Unfairness takes its toll
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LAWYERS FOR the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority are dismissing a class-action lawsuit seeking rebates for toll payers as "political theater." There is an element of histrionics in the plaintiffs' charges of improper taxation. But Massachusetts has a worthy tradition of debating such issues on the public stage, dating to Colonial days, when firebrand James Otis warned that "taxation without representation is tyranny."
Powerhouse trial lawyers for the Massachusetts Turnpike Toll Equity Trust are making the same arguments some 250 years later. They say the state has broken the covenant with Pike drivers by diverting more than $400 million in tolls collected by the Pike since 2006 to fund roads without tolls, including the I-90 extension between I-93 and South Boston, and portions of the Central Artery.
The problem dates to 1997, according to the complaint, when legislators gave the Turnpike the power to operate and maintain the Central Artery Project but capped the subsidy to maintain the toll-free portions of the roadway at $25 million a year. The Turnpike now requires more than $100 million of its yearly revenue for costs associated with the Big Dig. That's not a user fee, the suit alleges, but an "unlawful tax" from which toll payers derive no special benefit.
In a 2005 report, the Pike itself acknowledges "a major equity issue" related to its toll policies. There is also some legislative support for this view, as evidenced by a toll equity amendment in the House version of the proposed transportation reform bill.
A judge can sort out the constitutional issues. But the suit is strong evidence that the current system for paying for the state's transportation infrastructure is, at minimum, deeply unfair. Motorists coming from west of the city and from the North Shore pay dearly while those from the south get a free ride. Just how heavily can drivers at the Weston and Allston-Brighton tolls be expected to subsidize the rides of other drivers passing along the Central Artery from the Southeast Expressway?
The state shouldn't be expected to provide a perfect payment match between every driver on every segment of roadway. It is an integrated system, after all. And states from California to New Jersey rely on some level of cross-subsidization. But there is something wrong when more than half the toll revenue from paying customers on the Pike is used to benefit other drivers.
The only honest way to solve the debt and deferred maintenance problem on the state's roadways is to increase the state gas tax, which applies equitably to all drivers. The burden belongs on all 4.6 million of the state's licensed drivers. That's the final revelation in the transportation drama.
