Like TURF
Follow TURFRhode Island slaps tolls on un-tolled Sakonnet Bridge, protests ensue
Rhode Island collecting dime 'placeholder' toll on Sakonnet Bridge, but governor speaks up for toll financing
August 29, 2013
Toll Road News
Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority began collecting the 'dime' toll set by the state legislature first thing Monday August 19 following an arsonist's attempt to burn out toll cabling, and amid protest demonstrations at the Sakonnet River Bridge. David Darlington chairman of the board of directors of the Rhode Island Turnpike and Bridge Authority told us toll collection was not affected by the either the arsonist's fire or demonstrators.
"The toll system has been working flawlessly from the minute we switched it on. We haven't had any problems at all," he told us. This is the first all-electronic toll facility in New England.
System supplier was Sanef. RITBA has its own technical and operations staff.
Arson attack
The weekend before the opening at about 1:05am early on Saturday, Aug 17, the arsonist pried open two manholes near the toll gantry - one for a vault with fiberoptic communications cable splices and the other electric power connections. Kerosene or some other flammable liquid was poured in the two vaults and the fire set. It was a major fire. Firefighters took half an hour to extinguish the blaze.
The cabling in the vaults was completely destroyed by the heat of the fires. Darlington says the $2.2m gantry has redundant power and communications connections so the attack failed to disable the toll equipment and they were able to begin to toll as planned 48 hours later. But he says it is quite expensive to rewire and re-splice the cabling. Protestors have been advocating "civil disobedience" over the tolls but Darlington calls the arson a "destructive, dangerous and cowardly dangerous attack."
Police are investigating
About 200 anti-toll protesters turned up for a rally at the opening of tolls, many with banners urging motorists not to get E-ZPass, and urging motorists to refuse to pay video tolls. Darlington says traffic at around 40,000 vehicles per day has been about the same with tolls as before. About 55% of transactions are E-ZPass, 45% will be pay-by-plate (video.)
He says their transponders on issue have increased from 190,000 on about 135,000 toll accounts from about 160,000 transponders in the three months before Sakonnet tolls started.
All the media attention has probably encouraged people to get a transponder," he says. By law the authority cannot charge anything other than the 10 cent toll for the moment - no fees. "
Postage costs 46c, generating the paper bill about 10c and out total cost of issuing a video toll is about 80c, so obviously we are not going after a dime," Darlington says.
E-ZPass accounts are being debited the dime each trip, and video tolls are being accumulated without any bills sent yet.
Darlington says they haven't decided yet on a threshold balance for billing. And he says occasional users may be billed after a certain time has elapsed or at a lower threshold balance, because it wouldn't be fair to the regular users to simply forgo tolls on visitors.
Committee to study role of tolls
The Rhode Island legislature has established a 9 person committee (3 from House and Senate, and 3 appointed by the Governor, one of which is a RITBA delegate) to try and get agreement on the role of tolls and other financing methods for the state's roads and bridges. The committee must report its recommendations January 15.
Tolls may play a smaller role, a larger role, or no role at all, Darlington says. If the committee can't agree or the legislature doesn't pass new legislation by end March then come April RITBA will be free to go back to its plans for a serious revenue raising toll on the Sakonnet bridge - which were set previously at 75c for cars with Rhode Island E-ZPass, foreign E-ZPass $3.75 and video toll $5.25.
If RITBA is not free to toll the Sakonnet, the authority will hand the bridge, and the Jamestown - another untolled bridge - back to Rhode Island DOT to maintain and operate. Transfer of the two bridges and tolling the Sakonnet was an initiative of the Governor Lincoln Chafee and easily passed the legislature - until they had second thoughts when protests began in earnest this spring.
Governor speaks up for tolls
Governor Chafee was quite silent through the controversy and failed to veto the legislature's move to detoll, then to go to the dime toll. But August 21 Chafee spoke up for the Sakonnet toll saying it makes most sense to put a toll on the most heavily trafficked of the four bridges serving Aquidneck Island.
That allowed the toll rate to be lower to raise the money needed to rehabilitate and properly maintain the four bridges. The governor said it was simply unacceptable to allow the bridges to deteriorate for lack of money, as was happening before the Sakonnet toll was instituted.