I don't think that in the entire time I have been in the legislature have I seen a debate that evokes such strong emotion as the one that has to do with gas taxes. Not a day goes by where I do not hear from at least one constituent telling me to vote, or not vote for the gas tax.
For me, I represent what is probably the most rural district in the Massachusetts House. Many of my constituents drive 40 minutes to an hour just to get to work. Some must drive twenty minutes just to get to the closest store for a loaf of bread! And very few of my towns are served by some form of public transportation. Also, I would guess that on average, the number of trips my constituents would make in a year to Boston, and through the Big Dig, could be counted on one hand. Then there are the years of deferred road and bridge projects in my communities, while transportation improvement money, billions of dollars of it, went to fund the Big Dig. Now, with the project over and cost overruns clearly known, some in Boston are considering doing away with tolls on those roads and putting the future funding onto the gas tax.
SO...let me get this straight? The people who primarily use or live near the Big Dig, or those suburban drivers for whom the Big Dig was supposed to make for a less congested ride on their commutes to and from the city, will NOT have to pay tolls to use that road, but my constituents will have to pay a higher gas tax to drive around rural roads that have not been fixed in years?
And, those Boston and suburban residents also have access to dependable public transportation so when the gas tax gets high enough they will have another option for travel, paid for, again, via the increased gas tax? But many of my residents will...do what as another option? Walk?
WOW! Talk about getting your cake, eating it too and leaving the crumbs for the rest of us!
Let me be clear, I cannot and will not vote for any transportation plan that only allows for an increase in the gas tax. Any realistic transportation funding plan that wants my vote will have to include at least some (hopefully all) of the following:
1. Reforms. Let's try reforming our transportation system first before asking our citizens to pay more taxes. What about merging Mass Highway and Mass Turnpike operations?
2. Border Tolls. Why is it that other states like New Hampshire can charge Massachusetts residents for the pleasure of entering their state, but we can't charge them for coming into ours? Watch the NECN traffic report some morning and look at the volume of NH drivers coming into our state, down I-93, I-95, I-495 and many into the Big Dig.
3. Tolls. You know, as a western Mass legislator I pay them too! But hey, let's keep them for now. Especially if it means a better maintained turnpike.
4. Gas Tax. First, how much? Second, if a gas tax is to win my support, a good portion of it must go to increase the public transportation system for the Regional Transit Authorities like BRTA, PVTA and FRTA. More service to smaller towns is needed and expanded service on nights and weekends too! If we are going to raise the gas tax to encourage more people to use public transit, the public transit system has to be available to all residents; from the wealthiest suburb to the most rural town. I don't mind taking the political hit for raising the gas tax, but I must be able to show my constituents that they are getting something more for it too. Raising a gas tax to pay for the big dig will not win me too many votes in western Mass.
There are no easy answers and there are very few more that are popular.
What are your thoughts?
Why can't you just say "NO NEW TAXES"?
ReplyDeleteAll great points Denis! MassHighway and the Turnpike Authority need to be merged and purged - there is a huge amount of waste, cronyism, and abuse in those organizations.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't mind paying tolls if they finally start fixing local roads.
Reasons for voting against increased gas tax
ReplyDelete1. gas taxes are recessive
2. increased taxes are counter stimulative
Reasons for voting for increased gas tax
1. increased fuel prices influence the buying and operating decisions of motorists toward more fuel efficient vehicles and consolidation of trips thus reducing dependence on foreign oil and reduces greenhouse gas emission.
2. The Commonwealth is facing a significant budget shortfall that is forcing across the board cuts to programs and services that are vital to western mass residents. Increased income is needed to ameliorate these cuts.
3. Increased cost of transportation may cause more people to use trains and buses reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Big Dig
While residents of western mass are only occasional users of the Big Dig all of the residents of western mass are direct beneficiaries of the Big Dig.
Prior to the completion of the Big Dig, thousands of vehicles would sit idle and creep slowly through backed up traffic getting into and out of Boston. Better traffic flows have resulted in decreasing greenhouse gas emissions by millions of tons each year. Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is expensive. Not reducing greenhouse gas emissions is more expensive.
Tolls
Reasons to not increase tolls or toll booths
1. Tolls are regressive
2. Toll booths increase idle time and slow traffic increasing greenhouse gas emissions
3. Increased tolls are counter stimulative
4. Increased cost of commuting and delays from toll booths may cause some commuters onto secondary roads to avoid the cost and delay.
