422 Tolling: Elites who run our lives think it is the messaging and not the message

The pipe dream of the Delaware Valley Regional Rail Line running from Reading to King of Prussia and points east is breathing one last gasp with a marketing campaign aimed at convincing 422 motorists that, yes, indeedy, they really DO want to add insult to injury and pay a tax to sit in insufferable traffic twice a day. The misdirection involved here is that tolling 422 will fund the supposedly critical rail line which in turn will alleviate traffic on the road by getting people out of their cars and into the train.

Make no mistake, the focus here is on getting the rail line built, not alleviating traffic. Mercury:

Given that those examining this idea freely acknowledge they can find no viable alternative for funding the long-delayed rail line; or other improvements to the road which now carries some 45,000 vehicles through Pottstown daily and reaches 110,000 a day by the time the road crosses the Schuylkill River at Valley Forge, it should come as little surprise that those videos show people who support the idea of implementing a toll.

So if this is the success supporters of the toll are hoping for, then the funding will eventually dry up as people opt to commute via rail instead of via auto.

Right?

Ok, everybody knows that that isn't going to happen. People love their cars. So what this is going to do is actually give more people access to the 422 corridor who wouldn't ordinarily have it. This is not a bad thing, but it's important to point out that this is not what this marketing campaign is promoting; it is promoting tolls as a means to alleviate traffic.

The other focal point of this campaign is that the money will be used to fund improvements to the road.

Alan Piper, transportation planner the Berks County Planning Commission, pointed out that the road is not truly free.

Drivers have "always paid for that road in terms of their gas taxes, in their vehicle registration and in their license fees," he noted, adding "and what they're buying is a road that is crowded and in terrible condition. And we can't make improvements based on the revenue stream that's coming in now."

I'm glad you bring that up, Alan. Whatever happened to those funding streams? Where is THAT money and why isn't it enought? And specifically, what are the "improvements" planned? Seeing as how we have been tortured for the last year with the Obama Union Jobs Program American Recovery and Reinvestment never-ending stimulus-funded paving project, what improvements are we talking about? Another two lanes? Wouldn't that make the paving project a big waste?

Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

Given the vocal response to the mere suggestion of 422 tolling, if public opinion carries any weight at all, this is something that is not going to happen, especially in the current atmosphere of public mistrust of government. After all, we residents of the outer suburbs are not completely oblivious to the fact that there just so happens to be a regional rail line leading from the inner suburbs into Philadelphia and yet there still seems to be an inordinate amount of traffic on the Schuykill Expressway. Furthermore, SEPTA is heavily subsidized by state tax dollars. Do we really want to create another unsustainable and marginally accountable government run entity (see: Turnpike Commission, DVPA) with an infrastructure staffed by overpaid unionized transportation workers?

I think not. No tolls on 422.