Editorial: Mass. Pike officials must do more than listen
If the people who run the Massachusetts Turnpike really didn't want to hear from their customers, they couldn't have picked a better time to hold a public hearing on proposed toll increases: a Friday night when the Red Sox are playing for the American League Championship.
We still haven't heard a plausible explanation for why the Pike scheduled its MetroWest hearing for 6 to 8 p.m. tonight at Framingham's Memorial Building, but we suspect incompetence rather than conspiracy.
Pike officials can handle an hour or two of complaints about tolls, waste and inequity -- and most expect the Pike to do whatever it wants anyway. But we shouldn't be surprised when the Pike makes a scheduling decision that reinforces the reputation for insularity, unaccountability and arrogance this agency has earned over decades. This is, after all, the Pike.
We hope the Pike officials hear from MetroWest at tonight's hearing -- and at a yet-to-be-scheduled hearing next week they say will make up for the scheduling snafu. Here are some of the points we hope they will hear:
- Making Pike toll-payers pay for construction of the Big Dig while others who use that bedeviled stretch of highway ride for free was unfair when the Legislature voted for it in 1997 and it is unfair today.
- The toll increases -- 25 cents each way at the Weston and Allston toll plazas -- the Pike board tentatively approved last week are unfair, and the Pike should find a way to avoid them. They will cost MetroWest workers who commute to Boston $200 a year or more, an unfair burden that should not be shrugged off with the lame rationale that it could have been worse.
- There's a better way: Pike Board member Mary Z. Connaughton proposes raising the tunnel tolls by $1.25 and increasing tolls paid by commercial vehicles by 75 percent, while leaving the tolls on the Boston Extension where they are. That's more fair to toll-payers and will allow the Pike to meet its obligations to bond-holders.
- If MetroWest must continue to pay tolls, it's only right that tolls be restored at exit 16 in Newton -- where toll plazas were torn down by Gov. Bill Weld as a political stunt in 1996 -- and between Westfield and the New York state line.
- The consolidation of transportation agencies now being studied by the Patrick administration offer opportunities to improve efficiency, restore accountability and uproot the culture of waste that has plagued state authorities for a generation. That project should proceed -- as long as provisions are made to protect toll-payers from having to pay an even greater share of the burden of maintaining the transportation infrastructure.
Whatever the time and place of the public hearings, Pike officials must do more than just sit quietly while their constituents make these points. They must respond to them.