Why do we need toll roads? The cost a typical commuter from New Brunswick to the Lincoln Tunnel is $6.50 and the daily cost without parking fees (gas, insurance, etc.) is $21.50, for a total of $35.50 (not including the tunnel toll).
Not too cheap to travel from Central Jersey to New York City each day via the NJ Turnpike. And I am not even taking into the non-economic cost of your time traveling back and forth in heavy traffic. The total cost per year is $8946.00, not exactly cheap.
Now I am going to tell you that you could save the cost of driving on the NJ Turnpike if the tolls were to removed, as it was promised back in the creation of this quasi public private entity when it was approved by the legislature. Yes, the tolls were to be taken down once all the debits were paid off. But what really happened is simple, they cheated by always putting out more bonds so that the road will always not be free!
A number of years ago a group called Citizens Against Tolls proposed removing all tolls on the Turnpike, Parkway and Atlantic City Expressway. They failed because of all the political patronage involved. One of the things they pointed out is that the funding to keep the toll roads repaired could come from the Federal Government and this made a lot of sense.
Because of politics, you the commuter are paying for those who are feeding off the patronage system. These parasites earn salaries for jobs that are not needed, especially if the tolls were removed.
It seems that today very few care that they are paying tolls on roads that should have had their tolls removed years ago. How many of you sheep are there and why do you not revolt?
My answer is that many of you have given up and are moving away. And others are just biding their time till they retire and move out of New Jersey.
Unless and until this issue is brought back into the public’s spotlight, nothing is going to change. So typical New Jersey, we the public keep paying for something that should have been free years ago.
I wrote this article so that you the readers of this blog are enlightened and hopefully will be better informed. Also I wanted you to realize how much money is needlessly being spend.
That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike
