Time and Money Might Kill Toll Study Bill

You would think that with the state of Connecticut facing a huge budget crisis that entertaining any discussion of implementing tolls might be a bad idea. But with legislative elections every two years, legislators are eager to make their mark. Unfortunately for the mere residents of the state. There really was only one thing that legislators needed to focus on this session, and that was reducing the operating costs of government in the face of declining operating revenues. Yet, time and money was spent examining tolls on Connecticut’s highways.

Tolls wouldn’t be such a bad idea if there were many ways to get from point A to point B in this state. But years of legislative neglect, DOT incompetence and left us with few routes and roads that link up residents to job centers, too much sprawl, not enough public mass transportation that doesn’t involve roads and now not enough money to dig our way out if it.

The bill about the Tolls called for the DOT to hire a consultant to the tune of $500k. That money doesn’t exist, even more so because the DOT has managed, or rather mismanaged, just about every project it is supposed to be working on. New rail cars? New rail road yard? Way to maintain said new rail cars? And do I really even need to utter route 7 or I-84?

Notably the proponents of the tolls come from south eastern Connecticut, where they’ve gained all the traffic of the casinos but aren’t in the NYC to Boston corridor of economic traffic.