Be very, very careful before making statements like this:

"The start of tolling on SR 520 followed by less than two months the voters’ rejection of Tim Eyman’s I-1125 attempt to slam the door on modern tolling in our state."

Because it has not necessarily led to this:

"It’s important for Olympia to have heard unequivocally that voters are prepared to see what may happen with tolling."

It is not so easy to determine that voters rejected I-1125 strictly because they favored tolling. For example, I voted against it because (1) it was Eyman and (2) it was trying to stop light rail to Bellevue.

Because Eyman is a whore who is in it to make a buck, he had to include the anti-light rail provisions in 1125 to get his campaign bankrolled by Kemper Freeman. If Eyman, or any other initiative huckster, were to file an initiative that limited itself to barring collection of tolls for anything other than to build or maintain the highway being tolled, or to banning variable tolling and -- more important -- certain methods of its implementation -- do not be so sure that it wouldn't pass.

Olympia has not heard anything unequivocally. We might agree that it is important that it does, and the tolling fanboys will be trying to spin it that way, but their arguments are utterly unconvincing.

Pretty easy for an east-coaster to come to town, both guns blazing, and tell us what is good for us.

I do agree the mid-day and off peak tolls for 520 are wrong.

But so is the charging occasional users, who do not want to fund a purse (Doug's purse) with $30 a whole five bucks to cross is nutz.

To help Mr. McDonald understand, the bargain was we would settle for the highest gas tax in the nation (typical year) in exchange for not using the tolling model.

There are tons of alternatives to increase the highway construction money pool. How about this: Don't use 40-60% of a projects funds to build misquito breeding ponds, and as a sop to transit, while calling it HOV or some other obfuscatory thing.

Use it for roads.

Plus, this toll scheme condemns the poorest of us to transit, and removes flexibility for us to move around our sometimes circuitous routes without paying a disproportionate amount of money for tolls.

Now, the telecommute that Doug mentions is a great solution, but until the state is willing to use it's bully pulpit to bring large employers to allow that (think Boeing knowledge workers, who are not hands-on a plane) it limits that excellent solution too.

The Geezer

Traffic data is useful, but when it comes to the 520 experiment, post-toll data on public opinion will probably be a far more important indicator of the future.

Had tolls been in effect on 520 prior to the November election, would 1125 have passed? We can't know.

What's going to happen when the bills add up? Will the peak-520 crowd have second thoughts when they have to keep feeding their accounts?

What are the effects of the tolls on traffic beyond the data that the state is producing?

Doug is keen to toll I-90 too. Does the data support his opinion? So far, there appears to be no groundswell of support for tolling 90, except by tolling ideologues and 520 toll payers.

Will people agree to tolls on I-90 to pay for the completion of 520? Should the government toll some people to pay for benefits enjoyed by others? Maybe not.

Here’s a link to the PSRC’s ‘Preferred Alternative’ for tolling every freeway and major arterial in the Puget Sound by 2040.
http://www.bettertransport.info/pitf/resourcelinks.htm
SR520 is the first, to be followed closely by I-90 if WSDOT and the TC have their way. DBT will follow, then I-5 to balance traffic flows as the two bridges were done. The camels nose is firmly inside the tent.
I don’t have a problem with user fees and congestion pricing is certainly a good way to spread flows over longer time spans or eliminating some trips all together.
My beef with tolling (ala outside vendors and screenline collection points) is this.
It’s a horribly inefficient way to collect a tax with so much of the revenue stream just going to pay for the equipment, backroom operations, and all the follow up collection steps. SR167 hot lanes are a good example of the cost of the operation eating up all the tolls generated for over 3 years. They barely break even now. How does that help maintain the pavement surfaces, if there’s nothing left over.
SR520 and DBT are estimated to cost 1/3 of the toll revenue collected by WSDOT. I think it will be higher, but let’s wait and see.
Is this the best way to pay for things, with so much revenue being extracted from the economy and up to half being eaten up to service the system.
If property taxes, B&O;, or sales taxes had such high overheads, we’d all be wanting someones head on a pike.
Today’s cars have amazing computer systems, and could easily collect enough information to make year to year decisions on how that vehicle is being used – miles and time of day. Couple that with spot check cameras to validate location data, and you can create a simple tiered licence renewal algorithm to be applied on a yearly basis. Let the computers whirr, then send us a congestion priced bill.
Drive on congested roadways in the peak a lot and you’ll pay a lot. Don’t use the roadways during premium periods and you’ll get a significant break. That’s a lot cheaper than getting a letter a day from the DOT saying you drove on X number of roads last week, at these times, with these variable rates, so send us a check for this amount. Or trying to reconcille your debit account at the end of the month for multiple hits for traveling along X,Y and Z for each journey. That’s way to complicated.

I remember listening to Mr. MacDonald debate Tim Eyman on KTTH before the election on I-1125. He stated quite clearly that additional tolling in the Puget Sound Region was not a foregone conclusion, that to his knowledge nobody was planning for a massive expansion of tolling in the near future. When it was pointed out to him that the PSRC plan called for just such an expansion of tolling, he stated he didn't think that the legislature would be incline to pass an expansion of tolling.

