For Whom The Bridge Tolls

"Out-of-towners have their license plates photographed and get billed by mail.'

Oh yeah, that will go over well. Good job Portland. Make PDX even more unfriendly!

Maybe we should fund important things first, like bridges, and not trams, esplanades, street cars, etc.

I expected more from you Mr. Wheeler. And I don't mean MORE TAXES.

Yeah, I'm about to self-tax myself and build a bridge from my fist to Wheeler's face. The only toll around here is coming from a bell and Mr. Wheeler is for whom it be chimin like a mother-fucker. Hugo Wheeler Chavez better start baking some toll-house cookies, to sell at the local community bake-n-shake and I DO MEAN DOUBLE CHOCOLATE!

"...it be chimin like a mother-fucker."

It's not everyday that such poetry winds up on the local free rag's website. Applause to you, "The Wheel Deal". Surely, you are a man among men. You can be certain that I am infact "laughing out loud".

Jim -

The City built the tram, the esplanade and the street cars. City money does not = County money. If you have a problem with the way the City spends its money, let the City know but don't blame the County for City expenditures.

In New York and in San Francisco tolls make sense. The river and bay that separate those cities separate much more than 2 sides of town that the Willamette separates. The river happens to be in the center of Portland, but to separate the sides of the city would do no good except make traffic a bigger problem than it already is.

Since this article has provoked at least one threat of violence, I think I should point out that I have not suggested tolling as a short-term solution. I made it very clear to the reporter that a) the county does not have tolling authority, B) tolling does not make sense given that the county does not control all of the crossings in the area, and C) tolling lacks political support (including on recent polls done for the City of Portland). I raised other potential objections, as well. For whatever reason, the objections I raised were not included in the article. I will stand by my belief that tolling should be on the table as one of several possible LONG-TERM options, but only if the three above objections are addressed. Tolling is used as an ALTERNATIVE to other taxes to pay for transportation infrastructure in other parts of the country. All of the bridges mentioned with tolls are in excellent condition. Tolling may not be for us now or ever, but then again, we let a bridge (Sellwood) age to the point where it has a federal adequacy rating of only a 2 on a scale of 1 to 100.

It's a necessary political exercise to generate an idea and talk about to determine interest. That Wheeler talked about tolls, or retracted the idea - not even a proposal - isn't really news. The Minnesota bridge collapse was real and Sellwood could do the same in a slight earthquake. The man volunteered for the worst job in town - at least let him do the brainstorming without scorn.

Here is the problem, plain and simple. Any construction project, is a pork project for politicians and their favored unions. Any of them. This is not exclusive to Portland. Every state is like this; especially when federal funds are involved. The reason you can't fund things is because the politicians rob their constituency blind. And the people just seem to love it and take it from behind without so much as a squeal or a small box of chocolates. Quite simply, if you can't balance funding, you shouldn't have your job. As far as tolls go, they would be great in an ideal world where the people actually had control of how the collected money was spent, but this is just another political scheme to line pockets. If tax revenue was being spent correctly, you wouldn't see such a big difference between the east and west side. You would have a streetcar system that actually collects revenue and profits correctly. You would have a ferry system for north/south commuting. But you don't.

Every state already gets federal funds for bridge upkeep. As well as security funds due to DHS regulations.

"Out-of-towners have their license plates photographed and get billed by mail."

That's an invasion of privacy, would not leave a verifiable trail for disputes by the driver and would also create a massive allocation of database storage for personal info. Much of which probably wouldn't be handled right and would be stolen or sold to data-miners. A pork project.

"The state maintains all the other Willamette bridges except the Steel Bridge, which is run by Union Pacific Railroad.)"

Then let the state figure it out. Not the county or city. Again, the state is already getting federal funds.

People need to wake up, get a backbone and send politicians out of town on a rail when they purposely exploit and rob their constituency.

If you can't get rid of your corrupt politicians, at least put the bridges and roads under a privately owned enterprise, that works under an open bid system out of government control or influence, and is directly funded by the people. Let the their be open competition, let the system be profitable and let the people invest in the company and make a profit through dividends.

Everyone is forgetting that Portland, and the whole state of Oregon for that matter, already has a huge bridge toll. Washington residents who work in Oregon have to cross the 5 or 205 to get to work. How is this a bridge toll? Because Washington residents have to pay Oregon income taxes, a lot of Oregon income taxes, even though they have no representation, do not utilize the public programs which their tax dollars subsidize and because the taxes are automatically withheld they have no choice but to pay them. Granted, this isn't a literal "bridge toll," but the fact remains that Oregon is fleecing out-of-state residents who drive across two bridges to get to work every day, and that, in my opinion, is close enough.

