6. What do you think about widespread highway tolling?
Crosscut would like you to weigh in after reading our special report, No Exit: Pay Toll Ahead by Dean Paton. Comment here on any or all of the five parts.
By
June 10, 2007.
After you've read the stories listed below, please post a comment here about what you think. Is King County Executive Ron Sims prescient about tolling – will we end up with toll roads everywhere evenually, no matter what? Or is he overstating future problems?
Raise your own questions and offer your own ideas about how to finance massive transportation improvements in metropolitan Puget Sound – and elsewhere, for that matter.
Here's a guide to the articles in this series.
- Highway tolls are inevitable in metro Puget Sound: King County Executive Ron Sims has his own inconvenient truth to convey: Tolls are inevitable on all major metropolitan Puget Sound freeways. And he already has a plan for us to discuss.
- Avoiding a collision of transportation decisions: Mere talk about road tolls is seen as a threat to an unrelated $14.5 billion transportation ballot measure in November. That's why a proposal for widespread tolling has been secret until now.
- How 'congestion pricing' works elsewhere: Tolling and other measures are in use as congestion-reducers in London, Singapore, Rome, and many other places. There are a lot of ideas out there for Puget Sound planners to consider.
- How regional freeway tolling might work here: There would be no toll booths. Electronic sensors would detect whether you have a paid pass to use the freeways, and if you didn't, there would be cameras ...
- 'The bus system is stupid': If people must pay to use freeways, transportation planners say, there must be alternative ways to get around – cheaply and quickly.