So Mr. MacDonald, were you misrepresenting the future of tolling in an attempt to defeat 1125? Or are you totally ignorant of tolling plans that have been in place at PSRC and WSDOT for years? In either case, you do not appear to be a reliable source of unbias information.

"A future smart bus likely will look and operate as little like today’s transit coach as a smartphone resembles a hardwired rotary-dialed telephone. Tomorrow’s transit fleet will be far less dominated by rubber-tire buses, although they will still be important. What we will come to think of as transit will also see vast and convenient expansions of powerful commuting tools foreshadowed by the Microsoft Connector and King County’s nationally admired vanpools."

Well, yes. In traveling to places like Mexico off the beaten path, this is the go-to solution and it works just fine. Around Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo those rides used to cost a nickel and would get you where you wanted to go quite easily.

Why haven't we used this model FIRST instead of looking at it as an arrival point for the future? And why haven't we created incentives for employers to allow tele-commuting? I think the answer is that the government wants the tax money people drop when they come into Seattle and the toll dollars they can't wait to reap, along with the jobs that keeping this all going maintains.

The really annoying part of this is that the real reasons for these choices are never simply admitted and defended. Possibly because they're indefensible? Mr. McDonald would reject that, but I'm not convinced. We should be making much better choices, not creating yet another reason to stay in one's own neighborhood, since Metro is NOT an answer unless you're going into and out of downtown.

For folks that must travel across 520 at peak times and for whom transit is not an option, they'll be spending $35/week at peak tolls, or $150/month. In all likelihood many of the folks who now face these charges are low wage workers doing whatever they can to support themselves and their families. Metro and the other transit entities in the region do not connect well most of the time. Once one is out of the to and from downtown Seattle model, Metro and the other transit entities don't work at all most of the time, unless one feels that 4 or 5 hours of daily travel time is workable.

As usual with the transit and tolling true believers inconvenient truths are ignored in the self-congratulation. We have a right to expect better from our officials.

Thanks Doug for the early review.

I agree strongly about the rigid rates and small differences between on & off peak in that this is going to greatly diminish midday flows AND increase diversion.

What I can't tell is whether these negatives, and they are big, will overtake commuters' experiences (transit too) in post-toll opinion and whether the pressure on I-90 will get us to tolling there sooner.

What is the path to tolling on I-90?

...oh and Doug, will Mercer Islanders pay any tolls on I-90...or just us ordinary mooches ?

Welcome to the Tolling Surveillance State. Government workers will track your comings and goings, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It's Orwellian. I've lived in Washington all my life; my family has been here since the mid-1800s, but I would leave the state if this kind of plan was enacted. Where I choose to go is just none of the government's damned business.

Once again, I am reminded of why I moved to Bellingham. I've long believed the real reason for schemes like this is to purge Seattle are of all those awful poor people, in much the same way as the Rainier Valley Gentrification Project, aka Link™ Light Rail...

Doug MacDonald's essay is very educational, highlighting the many benefits of WSDOT's emerging tolling approach to capacity management.

However, even as a strong supporter of facility tolling and the eventual evolution to universal road use fees, I also agree with dbreneman that "where I choose to go is just none of the government's damned business."

Typical of tolling bureaucracies nationwide, Washington State DOT is so far failing to implement a tolling system that defaults to complete privacy protection and instead makes those who want to preserve privacy of location take extra steps to buy an unregistered toll tag. We can purchase one for cash at a walk-in Good-to-Go service center, but the option is not publicized and inconvenient to boot. Anonymous tags should be available in grocery stores just like the tags that must be registered.

And the better approach to a system protecting privacy is the storage of all vehicle location data inside the vehicle under the owner's control with only the financial transaction data passed to the government's tolling computers. Such a chip has been installed in many cars already, sometimes used by rental car companies to keep track of where its cars are. It's also part of systems for recovering stolen cars, for the parents of teenage drivers, for commercial fleet management, and for cheaper auto insurance. The data in such chips belongs to the vehicle owner and should be released only with her permission.

Such a device could be interfaced in a privacy-protecting design to tolling agencies. Then, a vehicle owner could choose to reveal the location record only on isolated occasions if she wishes to challenge the government's recording of the financial data that is on the invoice of tolls.

Private high-tech companies that could implement such a system in Washington State are available to serve DOT toll collection, but they haven't made the sale yet for lack of public demand on elected representatives.

Now that universal road tolling is our future regional path -- as set by the vote on the T-2040 Plan of the Puget Sound Regional Council General Assembly on May 20, 2010 -- those with ACLU sympathies must ramp up the pressure on governments to implement a road fee collection system that supports both the widely-held American values of paying for what you use and giving the consumer control of her privacy.

