OUR VIEW: For whom the tolls ring a bell

Kudos to Gov. Tim Kaine and the General Assembly for passing and signing legislation requiring the General Assembly to give consent to any tolls that would be placed on the Interstate 81 corridor.
According to a press release from the governor’s office, every lawmaker along the I-81 corridor voted in favor of the bill sponsored by Delegate Todd Gilbert and Sens. Mark Obenshain and John Edwards.
The legislation comes as the Virginia Department of Transportation is looking to widen the road to the tune of $11 billion. The plan to expand the highway’s capacity, funded by tolls on commuters and tractor-trailer rigs, has been rightly criticized for the past six years.
VDOT has sought the right to toll the road from the Federal Highway Administration to pay for the widening. Even if it weren’t for a disagreeable reason, we don’t believe VDOT, an unelected organization, should have the right to charge the constituents who already pay its salaries for the right to drive on the roads it is increasingly unable to maintain in a fair fashion. It smacks of taxation without representation. The tolls VDOT has proposed in some instances ran as high as 17 cents per mile on car and higher on commercial trucks. With gas prices at all-time highs nearly every morning, a 17-cent per mile commute could be devastating to families that rely on I-81 to get to and from work. Those same rates would end in one of two unfortunate ways for the commercial truck traffic, too. Either truckers would abandon the interstate, moving their loads to U.S. Highway 11, tying it up with unbreakable congestion, or they would pass the costs along to consumers, further eroding families’ buying power.
No one would argue that congestion along some portions of the interstate aren’t at a critical level; however, adding more lanes only invites more congestion, more spectacular tie-ups and deadlier crashes.
Kudos to those elected representatives who put their constituents above VDOT. They’ve taken care of step one. Now comes step two, diverting traffic from the asphalt to the train tracks.