Friday, June 5 | 8:16 a.m.
BY JEFFREY MIZE
COLUMBIAN STAFF WRITER
A triple toll for a replacement Interstate 5 bridge might sound good to those who want raise a boatload of money.
But new projections indicate that tripling a base toll actually would net less money than doubling the toll.
That's
because a triple toll, $7.80 each way during rush hour in 2017, would
cause more people to ride transit, carpool or divert to the Interstate
205 Bridge. It also could deter them from making cross-river trips.
"You
get to what we call the break-over point," said Doug Ficco, Washington
director for the Columbia River Crossing project. "After a while,
people just don't go because it becomes too expensive or they find a
different mode or they change the time of day they go."
The
Columbia River Crossing project sponsors council will get its first
peek at six tolling scenarios when it meets at 10 a.m. today in the
Oregon Department of Transportation's regional headquarters, 123 N.W.
Flanders St., Portland.
The Washington Legislature has ordered
state transportation officials to finish a Columbia River Crossing
tolling study by January 2010 that would:
— Evaluate potential diversion from I-5 to other areas because of bridge tolls.
— Study advanced tolling technology to maintain travel speeds and ensure reliability.
—
Solicit public comments on using tolls to pay for a portion of the
Columbia River Crossing project, implementing variable tolling
(charging different tolls according to time of day) and placing tolls
on the I-205 Bridge to raise money for the state and regional
transportation system.
The crossing office assumes variable
tolling would be used, in part to encourage drivers to change their
travel patterns and ease rush-hour congestion.
There would be
no toll booths. Drivers could either purchase transponders, which affix
to inside a vehicle's windshield and allow money to be electronically
withdrawn from an account, or cameras would snap a photo of the
vehicle's license plate and a bill would be mailed to the registered
owner.
Regardless of the collection method, tolling has the
potential to be a huge cost on 50,000 or more Clark County residents
who commute to weekday jobs in Oregon. Even with the lowest rate of the
six scenarios — $2.60 each way during rush hour in 2017 — bridge tolls
would cost commuters $1,350 annually.
Projections indicate that
if those tolls were implemented, 83 percent of drivers would continue
to use the I-5 bridge while 6 percent would divert to the I-205 Bridge,
1 percent would switch to transit and 10 percent would change their
destination and not cross the Columbia River.
A $2.60 base toll
would raise an estimated $1.34 billion, once the cost of administering
a tolling system is deducted, over 30 years. The money would be used to
help pay construction debt on a bridge-transit-freeway project expected
to cost $3.5 billion or more.
That amount presumes tolling would
begin when the bridge opens in 2017. With early tolling — starting to
collect money on the existing bridge in mid-2012 while a replacement
crossing is built immediately downriver — the amount of money raised to
pay off 30-year construction bonds increases to $1.68 billion.
Doubling
the base toll, with collection beginning in 2017, would raise an
estimated $2 billion. That's a 49 percent increase in money raised,
from a 100 percent increase in toll rates.
Tripling the toll rate would raise slightly less, $1.94 billion over 30 years.
But if you want to raise the big money, you double that base toll and place it on both the I-5 and I-205 bridges.
That
would raise a projected $6.06 billion over 30 years, more than enough
to pay the entire cost of building a new I-5 bridge, extending light
rail into Vancouver and reconstructing seven freeway interchanges.
Jeffrey Mize: 360-735-4542 or jeff.mize@columbian.com.
by Ham Chuck : 6/5/09 1:24am - Report Abuse
I would be up to a toll if the spending is made crystal clear, whereas all proceeds goes to fund the transit across the river. Once the cost of the transit and bridge is paid off, the toll shall be removed. It should not be acceptable to see the toll as a continued source of revenue to fund any other projects.And can't we make the toll into whole dollar or quarter values? $2.60? I get irate enough watching people pull out pennies from their coin puse as it is at the grocery store, do we need it at the toll?