PACKET EDITORIAL, May 29
By: Packet Editorial
We have one question to ask the folks who’ve been pushing so hard to make July 4 a toll-free day on the Garden State Parkway.
What’s the point?
It isn’t like removing the tolls, even on the richly symbolic occasion of Independence Day, is going to prove anything. Will the traffic flow more smoothly through the toll areas? Of course it will. Will motorists be delighted not to pay 35 cents every few miles for the privilege of driving on the Parkway? Of course they will. Will the Parkway lose about $450,000 in revenue for the day? Of course it will.
But we already know all that. Sears doesn’t have to give away dishwashers to prove that demand for them will be greater, customers will be happier and the Kenmore company will lose more money than if they were sold at the usual price. General Motors doesn’t have free-Chevy days to keep the assembly lines rolling, improve customer relations and put its auto manufacturing division out of business.
And the Parkway doesn’t have to waive the tolls for a day to know that traffic will flow better, motorists will be happier and the authority that runs the road will be poorer as a result.
So the only reason we can imagine that groups like Citizens Against Tolls and the New Jersey chapter of the National Motorists Association have been posturing for a toll-free day is the symbolism. And the only reason we can imagine that acting Gov. Donald DiFrancesco and other politicians have been giving it serious consideration is the publicity.
It is, in fact, nothing more than a stunt. We would call it a cheap stunt but, unfortunately, it’s an expensive one. (To paraphrase the late Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen, $450,000 here, $450,000 there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money.) What’s more, the whole idea is misdirected, targeted on the wrong day to the wrong beneficiaries.
If anyone deserves to enjoy a toll-free day on the Parkway (and that is a very debatable if), it is the daily commuter, whose quarters and dimes and tokens and E-ZPasses contribute mightily to the Parkway’s coffers. And if there is any specific day on which the removal of tolls would be most appreciated by those who traverse the Parkway on a daily basis, it would be one of those hot summer weekdays when traffic is backed up for miles at the Driscoll Bridge or the Union Toll Plaza, causing radiators and tempers to reach the boiling point.
Yet the one day this summer when daily commuters are least likely to be on the Parkway is July 4. According to Parkway records, about 1.3 million vehicles use the Parkway on a typical Wednesday, compared to about 900,000 on the typical Independence Day. So the full benefit of the one toll-free day that’s been under consideration would go to holiday motorists who, because traffic is always relatively light on July 4, would be breezing through the toll booths anyway.
Go figure.
It turns out that a toll-free July 4 probably won’t come to pass not because state officials wised up to the fact that the whole idea was stupid but because they can’t figure out how to do it legally. State law requires that public hearings be held before the tolls can be changed in any way on the Parkway unless there is "an imminent peril to public health, safety or welfare." And there isn’t enough time between now and July 4 to comply with the required schedules for holding such hearings.
Then there’s the not-so-small matter of the toll-collectors’ union, whose members aren’t inclined to give up eight hours of holiday pay without a fight. Not to mention the State Police, whose ranks would be swelled by troopers drawing holiday pay to wave motorists through the empty toll booths. The administrative barriers, it seems, may simply be too great to remove the toll barriers, at least for the moment.
Ain’t bureaucracy grand?