“Illinois called raising tolls a traffic reduction action”
High tolls certainly can reduce traffic–especially if that traffic includes me!
Recently, the Port Authority of NY & NJ raised the cash toll for all of its Hudson River Crossings (GW Bridge, Lincoln Tunnel, Holland Tunnel) to $15, round-trip. While I have usually avoided driving into Manhattan for many years because of the traffic congestion and the very high fees for parking, this toll increase was the final nail in the coffin for any thoughts of driving into Manhattan.
Either NY Governor Cuomo or NJ Governor Christie could have vetoed this toll increase, but neither–including the supposedly “anti-tax” Christie–did see fit to veto this type of extortion.
Anyone who can’t comprehend that this constitutes a tax increase is simply not able to analyze the situation completely.
I absolutely hate toll roads because they destroy traffic flow and waste tons of gas to slow down to either toss money in the hopper, pay a toll taker or read the toll RFID/barcode/reader on your car. It is a political cowards way to collect road use taxes without raising gasoline taxes.
That said it IS a deterrent to drive into NY or Chicago or any other city that can be isolated that way. The traffic and parking hassles should be enough of a deterrent, however.
In my experience toll increases don’t reduce traffic… they simply redirect it. And then yet another secondary road becomes overloaded and needs to be redesigned and rebuilt.
Regarding road tolls, the Turnpike Authority in OK plays a lot of games with that and here are several points.
Look at a map of Tulsa and you would find that it’s a major metro area completely landlocked by turnpikes in all directions. The alternative to paying a toll is winding 2 lanes.
Expanding the map a bit, you would find that anyone traveling from the upper Midwest to the SW is faced with tolls through Tulsa or the KS Turnpike. The alternative interstates lengthen the drive considerably.
There’s a turnpike between where I live and Tulsa that was constructed in the early 70s. Some years back it was announced that the turnpike was paid off and the regulations stated that once the bonds were paid off on a turnpike it was to revert to a free road. So what did they do?
What all politicians do; wiggle around it. They changed the regulations to state that if ANY turnpikes had bonds out on them then NONE of them could revert to being free roads.
That was immediately followed by building some metro turnpikes around OK City.
In eastern OK there is a 4 lane road that traverses the state from north to south and is heavily traveled. The Turnpike Authority was upset over this traffic avoiding the Indian Nations Turnpike so they tried to push this highway into becoming a toll road also. The only thing that stopped it was a lot of upset citizens and legislators from the affected areas.
About 15 years ago a few legislators were pushing for a number of very lightly traveled state highways in the NW part of the state to become toll roads. Since these roads go through the Glass Mountains motorists would be coerced into paying simply because any alternative route would double or triple the distance.
“In my experience toll increases don’t reduce traffic… they simply redirect it.”
Generally speaking, that is true, MB.
However, in the case of those 3 Hudson River crossings, the only “alternate” route would be to drive north for more than one hour to a different bridge, and then–of course–drive south on the other side of the river for more than one hour.
Theoretically, there is an alternative to those extortionary (is that a word?) tolls, but in a practical sense, there really isn’t one when one considers both the time factor and the cost of gasoline.
NH actually did something that IMHO is really dumb. They added a road to the newly expanded airport tied right into a major north/south divided toll road, the Everett Turnpike. They tied the new road in directly at the toll booths. With a secondary road running parallel to the turnpike, and new off & on ramps from the secondary road that bypass the tolls, those of us who commuted on the turnpike every day simply started taking the offramp to the secondary road, taking the onramp back to the turnpike, and avoiding the tolls completely. I saved a bundle in tolls.
I gotta agree with hating all of the tracking and never thought of that with the transponders. I signed up after getting raped going to and from NY on the toll roads. I think it cost me over $110 for tolls on the trip. With the transponder its half the price. The other thing is at least in Chicago, a lot of the small exits don’t take cash anymore, so you have no choice. I went through one once and took me about an hour to process a 45 cent toll on line with my debit card. Luckily we don’t have them in Minnesota. Just a couple of those lanes where you can pay extra to avoid congestion.
