Throwing My Two Cents into the Toll Booth

I attended the August 18 Tollway hearing in Wheaton.  The hearing was largely packed with those who are getting fat from the public trough (or would like to), including engineers who profit from Tollway contracts and union bosses.  Some faces I saw at the Wheaton hearing also appear in a photo of the Geneva hearing, indicating they were sent from hearing to hearing in an “astroturf” (fake grass roots) campaign.  One speaker, who recited humorous poems, admitted he was “told” to attend (presumably by his employer) and “have fun”.  Still, the crowd was polite to all the speakers.  Personally, I don’t object to paying tolls, and I have no problem with additional capital projects, if they’re done the right way.  But the current plan needs to go back to the drawing board.

First, there’s nothing innovative in it.  We’re told it’s needed to solve “congestion.”  If so, why not introduce congestion pricing for all vehicles, to generate more revenue and encourage more efficient use of the current system?  The technology is there; the Tollway already has it for heavy trucks.  Why spend the money to build lanes that have to be maintained 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, if the problem really only exists during rush hours on weekdays?

Likewise, the Tollway wants to impose a “one size fits all” toll increase to generate a giant pot of money for them to spend, without tying those increases to whether a given project is needed.  If tolls are a “user fee,” then each project should stand on its own merits – and be funded only by the folks that use it.  Want to build a 57-294 interchange?  If it is merited, just put an electronic toll plaza over that ramp and let it pay for itself, rather than make motorists across the system pay for facilities they’re not using.  Otherwise, the huge systemwide increase allows the Tollway to subsidize pet projects that may or may not be economically viable, without any financial accountability.  Several speakers at the hearing alluded to this issue; one wants an expressway to serve the project of a single developer.

Second, the Tollway claims its tolls are at the low end of the spectrum.  But they should be lower; the initial capital costs of land acquisition, engineering and construction should have been amortized already over the last 30-50 years for most roads, and tolls should now decrease to the levels required to maintain the roads.  The Tollway director showed a chart of systems with higher tolls, but those toll levels roughly correlate to the age of the tollways.  The newer tollways are much more expensive, as you would expect because they’re still paying off their startup costs.

Finally, can we trust the current Tollway regime to spend our money wisely?  The Tollway has long been a patronage dumping ground.  It featured heavily in the Blagojevich saga.  They spent our tolls to put up all those Blagojevich signs, and then spent more of our tolls to cover them over.  And who can forget the infamous John “Quarters” Boyle?  As suggested by DuPage County Board Member Dirk Enger at the hearing, it’s time for the Tollway to get rid of its no-bid professional service contracts and put everything out to the lowest bidder.  I suggest it’s also time to eliminate so-called “prevailing wage” requirements that result in excessive labor cost, and let the market set the price to save millions if not billions in construction costs.

Let’s implement a responsible, innovative and tailored capital plan, not a giant boondoggle.