stock market and inflation, the population is going to increase. We have to force people to use mass transit. And, with no other proposals on how to do that, tolls seem to be the solution.

So, it sounds like we need to push VA to increase the current offerings of train and bus as an alternative to tolls. However, I suspect (don't know) that no study has been performed to justify that the current offerings are "woefully inadequate." Also, I suspect (don't know) that the demand for these services has changed much in the past couple of years.

There is, however, a tie between the demand for mass transit and the slug system. Unless and until slugs have to pay tolls in excess of the cost for commuting via mass transit, the demand for those services will be arificially surpressed. Do you think Richmond has figured that out?