Thursday, December 18, 2008
Yet another reason to take BART....
$5 tolls! My goodness, the frequency of increases is starting to get ridiculous. Yes, I know this is for retrofitting but what percentage is truly going into that? And what about the money previously put aside to complete this project? I'm sure there is an obvious answer for that as well but the bottom line is, at this rate, in this economy, we're not far from a $10 toll. The "just take it out of the people's pockets" mentality will never go away.
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3 comments:
My grandfather told me that when the built the Bay Bridge and others, they always said that once the costs of building the bridges were paid off, they'd remove the toll booths and crossing the bridge would be free. Of course, it never ever works out that way, does it?...
Bay Bridge tolls were initially 60 cents/car, then dropped to 50 cents/car and finally 25 cents per car--the latter two equaling about $7.15/car and $3.57/car in current dollars. However, they were collected in each direction, so someone crossing over and back would have paid $14.30 or $7.14, respectively.
In addition, a toll of 2.5 cents per passenger each way was charged for people on the heavy rail crossing the bridge ($0.36 in current dollars).
Of course, the original bridge was usable, but was (is) seismically unsound. A toll of $5 per car would remain far below even the reduced Bay Bridge toll originally imposed, and with the benefit of having a bridge that is structurally more sound.
It is correct that there was a plan to end the tolls after the bridge bonds had been paid off, but I wonder how they were planning to pay for maintenance...
-Hayden
hayden is correct on both adjusted $$ and maintenance. As to the promises related by the grandfather, P T Barnum was especially correct w/ regard to politics. (...sucker born every...)
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