THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, September 7, 1996 TAG: 9609070001
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Opinion
SOURCE: Kerry Dougherty
LENGTH: 79 lines
A news item last week was easy to miss, given all the media attention focused on big stories like Saddam Hussein and Hurricane Fran.
On Labor Day, a driver leaving Virginia Beach and heading to the Eastern Shore, approached the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel toll booth. Instead of reaching for his wallet to dig out the $10 toll, he floored the accelerator and blew through without paying.
What ensued was a made-for-TV three-state 20-police-car rip-roaring chase up Route 13. The driver sped a stretch of Virginia and Maryland and into Delaware before turning around and heading south back into Maryland. He even dodged a roadblock at one point.
In Sharpsville, Md., the man abandoned his car and fled on foot. He was captured shortly thereafter and is facing a string of charges.
I'm not advocating high-speed chases or stiffing toll collectors, but I have to admit that for a minute - a split second, really - I was cheering for the guy who wouldn't pay the toll.
I travel up and down the Eastern Shore a fair bit and I knew exactly how he felt.
Not that I'd ever try it myself. No way. I dutifully fork over a $10 bill every time, turn on my lights and say thank you when the toll collector hands me my coupon for a free thimble-full of Coke at the Seagull Pier.
Hey, it beats waiting for a ferry.
But that $10 toll is irksome to me and a crushing burden to many Eastern Shore residents. Its existence is a double-edged sword that keeps the Eastern Shore both charmingly rural and sadly impoverished.
Every time I drive through the Eastern Shore I get the same feeling I experienced when I first drove through Europe. It's difficult to explain, but even without border crossings you sense when you've crossed into another country. The architecture changes, the people look different and even clothing changes from country to country.
And so it is when you cross the Chesapeake Bay and traverse Virginia's Route 13. Sprinkled among the stately clapboard farmhouses with their long, tree-lined drives are shacks and shanties, bent with age, covered with peeling tarpaper and encircled by dusty yards.
As a family, we stare at these dwellings through our car windows. My husband and I lecture the children on the pain of poverty. We hope to teach our children compassion as they gaze on the misery of their fellow Virginians. We want them to appreciate how fortunate they are.
We tell them that the one thing that could significantly worsen lives of these people on the Shore is to become seriously ill - and have to face that toll to get help. Eastern Shore families with children in Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, for instance, are often unable to commute back and forth daily because of the toll.
Some people with chronic illnesses choose to visit doctors in Salisbury, Md., rather than pay the $20 round-trip fee to get medical help in Virginia Beach or Norfolk.
A while ago, an Eastern Shore doctor told me she sometimes authorized ambulance transportation to Hampton Roads for her patients even if they can make the trip by car - because they lack the $20.
It shouldn't be so.
The Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel Commission has made it clear that there will never be commuter passes for people who would use the span to get to work - thus sentencing Eastern Shore residents to low-paying jobs on the Shore.
Elsewhere bridges and tunnels are only too happy to make up in volume what they lose in price by discounting tickets.
But a compassionate medical pass - one that would let people visit sick family members in the hospital or travel back and forth for treatment seems the very least that should be done.
As it is, the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and Tunnel Commission gives $5,000 a year to social services in Accomack and Northhampton Counties. Those agencies then buy full-fare tickets for the bridge tunnel which they can give to needy people desperate for medical services in South Hampton Rods.
But one need not be in poverty to find an additional $20 fee tacked onto all medical services punitive.
I wish the commission would someday reconsider its stance toward commuter and medical passes.
Then when I hear about some common criminal stiffing the toll collectors I won't get the urge to cheer.
KEYWORDS: CHESAPEAKE BAY BRIDGE TUNNEL by CNB