wasted toll money

in previous posts ive discussed the cost per mile that every state spends on their roads. ranked #1 is new jersey at and astounding $749,000+/mile. those must be some mighty fine roads!

then i see this article today about the new jersey turnpike. i guess its no wonder that tolls continue to go up for taxpayers.

Auditors say the New Jersey Turnpike Authority wasted $43 million on unneeded perks and bonuses. In one case, an employee with a base salary of $73,469 earned $321,985 when all payouts and bonuses were included.
...
The biggest expense uncovered in the audit was $30 million in unjustified bonuses to employees and management in 2008 and 2009 without consideration of performance.
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The Comptroller's Office audit released Tuesday says taxpayers also paid $430,000 for free E-ZPass transponders and nearly $90,000 in scholarships for workers' kids.
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the excesses happened as tolls increased on the Turnpike and Garden State Parkway in 2008. They're slated to rise again in 2012.

but people continue to vote for the same people and never learn the lesson.

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the lovely mass pike

so we drove from massachusetts to pennsylvania yesterday to spend thanksgiving with my family. we left around 8am and hit a little traffic but it wasnt too bad. im told by some friends that left around 9am that the mass pike was at a crawl. thankfully we left on the earlier side. obviously you have to factor in the holiday and that there are generally more cars on the road. however the mass pike drives me crazy...so i had to address it.

tolls in general
the tolls should be removed. they were originally put into place to pay for the building of the mass pike and the taxpayers were told that it was temporary and once the turnpike was paid for, the tolls would be removed. yet they remain, and the rates continue to rise.

we had a chance this year to add a ballot measure that would have allowed voters to decide whether the tolls should be removed. however the folks at close the tolls did not receive enough signatures to get the measure added to the ballots. i know i had some of you sign the petition, but lets work to get it added to the 2010 ballot.

there is another group called the toll equity trust that is actually suing the turnpike authority for misappropriations of collected toll monies. according to them, 58% of collected tolls are used to pay for big dig debt and not for turnpike expenditures.

fast lane
from what i could find, approximately 40% of drivers use the fastlane. the turnpike authority reports that they save an additional $0.30 for every toll dollar collected when drivers use the fastlane. so why isnt more emphasis placed on rewarding those with a fastlane pass? by getting more people to use the fastlane, it means less money lost paying for toll collectors.

check out how many actual fastlanes exist at tollbooths and where they are located. on our trip yesterday i noticed that at the sturbridge tolls (a notorious choke point for traffic) that there were 7 open tollbooths. of those seven, 2 were for fastlane users, 4 for cash payers, and 1 that could be for either. again, why are we not rewarding fastlane users?

wasted revenue
david hartgen is a professor of transportation studies at the university of north carolina charlotte and a fellow of the reason foundation. in july 2008 he produced his 17th annual report on the performance of state highway systems. you can find it here. there is lots of valuable information about every state in the report. the one area i wanted to highlight was the amount of money spent per highway mile. massachusetts ranks 2nd only behind new jersey with $749,070 per highway mile! should there be a pothole anywhere in the state with that amount of money spent?! where does all of this money go?


enjoy the rest of your turkey day celebrations.