Tim Eyman is wrong: Variable tolling is fair

On occa­sion, Tim Eyman inad­ver­tent­ly does us all a ser­vice by devi­at­ing from his well-rehearsed talk­ing points and reveal­ing just how lit­tle he knows about the sub­ject mat­ter of his own ini­tia­tives. This hap­pened again last week, when Eyman sent out a mis­sive attack­ing vari­able tolling, which is cur­rent­ly per­mit­ted by state law, but would be banned under Ini­tia­tive 1125.

Vari­able tolling is the prac­tice of charg­ing dri­vers dif­fer­ent rates depend­ing on demand, or what time of day they use a facil­i­ty (or both). At times of high­er demand, the toll is high­er; con­verse­ly, at times of low­er demand, the toll is lower.

To demon­strate this, here is the vari­able tolling sched­ule that the state has drawn up for for the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge, set to go into effect this December.

As we can see, dur­ing late night and ear­ly morn­ing hours, there is no toll at all, and dur­ing the shoul­der hours, the toll is less than what it is at peak hours.

This makes sense because demand to use the bridge varies great­ly depend­ing on the time of day. In the dead of night, cross­ing Lake Wash­ing­ton is easy; there’s not much traf­fic. At rush hour, get­ting across can be dif­fi­cult, because traf­fic is terrible.

Vari­able tolling rewards com­muters who time their trips to occur before or after rush hour, when demand is at its highest.

This ben­e­fits every­body — dri­vers who adjust their com­mute get to pay less, and dri­vers who don’t get to enjoy a smoother, more pre­dictable com­mute because there are few­er cars on the road dur­ing those peak hours.

The advan­tages of this approach seem total­ly lost on Tim Eyman.

For near­ly 100 years, when there was a toll, every­one paid the same. But now the politi­cians have a new scheme: social engi­neer­ing vari­able tolls — charg­ing dif­fer­ent peo­ple dif­fer­ent prices — that is com­plete­ly unfair because it hits poor and work­ing class tax­pay­ers the hard­est. We’ve all paid for our roads with our state’s sky-high gas tax — so all of us, not just rich peo­ple, deserve access to our trans­porta­tion system.

This is non­sense. Eyman obvi­ous­ly does­n’t even have a basic com­pre­hen­sion of the con­cept. Vari­able tolling does not mean “charg­ing dif­fer­ent peo­ple dif­fer­ent prices.” It means charg­ing every­one dif­fer­ent prices based on the time of the trip.

Any­one who cross­es the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge at any par­tic­u­lar time of day will pay the same toll, no mat­ter how much mon­ey they make or how fan­cy their car is. The dri­ver of a 2011 Lexus mak­ing $400,000 a year will be charged the same for a trip at 2:05 PM as the dri­ver of a 1996 Hyundai mak­ing $30,000 a year.

As with the Taco­ma Nar­rows Bridge today, there will obvi­ous­ly be a penal­ty for not hav­ing a Good to Go! transpon­der (this is because pay by mail tolls cost more to col­lect), but the penal­ty is also uni­form — every­one with­out a transpon­der will be charged the same. Those wish­ing to take advan­tage of the Good to Go! rate can open an account and get a transpon­der at a low cost.

(The state allows pre­paid Good to Go! pay­ments to be made using a cred­it card, a deb­it card, an auto-draft account, by check, or by cash at a ser­vice center).

Many low and mid­dle income fam­i­lies stand to save quite a bit of mon­ey under vari­able tolling. That’s because, at most times of the day, tolls will be low­er than what they oth­er­wise would be if the state sim­ply col­lect­ed the same flat rate ²⁴⁄₇.

Of course, any toll at all is an added expense that has a big­ger impact on the bud­gets of low income fam­i­lies than oth­er fam­i­lies. The state knows this, and has been lay­ing the ground­work to help such fam­i­lies.

We are sen­si­tive to the eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances of all users of tolled roads. For the SR 520 Bridge, WSDOT looked at how tolling would affect dri­vers with lim­it­ed incomes and learned that it was crit­i­cal for peo­ple to have mul­ti­ple choic­es for trav­el­ing across the bridge. Since Octo­ber 2010, King Coun­ty Metro and Sound Tran­sit have added near­ly 130 new bus trips to the exist­ing 600 trips occur­ring dai­ly on the SR 520 Bridge. Low income cus­tomers may also use Elec­tron­ic Ben­e­fits Trans­fer (EBT) cards to estab­lish and replen­ish a Good To Go! account.

Eyman and his sym­pa­thiz­ers have a warped sense of what’s fair. Why should the cost to get across Lake Wash­ing­ton at 4 AM be the same as the cost to cross at 8 AM, when the traf­fic is so much heavier?

Con­trary to what Eyman claims, vari­able tolling isn’t some­thing that was cooked up by politi­cians in some back room in our state­house. It is a promis­ing method of reduc­ing con­ges­tion that was devel­oped by trans­porta­tion planners.

Fur­ther­more, all trans­porta­tion plan­ning is “social engi­neer­ing”. Not charg­ing dri­vers to use our region’s high­ways and roads at all is social engi­neer­ing. So is charg­ing every­one a toll at the same flat rate, regard­less of the time of day, or the demand. The right wing loves to use the phrase “social engi­neer­ing” to scorn poli­cies they don’t like, but it is meaningless.

Because the vari­able tolling rates for the Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge have already been set, they will not be affect­ed by Ini­tia­tive 1125. But I‑1125 will pre­vent the use of vari­able tolling on oth­er projects in oth­er cor­ri­dors. The state Office of Finan­cial Man­age­ment says that I‑1125 may also result in the loss of a vari­able tolling grant from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment that the state has already accepted.

Every sin­gle time that Tim Eyman has tried to play trans­porta­tion plan­ner, he has failed. The peo­ple of Wash­ing­ton have repeat­ed­ly vot­ed down his attempts to micro­man­age WSDOT. But he’s not listening.

We can’t afford to rebuild our crum­bling roads and bridges with­out a robust, fair, and well-thought out tolling system.

As time goes on, the gas tax will only bring in less rev­enue as vehi­cles become more fuel effi­cient and Wash­ing­to­ni­ans get smarter about com­bin­ing trips. I‑1125 threat­ens vital projects that our state needs — it is imper­a­tive that we reject it.

Please join us in vot­ing NO on I‑1125 start­ing lat­er this month. Keep our roads safe, and keep Wash­ing­ton rolling.