Linsky: Fairness in tolls

My constituents are mad as hell and won't take it any more. And I don't blame them - I am just as mad.

What has all of us so angry is the Mass Turnpike's plan to raise tolls again - for the second time this year and by a grand total of 125 percent.

The Mass Turnpike, you see, is drowning in debt and cannot survive financially under the current system. They need revenue, and a lot of it, to pay off their bonds.

It would be fine if the tolls we pay went to pay off the bonds that built the roads on which we drive, but the bonds are for the Big Dig - central artery project, the Ted Williams Tunnel and the Zakim Bridge, as well as the maze of connector roads and tunnels, ventilation buildings and supporting infrastructure.

The Big Dig has a scheme of ever-increasing bond payments that require ever-increasing revenue to pay them. In fact, the Big Dig accounts for 80 percent of the Mass Turnpike Authority's debt. Where does the Turnpike Authority have to turn to pay these debts? Right now, there is nowhere else to turn but the toll payer.

And to make matters worse, they can only utilize the tolls from the Weston/Newton tollbooths at Route 95/128, the Allston-Brighton tolls and the tunnel tolls. Through a legal fiction known as the Metropolitan Highway System, which was created to finance this mess in 1997, the tolls from the Turnpike west to the New York border cannot be tapped to pay for this. Consequently, what was a $2 round trip from Weston to Boston in 2002 and a $4 round trip in 2007 would be a $9 round-trip in 2009 under the latest proposal.

What really sticks in my constituents' craw however, if this was not bad enough, is that the drivers who get the principal benefit from the Big Dig - those who live south of Boston and those who commute down I-93 over the Zakim Bridge, pay exactly nothing in tolls toward the project. Nothing. Zip. Nada. Goose-egg.

What's the solution? The fairest way to deal with this is one in which either everyone pays the tolls for the project or no one pays tolls for it. A small increase in the gas tax - 3 or 4 cents per gallon - could replace all of the tolls collected at the Weston/Newton tolls and the Allston-Brighton tolls and have some left over for operation and maintenance. Although previously calculated by a percentage of the wholesale value of one gallon, the gas tax has remained fixed at 21 cents per gallon since the year 2000.

We could also save money by getting rid of the infrastructure needed to collect the tolls, save fuel burned waiting in line to pay those tolls, get cars off the city streets in Newton and Boston who go there trying to avoid the tolls and be left with a financing solution that is fair to everyone.

I know that no one wants to pay more for gasoline, but this increase would cost the average driver about 50 cents per week, but would save those of us living west of Boston $45 a week. And it would be fair. Isn't that what we should try and do in government?

David P. Linsky (D-Natick) is state representative for the Fifth Middlesex District, representing Natick, Sherborn and Millis.