The Daily Campus

This is a consistent and truly outrageous idea, to let someone else pay for your usage. Teh tristate region needs more tolls to halt traffic and leave idling vehicles like, well, like the adtional smog such a proposal would create.

To tell NY'ers that their tolls, already the highest in the nation, hell, some of the only tolls in the nation, are going to increase, that their vehicles will sit in toll queues while their vehicles generate smog to add to the already generated smog at the multiple toll collection stations around the city will simply add to the problem.

As far as taxes go, attacking fancy and bloated pensions and helathcare plans meted to "public servants" from typist to garbagehauler, from paper pusher to one-term Mayor, will go far towards solving fiscal woes...throughout local and federal fiefdoms.

Easy for a student newspaper in northeastern Connecticut to call for tolls in southwestern Connecticut. What about reinstating *all* tolls, including the Hartford area bridges, and let's add in I-91 and I-84. After all, why should one (admittedly affluent) region of the state bear the entire brunt of lowering the gas tax?

screw that! reinstate tolls.... that's stupid! i means every single commuter going to their jobs will be paying for not only that high gas prices (because that won't change if tolls are put back in) and crappy tolls to get to and from work.

Sure, let's screw the people in Fairfield County some more. Its not bad enough that these are the people that pay all of the taxes in the state and that roads in that part of the state are overburdened and in horrible shape. Let's really stick to them by adding to their ridiculously long commute and shifting more of the State's tax burden to them.

If they were going to reinstate tolls, I would prefer the State just send every resident a check for $20. Let us decide how to spend it.

The example given in the article on the repeal of highway tolls as a result of a single accident 25 years ago is ironically typical of the kind of knee-jerk policies the article and comments argue for and against.

The article's premise that tolls will serve to relieve some of the burden of CT's gas tax (0.44 $/gal not 0.62 $/gal btw) during this period of increasing oil prices is not exactly feasible. If tolling legislation is approved it would likely take 2-4 years to implement and possibly longer before a revenue stream is realized. Furthermore it will require some short term investment in construction costs which will likely make taxes rise before they fall. This won't help your summertime driving costs.

I believe that the taxes raised should be pursuant to the policies supported by the legislature. If the goal is to recoup maintenance costs due to over use of I-95 in Fairfield alone then tolls should be instituted there only. If the goal however is to encourage alternate means of commuting (trains, buses, carpooling, etc) then tolls should be collected on all major state highways(I-95, I-84, I-91, I-395, CT-2, CT-9, CT-8). Furthermore, if this is the goal, some of the toll money collected should be earmarked for investment in the infrastructure additions needed to support it.

On the issue of gas tax, it's true that we have one of the highest state gas taxes in the nation but we also collectively have one of the highest abilities in the nation to pay those gas taxes and perhaps a greater than average geographical ability to choose not to drive. I for one would be interested in seeing what affect a further increase in those gas taxes would have on people's driving efficiency and its effect on greenhouse gas emissions.

As the parent of a soon to be student at UCONN, I am not pleased nor excited about paying the high prices for gas in Connecticut. I am from out-of-state and I if I have to pay extra tolls on I-95, so be it. Anything that will (1) lower my gas bill or (2) give me the peception that my gas bill is less, I am very much in favor of.

Yes. reinstate tolls. I live in fairfield county and work from home. let the people who drive on the roads pay for using them - not us folks who rarely hop on I-95. Institute congestion pricing - help clear up some of the traffic that us folks in SW CT deal with as people from the north and east drive down for work. And if the truck driver who caused the accident in 1983 is still alive, find him and make him pay the gas tax....

Living in Fairfield County, I know all too well the traffic problems here. So the idea of just screwing our area with tolls is prepostorous. How about greater fines for the speeders, the people who weave back and forth between lanes, and people who still haven't learned to use a a dman turn signal. The increase in fines would back to the state and maybe lower gas costs. Tolls would only cause more traffic and more road rage. And I see enough of that every day on my 30 minute commute to work. And even more so on the way home. Second, I am all for tolls...in one way and one way only. Put tolls at the borders and that is all. At the borders between CT and NY, between CT and Mass, and between CT and RI. Much of the traffic is caused by people out-of-state. So by putting the tolls at the borders, CT residents would likely be the least affected by this.

If a gas tax holiday won't work because gas stations would not drop prices, why would a drop in gas taxes as a result of tolls have any effect at the pump? It's time to address our energy crisis, not try and lower prices and pretend there's no problem. We need investment in new technology, and as difficult as it may be, only when oil is no longer financially viable will this happen.

If the Empire was not spending billions of dollars on the so called "War on Terror" there would be money for roads and health care. Imperial Washington uses its troops to dictate to other nations what they may and may not do. Even its puppet regime in Iraq does not want them. If Bush and the Democrats were really interested in halting terrorism they would free the Cuban Five and arrest and try or extradite Orlando Bosh and Luis Posada for downing a Cuban Commercial Airliner killing all 73 aboard as required under an international treaty concerning Air Piracy they signed. It is a national disgrace that Bosh and Posada walk the streets of Miami as free men braging about their deeds.

i completely agree with Matt. time has definitely come to address the energy crisis. We need to get our priorities in order.

Resurection of Tolls--A Bad Idea: Let me begin by saying Connecticut residents are "overtaxed" as it is--we don't need another thing to throw our money away into." Yes, I agree, an EZ Pass or similar system would eliminate the problems of the early to mid eighties with respect to fatal accidents. But that is just one issue that needs to be resolved. Take it from someone who knows. When I was a UConn student from 1981 - 1985, I had a summer job in the summer of 82 at the Norwalk Toll Plaza on the then Connecticut Turnpike (I-95). Passenger Cars paid 35 cents and trucks and buses paid 30 cents per axle. I earned the then minimum wage of $3.37 an hour. Now the minimum wage is $8.00 meaning passenger car tolls of $1.00 or higher would be required to pay the overhead--even if most lanes are for "High Speed EZ Pass," with utility bills at an all-time high in Connecticut, you still have to pay the electric bill. Tolls this expensive will break already broken economy in Connecticut and force more businesses, especially ones like mine that deliver furniture in trucks, out of Connecticut, and such corporations even in a good economy would be paying their taxes in another state. Another thing you may not know is how toll collection affects funding. Sure, a source of reveue to pay for road maintenace--not so fast. On a "True" Interstate highway (1-95, I-84, etc.), the federal government is responsible for 90% of the maintenance cost while the state the roadway is located in is responsible for 10%. If a source of revenue such as tolls are added, the highway loses its status as an Interstate highway, is identified as as an Interstate Route Number "only in title," and the Federal Government is prohibited from funding more than 50%. So we collect revenue but now we have to pay 40% more of the cost of maintenance--like filling the bathtub without the drain stopper! In addition, to comply with the new guidelines defined by the "Eisenhower Interstate Highway System," one out every five miles is built as a perfect "straightaway" so it can be used to launch military aircraft in the event of a national emergency. This means the toll plazas cannot be built on these perfect straighaways, the logical safest places for them. Although I believe Connecticut has learned its lesson and won't build a toll plaza on the infamous "S" curve between Exits 32 and 33 in Stratford, they would still be on less straight portions.

We fought so hard for the removal of tolls in the eighties. I would hope Connecticutites have evolved from this.

Thanks
Scott