Link to article here.

Va. Woman Killed, 18 Hurt in Delaware Toll Plaza Pileup
By Joe Holley and Daniela Deane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 17, 2007
The three Arlington County friends were sitting in a 2006 Acura, waiting for their turn to pass through the Interstate 95 Newark Toll Plaza in Delaware, just as more than 1,000 cars do every hour.

But as they inched closer to the tollbooth Thursday night, a Ford Econoline van was heading toward them at high speed, police said. The driver never braked and slammed into the back of the Acura, killing Meghan Kieffer, 23, who was sitting in the back seat, and setting off a chain-reaction collision that injured 18 people.

“They were just paying the toll,” said Kieffer’s mother, Barbara Kieffer, who lives in West Islip, N.Y.

Her daughter was heading to New York for a long weekend and had hitched a ride with two friends, Christopher Perry, 24, and Brian Meenaghan, 25.

Now Barbara Kieffer is making plans to donate as many of her daughter’s organs as possible to salvage something out of her unbearable loss.

“It’s possible it could help up to 30 people,” she said. “It gives me some comfort to know that. I know she would want that.”

After the 9:30 p.m. crash, the victims were taken to area hospitals, though not all of them needed treatment, said Cpl. Jeff Whitmarsh, a Delaware State Police spokesman.

Perry, who was driving the Acura, was treated for a minor head injury. Meenaghan, who was in the front seat, was hospitalized with chest and neck injuries. Kieffer died in the car.

Police charged the driver of the van, Hai Lin, 27, of Kimball, Tenn., with operating a vehicle causing death.

Lin, who was being held in a Delaware jail in lieu of bail, “did not even try to stop before the impact,” said Michael Williams, manager of public relations for the Delaware Department of Transportation. Police were trying to determine how fast he was going.

Williams said the collision was classified as a work-zone incident, because paving work near the toll plaza — which takes place only at night — required channeling northbound vehicles into five satellite lanes. Overhead message boards and bright lights directed drivers to the appropriate lanes. The backup was about a quarter-mile long when the collision occurred, Williams said.

The roadway was shut down for about two hours, with intermittent lane closures until about 3 a.m. Police put in place a procedure called “counter flow,” which involves directing vehicles over the grass median and through the toll plazas serving vehicles traveling in the opposite direction.

Kieffer said her daughter, the elder of two girls, grew up in West Islip, on Long Island. She moved to Baltimore to attend Loyola College, a small Jesuit university, and graduated in 2005 with a degree in business administration and a concentration in economics. Perry and Meenaghan are 2005 graduates of the University of Maryland.

After college, Kieffer went to work for BB&T Bank in Northern Virginia, where she and Meenaghan, who also has a degree in business administration, went through the management and development program together, Barbara Kieffer said.

Meghan Kieffer had lived in Arlington for the past two years, her mother said.

Barbara Kieffer said the last time she saw her daughter was in June, when she, Meghan and Meghan’s 19-year-old sister, who attends Wake Forest University, went on a hiking trip to Yellowstone Park.

“I can’t believe this has happened,” she said, choking back tears. “It hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.

Link to article here.
The Federal Highway Administration suffers from short-term memory loss since it forced TxDOT to do a full EIS on Bandera Rd because the tolling was controversial, yet they unequally apply this policy to 281 and fail to call for a full EIS!

Of course, TxDOT also claims there are NO viable ALTERNATIVES to converting an existing highway into a toll road, IGNORING their own gas tax funded ORIGINAL PLAN to put overpasses at the stop lights, to expand the freeway and add frontage roads for one-sixth the cost of the toll road!

Costs have ballooned to 6 times the original pricetag, and footprint now up to 20 lanes wide!

From the Express-News article below –
“Costs for the first 3 miles ballooned from $80 million to $100 million, state officials said. And the latest figure for all 7 1/2 miles is now a whopping $600 million, almost twice the amount floated six years ago.”

OK this is INSANE! Just since SB 792 passed, the latest figure for the 281 toll plan was $400 million, now it’s up to $600!!!! I have the original plan in front of me. The entire 7 1/2 miles came to $100 million. The first 3 miles that were funded in 2004, came to $48 million, not $80 million as TxDOT told the Express-News.

