“The state’s path toward implementing tolling is uncertain at best,” Kotek wrote in a letter to state transportation commissioners.
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That’s huge news. The whole tolling plan was ill considered from the start, with no plan to end it. It’s not like “Oh, hey, we have this bridge we need to pay for”, they just wanted to implement it as traffic reduction.
Deeply supportive of reducing car trips but they rolled out a revenue stream under the guise of the environment and traffic with NO improvements to alternative infrastructure that would have enabled citizens to avoid them. So pay the toll or you can…take a bus 2 hours with a connection or 3? Take max who cut service during the pandemic and even then doesn’t run 24/7 at a usable rate due to catch 22 traffic and now safety issues that won’t be quickly fixed?
They would need to triple public transit services, availability, frequency, stops and invest in making transit work let alone not a punishment for those who would most be affected by tolling, to even begin to claim it wasn’t just a fucking cash grab. There aren’t even express MAX service, they’re all local still! Where are the express commuter bus service to the areas that would be most affected by tolling? How fucking regressive of a tax can you get?
Also, it would be administered by some Corp that would take 30% administrative off the top, fuck that we can do better.
All of that AND they didn’t take into account the mass number of people going: “Hey Google, Avoid Tolls”. Routing to side streets in Gladstone, Oregon City, West Linn and Lake Oswego.
Which is all the more evidence it’s not about making the city work better for its inhabitants, it’s about a revenue stream. Diverted traffic? Regressive costs for those most unable to avoid them? Corporate giveaway to the admin who runs tolling? What’s not to like?
Yup, yup. Plus environmental costs as more traffic diverts to streets less capable of handling more traffic.
The tolling decision was moronic, glad to see it got killed.