Abolish public hearings on tolls in Massachusetts - they just attract the stupids (EDITORIAL)

It's time to abolish public hearings on toll increases in Massachusetts. They are a waste of the time of toll authority's staff and officials, who would be better deployed spending their evenings relaxing at home. Public meetings don't attract any cross section of the general public. They are a magnet for a few grandstanders, the disaffected and stupids, especially politicians.

Take the fifth and final public hearing of the Turnpike Authority in Worcester MA Jan 7. Top executives and board members showed to hear "public comment" on their proposed toll increases. Worcester is near the Turnpike so plenty of local people use it, many thousands on a daily basis.

Of those many thousands who actually use the Turnpike how many showed up to the evening "public meeting"?

The Worcester Telegram reports twenty people were there.

Four of these 20 were local politicians - State Representatives George Peterson, Paul Frost, and Karyn Polito and state senator Harriette Chandler. These showed up not to say anything new but to be televised and reported saying again what has already been said ad nauseam, notably that some people will find the toll increases tough. That's true of every price rise of every good or service, but it's not an argument against it. A market economy requires that businesses pay their way or go out of business, and the Turnpike is no exception to that rule. A toll road operation is not a welfare agency that cannot do anything that might adversely affect someone or another. It's a self-financing business which has to raise revenues to pay bills.

The pols and others did have one valid theme.

They all took the opportunity to declaim to the Turnpike Authority what they should be telling their colleagues in the state legislature: that it's unfair to attempt to lay the costs of the Big Dig which benefits downtowners and north-south travelers on the Turnpike users out west.

Levying new tolls on north-south Big Dig users is precisely within the jurisdiction of legislators and outside the power of the Turnpike Authority. Berating the Turnpike Authority for not doing what it presently has no legal power to do is pointless to the point of stupidity.

Or if the Big Dig debt is not to be covered by tolls on the existing Turnpike the legislature has the power to raise the gas tax for that.

Last time we checked the Turnpike Authority doesn't control the rate of the gas tax.

Public meetings are an opportunity for people to talk but they cannot really measure public sentiment on toll increases. What matters is not so much what people say as what they do.

The only true test of public sentiment about toll increases is in how the public behave after the higher tolls have been imposed.

If a huge fraction desert the Turnpike at higher tolls then they think it doesn't any longer offer value for money. Then the toll increases were a mistake.

If most of the users keep driving the Turnpike as before then the public support it.

The action of the public is what counts, not what a select few who choose to go to meetings say.

Instead of proposing a toll increase and holding public meetings to hear complaints from the meeting lovers it would be better for the Turnpike to simply raise tolls while saying that after several months they'll review public reaction as measured by traffic volumes.

Meanwhile, if the Turnpike absolutely has to have these public meetings despite their silliness it could at least bar politicians from speaking. We hear too much talk from their lot, and see too little action.

see http://www.telegram.com/article/20090108/NEWS/901080841/1116

Picture credit: except for the aerial shot the pictures are by Erika Sidor.

TOLLROADSnews 2009-01-08