Tacoma Narrows Toll Discounts

There's a small item in the P-I today about Governor Gregoire's proposal to halve the price of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge Toll for those drivers who carry an automatic toll transponder in their car. People who participate would pay $1.50 round-trip instead of the $3 everyone else pays. Presumably there would also be a fast lane for the traffic that used the transponders that would allow them to drive straight through, although at a somewhat reduced speed, instead of waiting in toll lines.

Seattlest just returned from Chicago where an automated tolling system has been in place for some time now, and since relatives in the Southwest suburbs and the Northern suburbs had us driving back and forth between the two approximately a hundred million times, we were quickly reacquainted with the I-PASS system. If you have an I-PASS transponder paying tolls around Chicago is fast and easy and relatively painless (assuming you're borrowing a transponder from a resident and the bill doesn't show up at your house). If you don't have a transponder, tollway travel in Chicago is a nightmare of missed cash lane turn-offs and unmanned toll baskets.

In Chicago they do it hardcore, though. Instead of reducing tolls for the people who participate in the I-PASS program, they doubled them for everyone else. It's probably not feasible to do that at the Tacoma Narrows since it will be the only toll in town when it's completed while Chicago has been living with an oppressive and extensive tolling system for the past thirty years, but if you really want to mandate participation in an automated tolling system, that's how you do it.