Commuters using the 520 floating bridge to cross Lake Washington between Seattle and the eastside will go back to the future tomorrow morning at 5:00 am when bridge-crossing tollsre-appear for the first time since 1979. And it will be 40 years before the bridge becomes toll-free since that’s how long it’s expected to take to raise half the estimated $4.65 billion cost to replace the current four-lane bridge with a new six-lane structure.
The other half will theoretically come from gas tax revenue and an as-yet unknown or undisclosed funding source.
According to The Seattle Times, the toll structure will be as follows:
‘There will be eight rates, based on time of day, ranging from $1.10 late-night to $3.50 at peak times, in each direction, for drivers who have a state-issued Good to Go sticker that works like a debit card.
Others will be billed by mail for the toll plus a $1.50 surcharge.
Overnight, bridge crossings are free for everyone.
If a toll goes unpaid for 30 days, the motorist will be rebilled with a $5 fee. After 80 days, a $40 penalty will be added.’
Tolling will be all electronic, either from scanning the dubiously named “Good to Go” sticker or via a bill from the state based upon a photo or your license plate. The latter will be interesting for out-of-state or rental-car drivers who will no doubt simply rip up the letter from the state asking for payment. Where there’s a law, there’s a way to scoff it.
Only late-night commuters will get a break since bridge crossings will be free from 11:00 pm to 5:00 am.
The existing 520 bridge, opened in 1963, cost 35 cents each way to cross. When the $21 million cost of the bridge was raised via tolls, they were discontinued. Since there is no end in sight for the new tolls, area commuters would do well to acquaint themselves, as I have, with how things work/don’t work at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.Living in northern New Jersey a scant 13 miles from New York City, I’ve become intimately acquainted with the Port Authority. It operates the bridges and tunnels from Jersey into the City, most of the area airports – JFK, La Guardia, Newark-Liberty – bus terminals, sea ports, real estate ventures and a lot more. It owns the site upon which the Twin Towers stood, and it’s developing a successor to the terrorist-destroyed buildings.
The Port Authority’s 2012 budgetis expected to be $7 billion, and it employs7,345 people, including a 1,600-member police force. The average base-salary of a Port Authority employee is $79,144, but with overtime, the average total pay exceeds $90,000.
The Port Authority has no power to levy taxes. Its revenue comes from tolls and rental income from property it owns. It’s governed by a 12-member board of commissioners, half of whom are appointed by the governors of New York and New Jersey, and it’s only to the governors that the commissioners are accountable. The PA is plagued with sloppy management resulting in routine scandals.
Port Authority tolls between New Jersey and New York are steep. For a standard car, they range anywhere from $3.50 one-way for off-peak commuters with an E-Z Pass, the PA’s equivalent of Good to Go, to $12.00 at any time for a cash payer. The PA still accepts cash payments, but it’s correct change only.
Tolls are paid only once round-trip. You pay going into Manhattan, but not going out. Of course, since Manhattan is an island, if you want to get there other than by swimming or your own boat, you’ll be paying the PA man.
My most frequently used Port Authority facility is the Lincoln Tunnel, which provides access from New Jersey to Midtown Manhattan. While it’s only 13-miles as the crow flies, it’s 90 minutes as the clock ticks – the jam at the toll plaza just before the tunnel is incredible irrespective of time of day.
This past summer, a snarly brouhaha occurred when the Port Authority floated plans for a massive toll increase. After a lot of political wrangling, hanky twisting, breast beating, posturing and an angry letter to the editor from this reporter, the PA relented and implemented a less Draconian toll hike that will see peak-hour fares into New York City increase “only” $4.50 over four years. What then cost $8.00 will, by December 2015, cost $12.50, an increase of well over one-third.
Why should King County citizens and taxpayers care about the outrageous costs and bureaucratic hassles of the Port Authority? Because when they rejected Tim Eyman’s Initiative 1125 limiting tolling authority and requiring the Legislature to vote on toll increases, they opened the doors to what we experience every day in the New York metro area.
Instead of having the Legislature set tolls by voting on them, authority to set them is delegated to the Washington State Transportation Commission, an unelected bureaucracy. Instead of limiting the scope and purpose of tolls, those collected on 520 are subject to “project creep” or the rapacious appetite of the Legislature who never saw a designated fund it didn’t want to sweep clean to spend on other, more politically lucrative purposes.
There are so many ways this can go wrong, it’s impossible to count them. While I’m not predicting anything approaching the size and cost of the Port Authority coming to Washington state, I’m content predicting that in short order commuters will pay a lot more than what they’ll start out paying tomorrow morning, and problems and issues akin with those the PA experiences will arise. Let’s say mini-Port Authority, here we come.
As with any government boondoggle, 520 tolling will run off the road somehow. Whether it’s cost overruns, design problems necessitating more money, management snafus or whatever, it’s only a matter of time. And tolls will be raised to cover those costs – and raised, and then raised again and again. Legislators will say it’s necessary, and there’s nothing to be done. Nameless, faceless Transportation Commission bureaucrats will be anonymous in their decision making process because that’s the way bureaucracies “work.” Because people will look for ways to escape the 520 tolls they’ll choose alternate routes that will eventually be tolled to make up for “lost revenue.”
How soon before a trip across the lake costs $12.00? Too soon.
It will happen because it has happened before, here where I live.
Tell ’em where you saw it. Http://www.victoriataft.com