Bacon's Rebellion

Hampton Roads Tolls

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

I’m all for slapping tolls on every major bridge in Hampton Roads to pay the bulk of the cost of the Third Crossing.

I hope they don’t screw up the actual crossing plans with something stupid. They should do a rail and truck bridge to 460 on the Southside and new tubes for cars across the Hampton-Norfolk crossing.

I don’t understand why a 22 person commission had to be appointed instead of VDOT collecting the tolls.

Pay attention to see if this commission hires staff and rents offices. Look to see who, and how many, they hire and how much they pay. Might be a good news story for a newspaper.

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

Comments

3 responses to “Hampton Roads Tolls”

  1. Jim Bacon Avatar
    Jim Bacon

    As a general proposition, paying for mega-road projects in Hampton Roads with tolls is preferable to paying for them through a sales tax. At least motorists as a class are paying for the road improvements rather than retail consumers as a class. That’s a small step forward.

    Does the legislation you refer to fund any projects other than the Third Crossing? Does it fund the grab-bag of giant projects that the Axis of Taxes has been lobbying for, or just the Third Crossing?

  2. kingfish Avatar
    kingfish

    JAB- I agree… in part. I don’t see the need for another level of bureaucracy to accomplish this job. Let VDOT do what ought to be part of its job.
    I have a harder time with slapping tolls on every bridge in Hampton Roads. The bridges and tunnels are already traffic chokepoints and if this happens we will bring traffic to an absolute standstill. It is part of the reason I favor increasing the gas tax to raise the revenue for these projects.

  3. NotGeorgeSteinbrenner Avatar
    NotGeorgeSteinbrenner

    Today’s Virginian Pilot reports “Hampton Roads was left with no clear way to raise money for its top road needs when the House of Delegates on Wednesday rejected giving tolling powers to a proposed regional transportation authority.”

    I thought tolls were an essential part of the House Republican’s no-tax “solution” to transportation. Only one GOP delegate (Welch) voted against the deletion of toling authority. What gives?

Leave a Reply

ADVERTISEMENT