Mass. eyes ‘congestion pricing’ and Conn. bringing back tolls

Electronic Road Pricing gantry in Singapore, the first city in the world to implement an urban cordon area congestion pricing scheme.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

Connecticut will likely reimpose highway tolls (on trucks or trucks and cars) in the next couple of years. (The state had tolls on the “Connecticut Turnpike,’’ aka Route 95, until 1985.) Meanwhile, Massachusetts is mulling jacking up tolls for people driving in rush hours in Greater Boston – the sort of “congestion pricing’’ now used in some cities in Europe and in Singapore. Both programs would probably speed traffic by taking a lot of people off the roads and onto expanded mass transit, which the new tolls should help pay for, along with road repairs. And user fees seem to me the fairest form of taxation.