Reasons to increase tolls and toll booths
1. The Big Dig bonds are a fixed cost to the Commonwealth and cannot be reduced during economic downturns forcing more severe cuts to other programs. Increased revenue will help ameliorate cuts to vital programs and services.
2. Increases in the cost of travel will help motorists make wise decisions on the purchase and operation of vehicles that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions
3. Could result in higher use of other modes of transportation such as buses and trains
I am in favor of significantly increasing tolls on the Mass Pike and introducing tolls on all major arteries leading into Boston. Placing toll booths at the New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire borders makes sense. The increased revenues could be used to widen and improve the roadways to increase traffic flow and reduce greenhouse gas emmision and/or subsidize high speed rail service.
Mass Turnpike vs. Mass Highway
Combining these two agencies will require an additional level of senior management and staff. Will there be any savings from combining accounting, personnel, legal, purchasing, maintenance and other departments? My suspicion is that these departments are currently underfunded and understaffed and there will be no savings. How will funding priorities be handled between the two departments? Given the current condition of the roads maintained by Mass Highway, it appears that they are currently underfunded. Will this be exacerbated by combining the agencies? Have any reliable studies been done to produce hard numbers that will answer these and other questions? Intuition, gut, and perception are poor criteria for decision making.
I would rather see you spend your political capital and the Commonwealths resources on high speed rail service up and down the pioneer valley connecting to Hartford, up and down Berkshire County with connection to Albany and Springfield, Springfield to Boston along the Mass pike corridor and Greenfield to Boston along the Route 2 corridor, Boston to Providence and Boston to N.H. This would have to be subsidized and priced to compete with the cost and time of driving to induce ridership.
Regional Transit Authorities.
One of the issues with buses is the increased travel time required over using a car. These include the time to travel from home to the bus stop, wait time at the bus stop, additional wait time of 15 minutes to an hour if you miss the bus by as little as 5 seconds, frequent stops to pickup and discharge passengers, and travel time from the bus to the final destination either on foot or by taxi. These issues plus the limited number of runs that would be available in rural areas leads be to believe that ridership in rural areas would be nonexistent or extremely limited. Providing the same level of service to rural areas as to urban and suburban areas, that is a bus every 10 to 15 minutes, would increase ridership, but the costs both financially and environmentally would not be wise or sustainable. The money would be better spent improving the rural roadways and providing ubiquitous fiber optic internet availability to all residences in the rural areas.
A higher level of service both in terms of frequency of buses and destinations of buses in urban and suburban areas should increase ridership especially if coupled with increases in gas and toll prices and preferential transit of buses on primary roads such as bus lanes. People will only choose to ride the bus instead of drive if the cost is less and the transit time is less.
After watching Al Gores testimony before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I am fully convinced that we will see some very significant and detrimental environmental changes in the next 10 to 20 years. Addressing the issues of environmental degradation is expensive. There are two competing methodologies for reducing CO2 emissions, Carbon tax, and Cap and Trade. I favor the Carbon tax strategy over the cap and trade strategy as it does not require the creation of a market mechanism and the attendant costs of managing that market and the revenue flows directly to government coffers for uses such as high speed rail, refurbishing of all state and local government buildings for energy efficiency and reducing their carbon footprints to zero using solar photovoltaics, wind or wave to generate electricity and geothermal heat pumps to provide heating and cooling. Could also be used to convert the states fleet to dual fuel, hybrid, or all electric vehicles.
I agree that the state needs bot a short and long term comprehensive transportation strategy and a comprehensive energy strategy. These two issues are joined at the hip and need to be integrated.
I urge you to change the name of the gas tax to carbon tax in all communications both official and unofficial and support passage of the carbon tax on gasoline as a first step. I know a rose is a rose by any other name but names have political weight and significance. I suspect that if you support an increase in the gasoline taxes to enhance revenues for whatever purposes you will spend political capital. On the other hand if you support a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gases you will gain political capital.
With recent price increases on almost everything including food, gas and utilities we do not like to see any more increases. However, if something has to be increased it only seems logical for those who use the roads to pay for them.
ReplyDeleteWe're vacationing in Florida and so far have paid several dollars on their toll roads. In the past several years many of the states we have traveled through charged tolls including New Jersey and New York.
Yet our Govenor expects visitors through our state not to pay tolls but to increase already rising gas prices to the residents of Mass.
If our state Goverment passes this gas tax they should be required to pay gas and vehicle cost out of their own pockets, not from the taxpayers.