Toll roads: Come to a full stop

Re “State’s future may be paved with fees,” Feb. 13

I was appalled to read the article about the toll roads coming to California. Letting private firms make a profit off of California roads? Now that just sits wrong. The roads in California should be accessible to all drivers, and the cost of the roads paid for by all drivers.

The cost of driving on California roads should not include lining shareholders’ pockets with a profit. However, in the case of a road/tunnel for truckers to get their goods inland, a toll road is a fine idea. Trucking companies are, after all, there to make a profit themselves.

STEPHANIE A. CONNON

Los Angeles

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That’s the way, governor, start privatizing the truck routes first and then ease the public, stretched to the limit, into putting up with fees to use the most crowded, polluted highways in the nation. The investment bankers want to own the public infrastructure, and with the help of a brain-dead Legislature and an electorate that believed Arnold Schwarzenegger when he pretended to be a liberal, they will. Does anyone besides me want to get out of California?

GERI A. MELLGREN-KERWIN

Burbank

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In a world built around the freeway, expensive toll roads will never carry their fair share of traffic.

We must do what President Eisenhower did in 1956 in establishing the 41,000-mile interstate highway system -- utilize standard financing techniques with general obligation bonds and state-federal partnerships. Privately financed toll roads provide state and local politicians with upfront money to make themselves look good, but captive commuters will be paying tolls for generations to largely foreign landlords.

The public-private partnerships utilize tax-exempt financing and government loan guarantees -- and merely outsource difficult decisions that strike fear in our politicians -- such as raising gas taxes. Let’s not give away our economic engine, the freeway, for a little money to be wasted on special interests that camouflage yesterday’s overspent budgets.

Our leaders must make the hard public infrastructure choices, backed by the public treasury, and not leave them to the whim of foreign stockholders.

JACK EIDT

Director of Planning

Wild Heritage Planners

Los Angeles

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Based on personal experience in New Jersey, toll roads would be a big mistake for California. Even with an “Easy Pass,” which automatically registers the tolls, cars must slow as they pass the tollgates, thereby creating traffic jams and increased pollution. There would also be the tremendous cost of installing all the tollgates on California highways. Because some drivers would not have “Easy Pass,” some tollgates would need to be staffed, also at a significant expense. In New Jersey, politicians often run for office promising to eliminate the tolls but, of course, never do so. Like most taxes, once initiated, government becomes hooked on them. California’s great system of freeways should remain free.

A. MICHAEL NOLL

Stirling, N.J.