This comes as a pleasant surprise. When the state announced this tolling system for the Narrows Bridge I explicitly asked several DOT representatives if there was going to be an anonymous option and was told there would be, but when the system was implemented that option was not part of it. There's no reason why people should not be able to buy a pre-paid Good To Go pass the same way they would buy a pre-paid cell phone (or even a Starbucks card for that matter). When it's used up, you could take it to a drug store or Radio Shack or something and "recharge" it.

We certainly need tolling – to encourage more efficient use of our roadways and to encourage transit or other arrangements. But MacDonald’s context seems to be some sort of high-tech wonderland rather than the reality that we can expect – higher real prices and lower real incomes driven by the limits-to-growth that the global economy is now encountering. Sharing will be the key to survival for an ever increasing portion of the population, especially for transportation and housing. This points directly to rail transit and transit oriented development as the economic ideal, with dispersed residential and job sites suffering increasing penalties. We need to dramatically speed up light rail construction so that far more people can enjoy this fabulous transit.

Dick Burkhart says:

"We certainly need tolling – to encourage more efficient use of our roadways and to encourage transit or other arrangements."
--
Speaking for myself and not presuming to represent anyone else -- although I suspect that a critical mass of voters share my views -- I refuse to accept this as a basic premise, and I will vote, and lend or withhold my political support, accordingly.

Ivan, you must be a socialist then. Why do you want a socialized freeway system? I never use the 520 bridge, so why should I subsidize your use of it?

I would be very happy if the bridge was privatized and had no government support. Washington state should switch to a turnpike system, where the users pay the entire cost of these mega-freeways.

One point I have never heard anyone point out is this -- when these freeways are built, more and more land goes off the property tax roles, thereby creating another, hidden subsidy. Turnpikes should pay property tax for land they occupy.

This is the word of the day:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shunpiking

Did not in an earlier piece for Crosscut the author state that a Metro bus does 140 times as much wear and tear on roads as does a solo automobile or SUV? If so, why don't all bus riders across 520 pay their fair share fare with added bus fares appropriate to the damage done? After all, foot ferry passengers do not get a free ride crossing the waterways of Puget Sound! Tolls should apply to bus riders!

Let us all know when the King County Foot Ferry get's close to 25% fare box recovery. Don't worry, it never will.

Do not trust the MacDonalds of Highway Robbery who love and understand money more than sensible roadway engineering.

Once again the last word in engineering is met with no resistance. I use the words 'horrendous, atrocious, catastrophic', with regret and only to meaningfully portray the bored tunnel potential for abject failure. I must inform the public of this incredible risk beyond an acceptable one to many prominent professional engineers outside the dear State of Washington where its not-so-dear highway builders control the information and media and violate their state chartered authority by 'rigging' their cut/cover and surface/transit design studies. OH YES THEY DID!

The dbt is "disastrous" when it must surely fail. There is NO WAY it makes sense. AND the traffic rearrangement is rated "F" by many worldwide standards; bad traffic design with the Mercer-West & Alaskan "Weigh the gold again Ivanovski" stupid design for a once working waterfront's Grandioso Boulevardisimo that left no room for rail & rail jobs?

The increase and redirection of traffic volumes onto residential streets and active commercial districts also increases the statistical probability for road accident and hazards. This is what some people call "a public safety policy failure".

Downtown gets a new road design to handle 30% and more traffic.
Armchair ENGINE-kneer-wannabees in Seattle, OMG U Moor-onz. STOP.

Tolling is an imperfect solution, in part because it has economically regressive effects on low income people. More imaginative, leapover solutions to traffic congestion are necessary, such as universal broadband, so that more people can work at home (telecommuting), study at home (distance learning), shop at home, and receive medical attention at home (telemedicine).

"..reshape the daily curve of traffic demand. You can then shave the peaks, fill in the valleys, smooth the traffic flow across the day, save fuel and reduce emissions, speed freight, improve the reliability..."

----
"Blah, blah, blah..." An attorney lecturing us on transportation science. How nice.

This PR makes it sound like tolling is the greatest thing since sliced bread. I thought Sound Transit was that. [/sarcasm]

The loss of midday travel on 520 may have very significant economic consequences -- and I'm not simply talking about WSDOT's ability to pay off its bonds. To travelers, the toll places destinations on either side of the lake much more 'distant' than before -- and that added distance scrubs away travel demand that formerly existed.

(There's a reason why many mainlanders don't take the ferries to the Olympic Peninsula -a far more direct route- for recreation than driving around. And much of that reason is $ cost. 520 bridge tolls work likewise, leading many non-commuters to either a) not go or b) divert to another crossing.)

By pricing such a large share of midday travelers off 520, WSDOT's very aggressive (punitive?) time-of-day tolls appears to have converted this facility from one available to *all* on a non-discriminatory 24x7 basis to one that is 'reserved' only to the highest bidders (commuters) -- and thus a facility effective (functional) for a only sliver of the region's populace.

I believe this is the inevitable result -especially for such aggressive tolling- and a result entirely inappropriate for essential public services (and transportation is one.)

Might other public services (e.g. police, fire, parks, schools -even legislatures!) be next for auctioning their services to users?