Then TxDOT tried to claim that $80 million for just the 3 miles at January’s MPO meeting, but Commissioner Lyle Larson and others jumped in to challenge those figures and TxDOT’s arguments didn’t hold water.

A year ago during some of the toll road debates, Alamo RMA Chair Bill Thornton said the whole 281 corridor project was now $200 million (double the original gas tax plan). Then we were shocked to hear $400 million after SB 792 became law, now we read it’s $600! We have TxDOT District Engineer David Casteel ON CAMERA at the Leon Valley debate last spring admitting they had $100 million in gas taxes for 281 (which would pay for the original plan to be installed). Hear it here. Now they claim it evaporated into thin air and that the only viable alternative to bulldoze what’s there and rebuild it as a $600 million tollway (and that’s before they start gouging you with market-based tolls of 29 cents to 40 cents a mile?

Also, they’re playing more games… Judy Freisenhahn of TxDOT said at a stakeholder meeting on 281, with witnesses sitting right next to me, that the ORIGINAL plan INCLUDED overpasses, expanding the freeway to 6 lanes, AND adding 4 lanes of frontage roads. Now they’re saying the original gas tax funded plan didn’t include the frontage and their EA tries to dismiss outright by saying it doesn’t give access to businesses when it does! Now the toll lanes have gone from 6 to 10 and up to 10 frontage lanes makes the footprint for the tollway 20 lanes wide!

The flagrant lies, the GIGANTIC size of the tollway, and OUTLANDISH cost escalations by our highway department are CRIMINAL!!! They are OUT OF CONTROL!!!

So off to court to we go…

U.S. 281 tolls get a green light
By Patrick Driscoll
Express-News
08/16/2007

The Federal Highway Administration has cleared the latest environmental study for adding toll lanes to U.S. 281, drawing cheers from some and igniting protests from opponents who managed to stall the project early last year.Building six to eight toll lanes, replacing the existing highway with access roads and adding merging and turning lanes to 71/2 miles of U.S. 281 would not significantly impact people or the environment, says a letter sent Tuesday to the Texas Department of Transportation.

The letter doesn’t mention how tolls, which earlier studies indicate might start at 14 to 16 cents a mile, could affect driving habits or household budgets, but it does say the tollway is needed to reduce traffic congestion, make traveling safer and speed up construction.

“That is a great day for San Antonio and our region,” Joe Krier, president of the Greater San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, said Wednesday. “If you’re one of the thousands of San Antonians who are not moving on 281, help is on the way.”

But a mishmash of activists, ranging from conservative to liberal, aren’t giving up and say they may file another lawsuit to force a more detailed study.

“There’s no way that’ll hold up in court,” said Terri Hall of San Antonio Toll Party. “They’re just going to toll an existing road over the loud objections of the vast majority.”

Controversy over a plan to add elevated toll lanes to Bandera Road was enough to prompt federal officials in April to call for a full-blown environmental study, which is what critics want for U.S. 281.

In December 2005, Aquifer Guardians in Urban Areas and People for Efficient Transportation Inc. filed a lawsuit for such detailed scrutiny of U.S. 281 toll lanes, and a month later work on the first three miles of the tollway was halted so TxDOT could do another study.

But the “assessment” approved Tuesday, which cost nearly $2 million, is not the more thorough “impact statement” the groups demanded.

“I assume it doesn’t address our complaint,” AGUA President Enrique Valdivia said.

AGUA may fold its concerns about U.S. 281 into a lawsuit filed last year to protect habitat for the endangered golden-cheeked warbler, which is a roundabout way of fighting development on Edwards Aquifer recharge areas.

“We believe protecting the warbler habitat protects the aquifer for everyone who relies on pure water,” Valdivia said.

The width of the U.S. 281 tollway would range from 10 to 20 lanes from Loop 1604 to Borgfeld Road, covering another 70 acres with asphalt and concrete.

Such impervious cover is typically referred to as the bad boy of roads and development when it comes to aquifers, but the federal highway administration letter says sealing the ground could actually increase groundwater recharge.

“The additional pavement would potentially reduce recharge to the Trinity and Edwards Aquifers,” it acknowledges. “Conversely, it is also possible that this increase in impervious cover would increase the amount of runoff to streams, channels and/or other areas with a greater potential to recharge the aquifers.”

“Well, they’re trying to have it both ways,” said George Rice, a hydrologist and AGUA board member. “They seem to be trying to claim that something good will happen without presenting any evidence.”

Even if more water was somehow funneled into aquifers, he said, it would pick up more pollution from the wider road.

Hall and other critics have insisted TxDOT instead turn U.S. 281 into a freeway for 3 miles north of Loop 1604 and add non-toll bridges at two key intersections farther north, as planned several years ago. They say that would be cheaper, less intrusive and wouldn’t require tolls.

“They cannot justify coming in and tolling people for their lifetimes,” she said.

The federal letter says overpasses would speed up some traffic, but there would still be hazards from cars entering from driveways along the highway. Tollways, like freeways, tie the driveways to access roads rather than express lanes.

Construction of the U.S. 281 tollway could start early next year, but much has changed since a year ago.

A new state law bans leasing of the lanes to private companies, and the Alamo Regional Mobility Authority has taken over the project from TxDOT.

Costs for the first 3 miles ballooned from $80 million to $100 million, state officials said. And the latest figure for all 71/2 miles is now a whopping $600 million, almost twice the amount floated six years ago.

The mobility authority could sell toll-backed bonds, borrow gas-tax funds from other projects or do both to get started.

“We have been in a position of watching while other communities were able to move forward with needed toll projects,” authority Chairman Bill Thornton said. “The Federal Highway Administration now means that our region can stop watching and waiting.”

Link to Toll Party Founder’s guest commentary here.

Comment: Politicians the real threat to nation’s bridges

By Terri Hall

Let’s face it: We live in a quick-fix world. Rather than thinking long term and genuinely planning for the nation’s present and future, politicians have become an extension of the 24/7 sound-bite media and short-term gain addicts on Wall Street.Those against the push to privatize and toll our freeways as a quick fix for America’s aging infrastructure see the Minnesota bridge tragedy as a transportation wake-up call.

It’s criminal for politicians in Congress to have passed a highway bill in 2005 that funded a $223 million “bridge to nowhere” in Alaska instead of retrofitting that Minneapolis-St. Paul bridge, located on heavily traveled Interstate 35. We have seriously misplaced priorities in this country, pointing to politicians who are derelict in their duties.

The 2005 federal highway bill had 6,000 earmarks for frivolous congressional pet projects pilfered from dedicated gas tax revenues at a time when the Bush administration was pushing the privatization and tolling of our highways, saying new toll taxes were necessary to address congestion and the aging infrastructure because of a shortfall in revenues.

By design, they want to double-tax us by tolling the traveling public to plug their own leaky boat.

Politicians are now blaming taxpayers for not giving them enough of our money to pay for infrastructure when, in fact, they have pilfered and diverted billions from both federal and state gas tax funds, creating an artificial revenue shortfall and causing our infrastructure to fall into disrepair.

In Texas, 25 percent of otherwise dedicated state fuel tax revenue is diverted to nonroad uses, such as public schools, while another 10 percent goes to other budgetary items that don’t relate to highways. The Legislature has diverted more than $10 billion from the highway fund since 1986 for items like the arts, the Historical Commission and mineral rights litigation.

It also has deceived taxpayers into thinking the only way out of our infrastructure woes is to toll citizens who drive on what their taxes have already built and to sell our highway system to the highest foreign bidder while still failing to keep bridges and highways safe.

With a $14 billion surplus in Texas (Minnesota had a $2.1 billion surplus), it is clear America doesn’t have a revenue shortfall problem, but a profound case of fiscal irresponsibility on both the state and national levels.

Heads need to roll rather than politicians in Austin and Washington double-taxing drivers and consumers by irresponsibly spending our dedicated gas tax revenues and then adding insult to injury by tolling our roads.

Terri Hall is founder/director of Texans United for Reform and Freedom, a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that educates the public on the shift to privatizing and tolling freeways.

For those that think an electronic toll collection system sounds hassle-free, take a gander at how government and/or the private companies government hires to collect tolls can and will abuse your personal information. Granted, this article involves Communist China, but we have already highlighted how the first steps of abuse are already happening (also read here) on our own shores. While an EZ Pass toll tag is sold as the silver bullet to toll booth delays, think about where the government government starts and stops and how the push to a surveillance society invades your privacy at best, and can be abused by government at worst.

China Enacting a High-Tech Plan to Track People

New York Times
August 12, 2007

Link to article here.

Talk about bribe money…for anyone who still thinks that the Bush Administration or federal government has no role in this push to toll tax everything that moves (in a double or triple tax on driving), feast your eyes on this story. The U.S Department of Transportation is offering up $354 million in “incentives” (ie – bribes) to New York City if they PUNISH motorists (with a DOUBLE TAX) for the unmitigated gall of entering the city limits during rush hour. So the Bush Administration is now paying local government to DOUBLE TAX TOLL its citizens. They claim there’s no money to build roads, perhaps that’s because they’re too busy funneling gas taxes into toll roads instead of maintaining our aging infrastructure and an efficient freeway system!

So they’re actually advocating TRIPLE TAXATION if those dollars are used to implement the toll roads (as Bloomberg says he plans to do)…the gas tax you paid for the existing non-toll road, the gas taxes used to implement tolls, and the toll you pay to use the road you now use toll-free. What government efficiency! You pay for something twice and then they charge you again to lease it back to you. More accurately, what a scam and public fleecing!

NYC gets $354 million for traffic-toll plan

BY ANN GIVENS AND JAMES T. MADORE

ann.givens@newsday.com and james.madore@newsday.com

August 15, 2007

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to reduce midtown traffic by collecting tolls from vehicles that travel to the city on weekdays got a major boost Tuesday, when the U.S. Department of Transportation announced it will pay $354 million to launch the plan.

Still, “congestion pricing” is hardly a done deal. The city won’t get the money unless state legislators approve Bloomberg’s plan or an alternative to it within 90 days of reconvening — roughly by the end of March, DOT Secretary Mary Peters said at a news conference.

So far, all state lawmakers have agreed to do is appoint a commission to study the plan. That commission’s recommendations, which are expected by Jan. 31, must then be brought back to the City Council and state legislature for final approval.

“This is a very significant piece of what we need to begin this process,” said Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who answered questions on the DOT announcement alongside Bloomberg at an affordable housing news conference in the Bronx yesterday. “We feel great that we will get this done.”

Spitzer and others said now that the federal money has come through, they expect to appoint the members of the 17-member commission soon.

The mayor’s plan is to charge motorists $8 — $21 for trucks — to enter Manhattan below 86th Street on weekdays between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Motorists within the zone also would have to pay to drive but the charges would be lower. He says it would be a way to reduce congestion and pollution while creating a steady source of money for mass transit improvements.

New York would be the first U.S. city to implement the plan, which is in place in London and Singapore.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan), who has raised many questions about the mayor’s plan, stressed that it hasn’t been approved yet.

“My Assembly colleagues in and near New York City have heard concerns from their constituents as well. I believe it is essential that we consider these concerns,” Silver said.

Some lawmakers from Long Island and the four boroughs outside Manhattan have said the plan will squeeze their constituents, many of whom commute into the city; stress public transportation; and cause parking problems outside the toll areas.

“If the City Council and state Legislature come up with a viable alternative to the mayor’s plan, I believe Transportation Secretary Peters has an obligation to approve that plan,” Silver added.

Bloomberg said he is open to new ideas.

“We’re not married to any one plan; we’re married to reducing congestion so the economy isn’t hurt and so our air is better,” Bloomberg said. “I’ll junk my plan and take yours if it’s better.”

The $354 million, which Bloomberg said he will use to pay for the plan’s start-up costs, is about $150 million less than the city had asked for, but about $150 million more than the amount the legislature set as a minimum for the state commission to proceed.

Peters said the legislature’s bickering about the plan — and failure to meet a July 16 deadline to approve it — was not the reason the city didn’t get the full $536 million it requested. New York was among nine finalists for $1.1 billion in federal funds being awarded to combat urban congestion.

The DOT money would help buy buses and set up express routes, park-and-ride facilities, ferries, and cameras and electronic toll collectors to track vehicles entering Manhattan, Bloomberg said.