Oregonians cannot tax an intersate bridge because they are funded with federal dollars. As far as "fleecing" out of state residents, there wouldn't be a problem if Southern Washington had any sort of industry or service, right? Washingtonians should stay in Washington and quit feeding off of Oregon and stealing our jobs. Oregonian jobs for Oregonians, plain and simple. We should tax out of state plates that park in Portland. That'd be a quick way to raise funds.

I have to echo the sentiments of "the nickel arcade" - Washingtonians do tend to benefit from being on the Northern side of the divide. This is coming from a home-owning Portlander/Oregonian who commutes INTO Vancouver everyday (I know - the insanity). Vancouver-ites specifically benefit from dipping down into our city to avoid sales tax, and living in Vancouver to avoid our ridiculous property taxes (and those fun multnomah county income taxes that surfaced a few years ago) - while still gleaning a paycheck from abundant jobs available in a major metropolitan area (which Vancouver is obviously - NOT).

That they have to pay Oregon state tax for the privilege of working in Oregon (thereby, clogging up our roads, etc) is no skin off my nose.

I don't complain about dropping 8% sales tax on all the food and gas I buy over here. I enjoy the inter-connectedness of the two cities.

What we really need is some light rail system between the two (and better public transportation) - which would take a lot of head-ache out of the commute.

Much Love, Mindy C

PS - I LOVE our Portland bridges, but trying to seriously consider a toll for their use, when traffic is already terribly shitty on those bridges most of the time as it is...aigh. I pity the fool.

A coupla points in response to county Chairman Ted Wheeler's comments above:

1) Above all, what a sorry state of affairs if the chairman is being subjected to a threat of violence for speaking honestly in response to a question we asked about tolling.

2) I would also add that the piece quotes the chairman talking about tolling as an option "50 years from now."

The piece also notes that the Legislature would need to rewrite state law to allow local tolling, that the county does not control all the bridges; the story also cites polling that shows a plurality of residents opposed to tolls.

Hank Stern

News Editor

"the chairman talking about tolling as an option "50 years from now."

Oh, well that makes it all better. It's such a relief to know that in 50 years we'll have progressed to the point of charging people to cross the river on bridges that are already paid for. Long live "The City That Works!"

Thanks, Hank. Ted

Jefe -

Based on your arguement that we shouldn't have to contribute more money for bridges "already paid for", I guess you don't believe in maintenance for your car or home. I don't particularly enjoy forking out cash to replace the roof on my home or get the oil changed in my car but it's a necessary evil. If I forgo maintenance because I already paid for my home and car, I'll end up with a house that's falling down and a car that doesn't work. Similar to what we're going to see with the Sellwood bridge and the others if someone doesn't do something soon and that requires money, whether or not we already paid for the bridge more than 50 years ago or not.

Look at what the Multnomah County I-Tax did. Absolutely nothing.

The government waste so much money on bureaucracy and administrative costs that very little goes to substance.

But that's not enough so the government needs to raise taxes and call for new taxes for more money.

It won't be long in our corporate slaving lifestyle of nearly a 24-7 workweek, just to go home with a few pennies in our wallets.

I'm sick of this nickel-and-dime shit.

In making the claim that tolls are necessary and in place in other cities, why isn't it also mentioned that although there are tolls in New York when crossing directly over the Hudson River between OUTER boroughs (Triboro, GWB, Verazanno, etc), there are absolutely no tolls on the bridges spanning the east river from Queens/Brooklyn/Bronx to Manhattan (Queensboro Bridge, Williamsburg, & Manhattan Bridges)... basically in the same way that there are no tolls here in Portland connecting various parts of this city. It wouldn't make much sense to toll the only connections between the two sides of the city now would it?

To Mr. Jekyll and all the other blow-hards who do nothing but complain,

If you don't like it then why don't you GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO IT YOURSELF! Its really easy to bitch online in a blog but its really hard to get involved and actually contribute to solving the problem.

If you know all the answers then get involved, run for office and make changes. As someone who has contributed significant amounts of personal time to my community I can tell you that very rarely do you hear a compliment. What you hear are jackasses like yourselves always bitching, but never lifting a finger to actually contribute to a solution.

The only finger I want to lift for all of you blowhards is my middle finger because you are a huge part of the problem since you don't want to be part of the solution.

I think we should figure out a way for Portland to acquire those bridges from the county. It makes no sense that the city is responsible for the streets leading up to the bridges and the county is responsible for the bridges. Portland should acquire those assets and we should let the county take care of health and social services while the city takes care of transportation.