The proposed toll hike from $.40 to $.75 (IPass, for cars at half the toll plazas) is supposed to pay for a $12 billion plan to repair and expand Illinois tollways over the next 15 years. Among $8.3 billion worth of projects already on the drawing board: widening I-90 to improve the connection between Chicago and Rockford.
Officials claimed without the fare hike the State gas tax would have to go up 9 cents per gallon just to pay to keep what's already in place running, 20 cents more to build anything new. Deputy Engineer Rocco Zucchero observed the Tollway hasn't boosted prices since 1983.
Jeff Peters, a business rep for the machine operators union, said the way things are now reminded him of growing up in Algonquin. "I saw my dad drive into Elk Grove Village and for 35 years it took him longer and longer and longer to get home each night," he said.
Most speakers had an oar in the water on the fare hike. Officials from the machine operators union were all for it since Toll officials said it would create 13,000 construction jobs. So were a lot of local highway engineers. Huntley's Lee Bollinger said at least the hike would be fair. "Only those using the tollway would pay the fee," he said.
Support for the increase wasn't unanimous, though. Lakewood gadfly and blogger Cal Skinner was against it. "That's S-K-I-N-N-E-R," he told the clerk, "like the way you want to skin people with this toll increase." Skinner said the Authority ought to go after Motor Fuel Tax money he claimed gets paid up here but spent downstate. That drew the biggest round of applause of the evening but only barely.
Zucchero himself touched on the Tollway's biggest problem. "We can't just keep adding lanes," he said. "They fill up quick."
In the pic: Algonquin engineer Ted Lachus from the American Council of Engineering Companies told a hearing in Huntley Friday that Tollway expansion "is long overdue".
