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OK, you folks from Arizona are gonna get the blame if this doesn’t work out real well for us!

Mary E. Peters, Secretary Of Transportation, a fourth-generation Arizonan and an avid motorcyclist.

Wonder what she rides?

DoT bio of Mary Peters

Not bad lookin for a grand ma either.

One report places her on a Fat Boy .

Forgive my OT, but I'm disappointed to read that she very strongly favors putting more tolls out there. If we are indeed going to need more money for the care & feeding of the future of the US transportation & highway system, which is a song I'm hearing far & wide these days, then I'd prefer higher fuel taxes instead of tolls, as the revenue collection infrastructure for fuel taxes is already built.

New tolls mean new toll collecting agencies, and new agencies usually equals untouchable employees and pensions, and health insurance for life, etc. etc, etc. For an example of extreme agency overhead, we pay nearly one million dollars to retire each CT state employee now, with half pay and full $0 co-pay health insurance for the retired employee, AND their spouse, for life. They aren't left to get by on 401ks and SS like the rest of us must make do with. This lush CT benefits system will remain in effect for all new state employees as well, for the next 15 years, thanks to our convicted felon jail bird governor. You'll find very few DNR orders among retired state of CT employees. As long as they're breathing, their spouse still gets the $0 co-pay municipal employee grade (read-top shelf) health insurance. Cha-ching. Sorry for the rant, but I'm one of the CT employer / taxpayer schlubs paying for this mess.

FWIW, I believe the politicians realize that tolls are less cost effective than fuel taxes, but new agencies are a way to make and repay favors, combined with how lucrative contracts to place the toll transponders and build the new toll plazas would be, (and we would need change making plazas, for you can't yet make every vehicle buy a toll transponder, and woe be unto our wallets if we need another agency to get that done on a nationwide scale) not to mention the major large bank interests that accompany the EZ-Pass style collection systems. (Did you know your EZ Pass dollars get filtered through a bank before the states get their mitts on the money?) Then there are the 2nd, 3rd, & 4th agencies required to oversee the first agencies...

For an example of the way we loves us some agencies, let's consider the "Homeland Security" folk. Don't we already have state & local Police, the FBI, The CIA, & the NSA? When one agency isn't geting the job done, instead of fixing the problems, we build new agencies as a fix.

Same as it ever was...

And to think I was just warming up to former Secretary Mineta when he described publically our unaccountable methods of subsidizing the US mass transit rail system as a "financial black hole."

That is funny. Build infrastructure in order to build infrastructure... Makes sense. Is middle management a contageous desease?

Our tax dollars at work - spend a dime to make a nickle, and we'll make up the loss on volume (not)

There was an article in the local paper about Mary Peters and her love of toll roads the other day for states like Arizona. To me it's just another effort to Californicate Arizona as she proposed privatized commuter toll roads like they have in the LA area.

"She acknowledged that Arizona is a "donor state" when it comes to federal highway aid, sending Washington more in gasoline taxes collected in the state than it receives back in federal highway aid."

But we need toll roads? Just give us our money that we pay in taxes so we can build our own roads! What makes it even worse is the fact that Arizona is one of the faster growing states. So they take our gas tax money and give it to some area with a dwindling population? Just another example of the gubmint not getting it.

The toll road business is sweeping the country. It's just another form of taxes, one we did not vote on. Just what exactly do gasoline taxes and license plate taxes pay for?

Our present Texas governor wants to cut a road 10 lens wide with a railroad in the middle from the Mexican border to Oklahoma. And use a Mexican company to do it. I'm hoping we elect anyone but him.

I'm not against toll roads like Houston has voted on and implemented but I am against 'committees' that were not elected turning existing roads into toll roads by repaving them or some non-sense. I was once a big support of GWB but I've had enough of this highhanded r*pe of the American people by his stooges.

Funny I was thinking about this today. The ONLY sense I can make of tolls vs. taxes is that everyone pays the same toll so it is "fair" as opposed to gas tax which will cost the gas guzzlers more. Of course in TX don't you all drive F150s?

That being said, they toll roads have WAY more layers of fat like someone else suggested.

Actually I do have a a F-150. Hard to haul 12 sacks of ready mix on my America.

That is exactly what I am oppossed to. Pass a bond issue and decide to build a new road, toll or not, that's cool. But when these unelected committees can decide to widen existing road and make it toll, that's not right. With the law of emminent domain where the state can take anyone's property if it will generate more tax revenue, the courts have taken our privilages away.

How ever you vote, just remember to vote!

No kidding! An F150 is a small truck now!

I passed a jacked up F350 on the highway the other day. I don't know how much lift it had, but the tires had to be 40-something" tall. As I passed it in my Charger, I was lookin at the rocker pannels...

Ct had one toll road a few years back. On 395 near Montville. For years people complained it was dangerous and unessassry. But the State dot was too much in love with the revenue. Until a tractor trailer either lost his brakes or the driver fell asleep i can't remember which. And plowed into the line of waiting cars,Killing a bunch of people.
Thats when the state decided to take the toll booths down.

Now there are some a$$holes in the state ledgeslature that want to reinstall the toll booths.And make um "safe".
Seems our "leaders" have short memories.

All that casino traffic! Coincidence?

no benny cant blame this on on the casinos if memory serves it was pre-casino.maybe buy a year or so.

But for REinstalling them... gotta be from casino traffic.

I dont know what the logic is in them wanting to put them back.Other than to bilk a few more pennies out of the motoring public.Could be that they are looking at it as a way to get a peice of the casino action...shaking down people going to and from.

If the state of Connecticut builds any new toll plazas, the FBI will be required to do the final inspections.