FIght Toll Increases

Marblehead - Without hesitation, we’ll add our full-throated voices to the hue and cry across the North Shore over the proposal to double tolls at the Sumner and Ted Williams tunnels to $7.

If you are having trouble mustering similar outrage, seek out Yvonne Abraham’s excellent column in Wednesday’s Boston Globe.

“Together we can?” she begins. “Apparently not when it comes to the Big Dig. There, toll collectors and Fast Lane transponders make a joke of Gov. Deval Patrick’s ubiquitous, winning campaign slogan. Because while some of us shell out hundreds of dollars a year for the beautiful new roads, the rest of you get to speed along them for free, the wind in your hair.”

Boston-bound Marblehead commuters, of course, fit into the former category.

“Those of us who pay tolls are no more responsible than the rest of you for the mess that is our state’s transportation system,” Abraham continues. “And yet, here we are, paying more than our fair share for the consequences.”

To Abraham, the answer is increasing the state’s gas tax, and we are inclined to agree. Not that anyone wants to pay more in taxes, but the numbers Abraham provides are pretty compelling and speak to a state making insufficient use of the revenue stream to invest in its infrastructure. Not only is the state 35th in the nation in terms of the ratio of taxes to income, but Massachusetts’ 23.5-cent-per-gallon gas tax is approximately half of those in states perhaps most like us in the union, in terms of hosting at least one major city to which workers commute from nearby suburbs: Connecticut (47.2 cents), New York (42.5 cents), Illinois (46 cents), California (48.7 cents).

Abraham speaks favorably of legislation to be filed by state Rep. David Linsky, a Natick Democrat, to raise the gas tax by 6 cents, which would “eliminate some tolls and freeze others.” Other plans are likely to emerge in the days ahead, and it is a little early to say definitively what the “right number” is, in our view.

But at the very least, what seems to be needed is a “timeout.” That, in essence, is what legislation proposed by Rep. Steven Walsh, D-Lynn, would accomplish. Walsh’s bill is backed by a bipartisan group of 36 state lawmakers, including Marblehead’s Lori Ehrlich, and would strip the Mass. Turnpike Authority Board of the authority to change toll rates until Dec. 31, 2009, or until “a comprehensive transportation plan is passed, whichever is sooner.”

The North Shore delegation is united in pushing for passage of Walsh’s bill, but as Ehrlich notes, there is a role for the public to play, too.

“I only hope that this hike is so over the top that North Shore residents respond in force by attending hearings and submitting commentary,” she told The Reporter. “North Shore legislators are standing together to oppose [the toll increases] and come up with a better alternative. Citizens need to get involved.”

We hope you heed that call.