I-95 Toll hikes coming July 1

[pcity]

MD considers it a toll facility. No doubt you can use parts of the facility without paying a toll but the highway was and continues to be funded by tolls rather than Federal transportation dollars. That is why the toll is so much on the 95 bridge compared to other bridges.

[Tom Lennox 70]

Originally Posted by Rambler123

The whole thing is a joke - the tolls to cross the Tyding Memorial Bridge are much higher than the tolls to cross the Bay Bridges, despite those 2 bridges being much larger and thus requiring more money to maintain. The theory is that Maryland just bilks out-of-state drivers using I-95 and then uses those extra revenues to keep the tolls lower on the Bay Bridges. Of course, this hoses people like me who go up I-95 to visit family and who rarely use the Bay Bridges at all.

That, and as others have said, the concept of toll roads is something out of the 1950's - stopping on a freeway to hand somebody some cash?! Even slowing to a crawl to use EZ-Pass is absurd. Do away with the tolls, raise the gas tax, and be done with it. I'd still pay the same, but I wouldn't have to have the lunacy of it thrown in my face every time it costs me now $8 to cross a bridge.

The tolls are high because of the ICC which Montgomery County's liberal elite demanded that the state build for them. Ehrlich agreed to it in a failed attempt to buy the votes of Montgomery's Democrat voters who still didn't vote for him due to their passion for gay marriage, abortion, and illegal immigration. Maryland is one of only a few states without regional transit taxes among states with mass transit also. Montgomery County expects the rest of us to subsidize them and their massive mass transit projects through our tolls and gas taxes. The ICC shoulda been funded by Montgomery COunty taxpayers alone. The Bay Bridge and Tydings bridges are already paid off and have been paid off for years. That's why Virginia removed some tolls from the James River bridges after they have been paid off, but Maryland finds ways to keep on increasing the tolls instead of removing them like should have happened once the construction costs were paid off.

I guess gay marriage and illegal immigration is so important to the liberal passions that the Democrats can raise all the tolls and gas taxes they want and still get elected.