More toll increases up and down the Massachusetts Turnpike look inevitable, two agency board members said yesterday after the authority warned that its fiscal woes will delay more than $65 million in necessary construction and maintenance work this year.
The comments were made just two weeks after the authority imposed 25-cent toll increases in Weston and Allston and a 50-cent jump at the Boston Harbor tunnels and as the Turnpike Authority's board unanimously approved what officials called a minimal, severely stripped-down 2008 program of maintenance for the 138-mile toll road and harbor tunnels.
From Weston to East Boston, engineers said, $49.8 million worth of maintenance work needs to be done in 2008. But the cash-strapped agency can only afford $4 million of that and will have to defer work such as a $1 million replacement of backup batteries intended to ensure that tunnel ventilation systems in Boston work during an extended power failure.
Likewise, on the 123-mile stretch from Weston to West Stockbridge, the agency can afford only $10.5 million of the $32 million it needs this year, officials said. That will force the authority to wait indefinitely to resurface 22 miles of highway in Central Massachusetts and repair the deck of the bridge over the Quaboag River in Palmer.
Vice chairman Michael Angelini and director Mary Z. Connaughton, two members of the board who regularly clash with each other, both agreed that toll increases must be considered imminently.
"There's a toll increase on the horizon," Connaughton said. "It could be a broad toll increase, or it could be from reinstating tolls" on the West Stockbridge-West Springfield stretch that was made free to cars in the 1990s. Ending tolls for passenger vehicles at the first six exits, Connaughton said, has deprived the authority of $120 million that could have staved off the growing backlog of maintenance work.
Angelini agreed that with such a big and growing maintenance backlog, "you either ignore it or raise revenue."
Bernard Cohen, the state transportation secretary and chairman of the Turnpike Authority board, has repeatedly said that unless legislators overhaul state transportation financing this year to move debts from the $15 billion Big Dig off the turnpike's books, legal obligations to bondholders will force the agency to seek another round of toll increases.
"The longer you delay the capital projects, the more expensive they are," Cohen told the board meeting.
The turnpike's two operations are meant to be financially independent and self-sustaining. They include the stretch from Weston to West Stockbridge and the Metropolitan Highway System, which comprises the Weston-Boston extension, harbor tunnels, and Big Dig tunnels and bridges downtown.
Any further toll increase or reimposing tolls that Governor William F. Weld ended in 1996 when he was seeking Western Massachusetts votes for his US Senate campaign are certain to stir debate on Beacon Hill.
Senator Michael R. Knapik, a Westfield Republican, said reinstating tolls from Exit 1 to Exit 6 would "would not be a popular step at all, to say the least."
"They have got to have a serious dose of heavy reform at the Turnpike Authority before they look at any revenue-raising measures," Knapik said.
"I am adamantly opposed to tolls going up, because I know that over 50 percent of the tolls we're paying now on the Weston-to-Boston extension aren't going to the road we're riding on, but to the Big Dig," said Representative David P. Linsky, a Natick Democrat who chairs a caucus of west suburban legislators.
Linsky said that he thinks the authority under Cohen "is being much more forthright and honest about deferred maintenance than previous administrations," but that the key issue is that the authority's Big Dig debts need a new statewide funding source to replace the Interstate 90 and harbor tunnel tolls.
Helmut Ernst, chief engineer of the authority, stressed that none of the work being deferred poses a safety threat.
"Are there immediate safety issues? No. But you can't continue this process of pushing it to the next budget cycle," Ernst said. "It's nothing that I want to continue for the next five years."
Ernst added that he is especially concerned about delays in fixing the tunnel ventilation fan backup power system, a $6.4 million replacement of the deck of the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge over the Pike near Boston University, and older bridges at the Route 128 interchange in Weston.
Other projects that engineers say are urgent this year but that the authority can't fund include $16 million worth of Sumner Tunnel ceiling repairs, $5 million to resurface the Sumner roadway, and $1.1 million for noise barriers in Newton.
Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.
