THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, November 19, 1994 TAG: 9411190021
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A16 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
It's official. As of October 1995, there will be no more tolls on the Virginia Beach-Norfolk Expressway. Whatever reservations officials have about revenue losses, drivers will be relieved.
It's a feeling akin to that when the Berlin Wall came down. Not so momentous geopolitically, perhaps. But the removal of the toll barriers nevertheless represents the removal of an annoying impediment to the free flow of traffic and the substitution of a bit of personal freedom for a bit of state regulation and regimentation.
For 27 years, motorists have had to slow to a crawl and often to a halt, fumble for change, pitch it in baskets or press it into outstretched hands, and wait for lights to turn or gates to rise. Far too often, the gizmos have malfunctioned and bells and whistles have gone off, further increasing the joy of commuting. The central toll plaza has functioned like a gigantic speed bump, making a mockery of the term ``expressway.''
In recent years, 100,000 travelers a day have had their journey interrupted. Holiday fun seekers have been met with a traffic jam at a toll booth and a hand stuck out demanding to be crossed with silver. Welcome to the Beach! At rush hour, infuriating waits have raised the blood pressure of uncounted type-A commuters. Even if the average wait was only five minutes, the cumulative total of man-centuries wasted in toll-plaza lines is mind-boggling.
Now our own Checkpoint Charlie and all the lesser toll baskets will come down. The Virginia Department of Transportation might consider doing what the resourceful Berliners did. Get acetylene torches, cut the toll booths into one-inch squares and sell the pieces as souvenirs. Who knows? Liberated commuters might snap them up. And the revenues could be applied to the building of new toll roads.
If other roads with tolls are, indeed, constructed in Virginia - the Southeastern Expressway, for instance - planners ought to learn some lessons from the flaws of Route 44. Toll-taking can surely be made a lot less intrusive and a lot more efficient.
There are ways to collect the money without creating twice-daily bottlenecks and backups. Some new computerized methods allow regular users of a tollway to be counted and charged electronically as they roll past scanners.
User friendliness has not been a distinguishing feature of Route 44. It ought to be priority on toll roads from here on out. Commuters will pay a lot less grudgingly if a toll road eases their journey instead of making it more difficult. by CNB