No toll on Legacy's first segment
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Tuesday, January 9, 2007
It really would be good news if we didn't have to build any more expensive highways and freeways along the Wasatch Front. Just imagine what we could do with the billions and billions of dollars saved.
Alas, Utahns drive cars -- their own cars -- everywhere. We don't walk. We drive. And drive and drive and drive.
And since those billions for roads are being raised via sales taxes, primarily, it only makes sense that the Utah Taxpayers Association -- its raison d'être being to advocate for lower taxes -- would be looking for ways around the expense. The organization has landed on something called "congestion pricing," which is being used in other states to raise money for new roads and, more importantly, to change people's driving and commuting habits.
The Taxpayers Association says congestion pricing would amount to variable tolls on the Legacy Highway in Davis County, and on the yet-to-be purchased Mountainland Corridor between Salt Lake City and Utah County (basically: Legacy Highway South).
Electronic transponders would be placed in everyone's cars, and when Legacy opens in a couple of years, if you used it during peak rush hour, your credit card would be charged a toll.
But if you used it midday, late at night or on weekends, there might be no charge at all.
This, the theory goes, will eventually encourage commuters to use mass transit and telecommute, and their employers will institute more flexible work hours. The tolls will produce some revenue, though other states' experience has been that the income is the least-attractive result. The goal is to reduce spending on new roads and increase the use of mass transit, which in the Top of Utah would be commuter rail and buses.
Our only objection to the Taxpayers Association proposal is that the Legacy Highway funding has been determined. It was never undertaken as a toll road, and even though an environmental lawsuit temporarily halted the work, a delicate and controversial settlement was finally reached between the state and anti-highway groups.
Now construction is scheduled to resume on the road this spring. Transforming it into a toll road may or may not complicate the negotiated agreement, and that could be tragic -- given all the difficulty and extra expense incurred already.
As for the Mountainland Corridor and, more important to the Top of Utah, Legacy North between Farmington and Weber County: As long as congestion pricing is on the table from the start, everyone would know what they're bargaining for. By all means, let's study it and see if it's a good idea.
But it seems to us that Legacy's first stage between Farmington and Salt Lake City is too far down the road, so to speak, to be adding a toll on top of the high price all Utahns have already paid and will pay to see it completed.
Our thinking is not absolutely closed on the matter, but we're of the opinion that discusion of tolls should have come along a lot sooner in the process.
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