Expedient financing

Surely equity would dictate you try recover a decent part of the cost of a facility as expensive as the Central Artery/Tunnel project from the people who will benefit from it – which will include about 300k motorists/day likely to use it plus adjacent property owners who’ll benefit from having the existing ugly, noisy elevated highway torn down. The Ted Williams tunnel part of the project has had tolls from the start. But it is only approximately a fifth of the whole Central Artery/Tunnel.

Even the latest financing package avoids any charges on the project’s beneficiaries. It is the awful ‘innovative financing’ again – a slick way of spreading the costs so thinly that no-one notices them much, while claiming to be a very with-it financial whiz. (Past crooks had the decency not to brag.) $1.3b in bonds are being sold to cover much of the cost overruns on the security of $100m/yr in increased state drivers license and car registration fees, spreading the costs over motorists throughout the state, whether they get to use the CA/T or not, while taking nothing from interstate travelers using the CA/T as a way through Boston.

A facility as expensive as the CA/T needs variable toll rates to manage traffic flows to prevent stop-&-go overload, and to get it used efficiently, as well as to meet an equity test. Unfortunately expediency, by way of spreading and hiding costs is what politicians are usually about, not equity or efficiency. Bunch of rogues, they are, preying on the public’s inattention.