The problem with toll roads being accepted here is I think people are beginning to catch on to the probability that any additional funds collected would probably be used for anything but road maintenance, schools, or some other lie and more likely diverted to bike and rail.

The other important side to this story is that the toll system costs more than the road improvements. This story is playing out here in Portland, and is happening even in our garbage, water, sewer services. The frills, PR, administrative costs are more than the actual services.

And we have a cabal of Planners ready to impose tolling on us with all these costly "taxing" devices, just like the solar parking meters costing more in debt service, maintenance, collection and initial costs than the services rendered.

Plus, its all ready for corruption like the meters. By the way, when is McCoy going to jail?

McCoy who?
Oh, right. Given this is Portland, Oregon, progressive planners paradise, it all depends on whether or not anyone other than himself is implicated.

Repeating myself, I say resistance to tolls is a matter for rebranding -- forget tolls, but remember tickets to the show.

Portland is weird; Portlandia is a showcase playground. Therefor charge admission.

Charge admission to enter the Urban Growth Boundary, into the overcast tent of Cirque de Déluge where it's raining. The show will start at any time, get your ticket, step right in.

But free passes for 2 situations:
1.) Intrastate arrivals: no Boundary fee for Oregon-to-Oregon passage,
2.) Arrivals on foot, bike, boat, train, plane, or riding animals: no charge.
(Trucking and cartage 'passing thru' the UGB don't qualify as Arrivals.)

That leaves two veritable and one virtual bridges of interstate entry, and
a dollar-per-axle ought to pay & pave the way. And/or be sure to tip the doorman,
service staff and performers inside The Really Big Shower. No exit fee.

Cirque du Déluge

Touche! (And I mean that in the Thurberian sense.)

I would LOVE a tax system in which income taxes are dedicated solely to education; sales taxes are dedicated solely to welfare (i.e. public safety, social services); property taxes are dedicated to local government services; road taxes (including tolls, fees, licenses, taxes) are dedicated to roads, so on and so forth.

But I know, just like the next person, that government will find a way to rob Paul and pay Peter with it. Just as the bicycling rally wants motorists to pay for their stuff. The mass transit people want motorists to pay for their trains. The Amtrak people want an "AmPenny". The income taxes on the rich pay for the benefits of the poor. So on and so forth.

Everyone should pay their fair share - and when someone has a proposal they should find a way to pay for it without interjecting "everyone else but me should pay for what I want!"

Before long, we'll have a four class society: those so rich they can evade taxes, those so politically connected they evade taxes, those so poor and indignant that everyone feels bad about making them pay taxes, and the rest of us.