The CT Transportation Strategy Board is about a month away from the December 15 deadline for presenting its recommendations to Governor Rowland.  One of the main issues left unanswered by the Board is how to pay for urgent transportation needs.  While tolling the state’s main thoroughfares is reportedly under consideration, the Board’s finance working group has not issued a substantive report (MTR #387). Perhaps more to the point, even if the board courageously recommends road tolls, Governor Rowland would have to make a significant departure from his identity as a tax-cutter and invest a lot of political capital to impose tolls that could raise enough revenue to make a difference to the state’s transportation system.

Don Strait, executive director of CT Fund for the Environment, and the Campaign’s Jon Orcutt laid out a more realistic method for re-introducing tolls to Connecticut in a Hartford Courant op-ed that ran last Tuesday. They argued that tolls in CT should start with the existing I-91 and I-84 high-occupancy lanes, which are underused.  Solo drivers could pay to use the HOV lanes to bypass congestion. Carpoolers would continue to use the lanes for free.  If that worked, the piece pointed out, congestion pricing could be extended to other corridors.  Another logical choice — if a bigger lift — is to make the Merritt Parkway a tolled, congestion-free alternative to I-95, with the revenue devoted to additional train service on the New Haven commuter rail line.

“Our neighbors, NY and NJ, have instituted congestion relief pricing and have seen congestion drop,” the piece points out.“...Here in Connecticut, a 1994 study by the Department of Transportation and business and environmental groups concluded that the only way to seriously reduce congestion in our state is to pursue investments in mass transit and congestion pricing,” they wrote.

CT Congestion Busting Plan May Miss Mark -- Curry Continues Challenge to Rowland Record --
(Oct. 7, 2002)

Transit Study in CT Covers Familiar Ground (July 22, 2002)

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