Lamont Urged To Consider Tolling Of All Vehicles

Gov.-elect Ned Lamont is being urged to consider going back his campaign promise to only toll heavy trucks and instead toll all vehicles. The recommendations come from a policy group that was tasked at looking at transportation issues by Lamont's transition team.

The policy group noted that Connecticut’s infrastructure continues to get more outdated while gas tax revenues dwindle at the same time, according to the Connecticut Mirror.

Rhode Island recently installed truck-only tolls, but the state is being sued by the American Trucking Association which argues the tolls are discriminatory.

Republican State Sen. Len Fasano said that many of the ideas emerging from Lamont’s transition team meetings are concerning, including talk of electronic tolling of all vehicles and a potential increase to the gas tax.

The topic of tolling has come up in the past couple of legislative sessions, but it never made it to a full vote. Democrats widened their control of the State House this election and regained a majority in the State Senate after being tied with Republicans.

A study commissioned by the state Department of Transportation found that tolls could produce $1 billion a year in revenue for the state by 2023 with about 40 percent coming from out-of-state drivers.

Here are some highlights from the study:

How Much It Would Cost To Drive

The study outlines some potential pricing points for Connecticut commuters, out-of-state drivers and trucks. Those with an EZ-Pass would get a discount while the rest would be billed through the mail.

Tolls could produce more than $1 billion a year in revenue for the state by 2023. Of that, a little more than 40 percent would come from out-of-state motorists. About 71 percent of revenue would come from passenger vehicles with the rest coming from trucks and buses.

One potential outline would have Connecticut E-Z Pass holders pay 4.4 cents off-peak and 5.5 cents on-peak per mile.

The cost per mile would be on the lower end and in line with Massachusetts Turnpike rates. The New Jersey turnpike is nearly 10 cents per mile
Here are some proposed travel costs:

Toll Locations

The study suggests toll gantries be placed an average of 6.6 miles with only one gantry per town on any given highway. Higher trafficked highways should have more gantries while more rural ones should have less.

I-95, I-84, Route 15, I-91, I-395, Route 8, Route 9, I-691 and I-291 were considered as tolled rolls in the analysis.

There would be 82 tolling gantry locations across the state.
Below is a map of proposed locations:

How Much Time Will This Save Commuters?

It would cost about $100 million to operate the tolling network per year in 2023 and the cost would drop to $82 million by 2040. Overall it would cost $372 million to install toll gantries and connect them with a fiber optic network.

Overall commuters would save on average 15 hours per year in travel time thanks to tolls and the infrastructure improvements that they wound fund. Western I-95 commuters would eventually save 18 hours per year just because of tolling and 29 hours per year if the highway was widened between Bridgeport and the New York State border.

The average speed on I-95 is 33 mph west of New Haven during the peak morning hour. It could increase to 42 mph or about a 25 percent reduction between tolls and infrastructure improvements.

Time saved overall by commuters between tolling and infrastructure improvements would be 20 million hours per year, which is worth about $500 million in economic benefits.