Getting caught in the crossfire of a Maine civil war - TOLLROADSnews takes hits

Your editor was characterized by Maine Turnpike spokesman Dan Paradee a couple of days ago as "sort of off the wall." We were grateful for Dan's "sort of" qualification there, reflecting no doubt the fact that our professional relations over many years have been cordial and generally productive. He went on however about your editor: "He knows nothing about Maine, nothing about the Maine Turnpike."

That's a low blow having faithfully read every Maine Turnpike annual report, read most Turnpike press releases, waded into their consultants reports, called Dan many times and drunk with Paul Violette, the longtime exec-director, at several conferences.  

As for knowing Maine we've travelled the length and breadth of that splendid state from Seabrook at the NH line to St Stephen on the New Brunswick border (on the way to an IBTTA conference in Halifax NS), even having a near-miss with a monstrous Maine moose standing in the middle of the roller-coaser 2-lane US1.

In addition to which we've been told - admittedly by a Texan - "You must be from Maine. Your accent sounds Maine, New Englandish." That surely is dispositive of a deep immersion in Maine culture.

Ah well, we seem to have ambled innocently into the midst of a sharp little civil war up there in Maine about how or whether to rebuild their principal toll plaza at York which is not far up the pike from the New Hampshire line. Local press picked up the TOLLROADSnews editorial. Paradee's comments were in reaction to that.

Still smarting from the know-nothing blow we responded to one:

Letter to the editor  11/17/2009

Seacoastonline

I guess I really got under Dan Paradee's skin, having provoked the charge from him (seacoastonline.com, Nov 12) that I'm "off the wall" and know nothing about Maine. Actually I wasn't claiming any special knowledge of Maine. My editorial was about the serious factual errors of the HNTB report to the York Selectmen on the status of all-electronic tolling around the country and internationally, something I've been devoting my workdays to covering as a specialist reporter for some 14 years now.

All-electronic or cashless tolling is being implemented many places, and planned in many others that HNTB's report to the Selectmen completely overlooked.

Maybe they regurgitated an old report of several years ago?

The second point of the editorial was simply that the open road or highway speed toll lanes planned through the middle of the new Southern toll plaza by the Turnpike pose precisely the same risk to revenues - absent effective interstate cooperation or private debt collection support - that all-electronic tolling poses.

Anyone who wants to evade the Maine toll at the Turnpike's planned new southern plaza will be able to fly though the middle.

Following up by mail with a violation notice and collecting on it requires the same level of access to interstate motor registry or private data as camera based tolling in an all-electronic toll point with no cash booths at all. For cashless or all-electronic the systems do need to be scaled up to handle up to 40 percent of transactions rather than 5 or 10 percent.

The Turnpike is right to be cautious about all electronic tolling but it also needs to be cautious about open road down the middle given the large number of interstate users of the York toll plaza. The situation on I-95 near me in Delaware has many similarities.

There they've decided to move to all-electronic in two steps, and their immediate plan is to use federal stimulus money to modestly rebuild the toll plaza on the existing site near Newark DE. Under that plan there are just two open road toll planes through the middle each direction despite traffic volumes about double those of Maine. They figure all-electronic will be supported by more solid interstate cooperation in five to ten years time, and then it will likely be time to go cashless. In my opinion they are being over-cautious but their approach is reasonable.

Truly off-the-wall is the notion that we can be certain cash toll collection will be around on major highways for another 20 or 30 years and that we absolutely have to build/rebuild to that timeframe.

Peter Samuel, editor TOLLROADSnews, Frederick Maryland

see the report to which we responded:

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20091112-NEWS-911120431

Seacoastonline did their own editorial on the toll plaza issue:

http://www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20091118-OPINION-911180340

TOLLROADSnews 2009-11-18