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Turnpike board rescinds toll hike

E-mail|Link|Comments () June 29, 2009 10:43 AM

(Evan Richman/Globe Staff/file 2008)

By Noah Bierman, Globe Staff

FRAMINGHAM -- The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority board unanimously approved a budget this morning that rescinded a $100-million toll hike because the governor is poised to sign a budget later today that includes a bailout for the struggling roadway.

The 5-0 vote officially eliminated the toll hike that had been scheduled to take effect Wednesday. The Turnpike Authority will instead receive a $100-million annual subsidy from a 1.25-percentage-point increase in the state sales tax.

"We feel vindicated because the public has now agreed that the burden of paying for the Big Dig shouldn't have to fall on Metrowest and North Shore commuters," said Representative David Linksy, a Democrat from Natick. "Now that burden will be shared."

The hike would have doubled tolls at the harbor tunnels and raised them substantially at other booths in Greater Boston. The budget Governor Deval Patrick will sign this afternoon will increase the sales tax from 5 percent to 6.25 percent.

Michael Kelleher, founder of StopThePikeHike.org, said his organization would not rest after today's victory, vowing to launch an initiative to remove all tolls.

"We beat the toll increase today," Kelleher said. "Within a year or two, we are definitely going to have another one."

In 1998, a ballot initiative to remove tolls was struck down by the Supreme Judicial Court.

Last week, Patrick signed a law that will eliminate the Turnpike Authority in November as part of an effort to restructure the state's transportation bureaucracies. That will not, however, be the end of tolls or the agency's $2 billion in debt, much of which is from the Big Dig.