Oh yes and you always have the choice of saying yes or no to tracking and personal information disclosure, but the punishments always limit that freedom. I remember we had a guy at work that refused to put his SSN on his time report or to sign it. That answer from the caring human resource folks (put them in the same class as social workers) was fine, you don’t have to provide your SSN or sign it, but then we can’t pay you either. Some choice. There is a high price to pay for freedom.
I don’t like giving out my SSN, if there is another way
When I’m talking to businesses on the phone, and they ask for the SSN, I say “No. Ask me another question.” And they always do, and everything is fine in the end
I remember the day when your employee number actually was your SSN. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.
A few days ago, the boss was asking my coworker for his SSN. I think they were filling out some paperwork. I immediately walked away, because I don’t want to know such information. And when his identity gets hijacked, I don’t want him saying “such and such was eavesdropping when I told my SSN to the boss . . .”
I always try to walk out of ear range when giving the company credit card number over the phone, wife got a call from supposedly the service provider company, call this number and enter this code. Called the Provider, bill had been paid, probably just another scam. Credit card skimmers like at gas stations are getting more sophisticated
My bank sent out letters to the customers, instructing them to watch out for those devices. Apparently, some POS thieves were installing them on atms in fairly remote locations, the ones where there is no security guard hanging around
But I have heard that the gas station is the favorite place to install the skimmers. I always pay cash for my fuel, so at least my card won’t get hijacked at the pumps
Just out of curiosity, does anybody know what kind of prison time these guys get, when they’re caught. I wish it was really lengthy, in a maximum security prison, full of bloodthirsty criminals. Because hijacking somebody’s card can potentially make the victim’s life very difficult
I may be mistaken, but I seem to remember hearing the penalty for SSN theft is far higher than credit card theft . . . ?
I consider these thieves to be parasites. I barely consider them human beings. Almost not worthy of being kept alive. They definitely aren’t contributing anything useful to society.
"If George Burns is looking to make a comeback Michelle Bachman might be interested. "
Nah!
The late Gracie Allen was a comedic genius who knew exactly what she was saying.
By contrast, Ms. Bachmann never had any clue regarding the…bogosity…of her utterances.
This is a clear difference between a woman who used obvious logical impossibilities for comic effect, versus a woman who had no clue that she was perpetually clueless. Luckily for the people whom Ms. Bachmann used to represent, she is no longer able to expose her cluelessness in public forums.
db4690: When I enlisted in 1977 SSN had replaced the service number. My SSN is now recorded on uncountable documents. Much later when I was a custodian of flight records I saw all aircrew SSNs I just tried not to record them on my organic hard drive. Of course I still remember one 444-44-4444 but I will never tell who it belongs to. I did change one digit. You have to guess which one.
In ND way back when, drivers license number was your SS number. Got written on many checks I wrote as ID. Now when I got my training for bartenders license, the code used for proper license number was able to verify a valid license including at least birthday.
When I went in in 1970, your SSN was stenciled on your duffle bag for everyone to see. And when orders were cut, they were pasted on the communal bulletin board with maybe 20 or 30 other guys and their names and SSN. In fact I still have copies with all the SSNs on them. Now if you ask for records, the SSN of everyone else is blacked out.
Of course never used to be a problem because you couldn’t just get credit by sending in a form and the local credit bureaus and banks were the ones that kept the records and they knew you. Trans Union or whatever they are didn’t exist. So you really have to lay a good portion of the blame on these three companies for allowing identities to be established without even a hand shake. Interesting that in high school we went to visit the local credit bureau and they would check the papers for articles on people and cut it out and file it. It may be archaic by today’s standards but there wasn’t any identity theft back in 1965.
As far as penalties for social security theft, I may be wrong but it may be a federal crime to screw with Social Security which is a federal program. Plus if it was stolen checks from the mail, that would be a federal postal crime. A little different than the minor infraction of stealing a car.
